EXERCISE ARRCADE CAESAR
Lieutenant Colonel Fortey
At the end of September , Engineer and Civil Military Interaction ( ECMI ) branch led the annual ARRCADE CAESAR battlefield study to Sicily . ARRCADE CAESAR is an opportunity for the Commander to bring together his team ( mostly from full Col and above ) to enhance understanding of the demands across the land , sea , and air domains , with a focus on Corps-level operations .
It was designed to provide an invaluable opportunity to develop mutual understanding , enhance component synergy and , using the past as a handrail , provoke challenging discussion and debate on how to tackle the operationallevel challenges of the future .
Each stand was opened by an authoritative , interesting and thoughtprovoking brief given by Professor Niall Barr of Kings College London , who also added value throughout the day in further discussions . The strength of the exercise was that the stands were led by the ARRC branch Chief ’ s and the different stands were aligned to branch outputs . This enabled staff to ask pertinent questions about how ARRC does its business , against the historical backdrop of Multi-Corps and Joint Operations .
As it was the summer season , for the vast majority of the time the weather was kind and the Mediterranean sun beamed down on us as discussions took place . The discussions continued well after sundown , and lessons learnt were recorded to be picked up once we were all back at Imjin Barracks .
The secondary benefit of an exercise such as this is the team building that occurs , and which fosters a deeper trust across the ARRC command team .
This was evident as difficult issues were worked through . The after-action review on the final day highlighted the intellectual ground covered . This showed the worth of the battlefield study in stimulating a group of minds in a way that is simply not possible by other means .
Looking to the next 12 months , lessons identified from the ARRCADE CAESAR study will support the intellectual and conceptual discussions of ARRCADE THOR and help to shape staff thinking prior to LOYAL LEDA 22 and STEADFAST JUPITER 23 .
The organisation team collected 30 participants from ARRC early on a Sunday morning to transport them to the airport . Eventually a total of 51 people joined the battlefield study , including guests from Italy ’ s Acqui Division and the Italian NRDC . The plan was to start on a Monday morning at the point at which British Eighth Army landed at Sicily on the south-east coastline by the city of Avola . From there , we would follow the path of General Montgomery ’ s advance north and clockwise around Mount Etna ( also a famous volcano ) to conclude the study at the end of the week in the city of Messina . This was the closest point to Italian mainland and the point in which the Axis forces withdrew from the island during the war .
@ HQARRC Allied Rapid Reaction Corps the imjin WINTER 2022-23 13