The army is practicing combat operations in the “open landscape” of the desert that is “reminiscent of the Ukrainian steppes. The joint exercises of the United States, Great Britain and Australia, “Project Convergence” (Project Convergence), simulating military operations against Russian troops in Europe, began in the Mojave Desert in the United States.
Project Convergence is not just an exercise, but an Army-hosted experiment focused on extracting key learnings from successes and failures to solve problems from a Joint Force perspective.
About 450 British troops, including the elite Rangers unit, went to California to take part in a 14-day exercise at the Fort Irvine military base to practice combat operations in the “open landscape” of the desert “reminiscent of the Ukrainian steppes”.
They are joined by military personnel from the US and Australia in the training exercises. The training exercises, according to the newspaper, “simulate battles under the conditions of the presence of Russian troops in Europe.”
As part of the exercise, swarms of reconnaissance drones, specially adapted to desert conditions, were used, as well as British systems for launching guided missiles of the GMLRS family, which were used against targets based on information received as a result of the use of American fighter-bombers F- 35. The exercise simulates both a “land battle in Europe” and an “island conflict in the Pacific”.
The American training center occupies an area of about 1.6 thousand square kilometers. On its territory, realistic models of settlements and other infrastructure facilities have been erected, in which specially recruited “Russian speakers” “live”.
Communication between them takes place in person and on the Internet – the social networks Twitter and Facebook were created specifically for the exercise – in which citizens, in one scenario, organize mass riots due to their mistreatment by American soldiers, who then have to suppress the events.
According to one participant in the training exercises, the conflict in Ukraine revealed “certain changes” in the practice of war, including the widespread use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and now Western armies “will have to quickly adapt to the new realities.”
Among the “experimental practices” being deployed in the exercise are the use of 3D printing to produce parts for foreign military forces in the field, as well as the use of digital processing technologies for large amounts of information collected by UAVs to make command decisions.
In 2023, similar training exercises will take place in Europe. Germany or Poland could host an exercise, called Warfighter that “reflects the US and UK’s shift to the European theatre”.
