Watch: Inside a Tactical Operations Center in Poland, American Soldiers Train to Defend NATO Territory

BOLESŁAVIEC, Poland — In the middle of the woods in below-freezing temperature, several hundred American soldiers trained furiously on a Polish military base in conditions they may someday have to fight in — in the middle of the European winter defending NATO territory.

A small group of reporters, including from Breitbart News, were recently allowed to go behind the scenes into a U.S. Army war-planning command post, known as a tactical operations center (TOC), consisting of a large main tent and several smaller tents that could be quickly set up in expeditionary field conditions. Indeed, this one was set up amid a clearing on top of mud and snow.

In the center of the main tent was the “command node,” essentially several tables surrounding a giant map with markers and a large digital screen, all designed to give everyone a common operating picture in both analog and digital.

Around the command node were sections dedicated to everything needed to run an expeditionary command post of a few hundred soldiers 24 hours a day, including: human resources, health support, weather forecasting, engineering, logistics, air and ground weapons systems, electronic and non-lethal warfare, biological and chemical warfare detection, legal support, and tech support. There was also a section specifically for allies, where several Estonian soldiers were spotted sitting and walking about. Allies could also sit with their counterparts at any of the specific sections.

There was a smaller tent attached for the commanding general and staff, which had a giant map mirroring the one at the command node. There were also separate tents for intelligence and planning personnel. The entry to the intelligence section was conspicuously closed off from the main floor.

The soldiers, who were mainly from the 1st Infantry Division (1ID) based in Fort Riley, Kansas, were in the midst of carrying out Command Post Exercise Winter Strike, where they were given various simulated scenarios over several weeks in the field to test their war-fighting readiness and skills in real-world fighting conditions.

“We train as we fight. And so everywhere that we fight isn’t necessarily comfy and cozy,” said Army Sgt. Maj. Stephanie Rodriguez, the 1ID’s operations sergeant major.

“It’s a very unique environment to operate in,” added Army Capt. Kamilah Cruz, the 1ID’s signals, intelligence, and sustainment company commander. “This is a mission that you really can’t simulate back home in Fort Riley. You can’t really simulate NATO allies back home, you can’t really work with the Estonians, Latvians, Romanians, and all these other countries that we work here in Europe with.”

The 1ID Headquarters is based out of Fort Riley, Kansas, but their particular area of responsibility is Eastern Europe, which includes Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia — all countries on the frontlines of defending NATO from a revanchist Russia.

Although soldiers acknowledged the existence of a hot war going on next door in Ukraine, they insisted the exercise was not aimed at any particular adversary.

“We train to fight a very, very generic adversary of weapons systems all across the world, so it’s nothing very specific that we’re specifically training against,” said Army Staff Sgt. Nathaniel Robles, an all-source analyst with the 1st Infantry Division.

However, Army Maj. Chris Zaczyk, a strategic planner with the 1ID, did divulge that the “overall scenario that we’re participating in is we’re working with our allies and partners to simulate a threat inside of NATO sovereign territory where we work together as a team to repel that threat and restore the sovereignty of NATO territories.”

That scenario is not so unthinkable as it was before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, particularly given the widening scope of the war. Last month, speculation ran rampant as to whether the U.S. would enter the war after a Russian-made missile fell into Polish territory. Polish authorities later determined it was a Ukraine-fired air defense missile that malfunctioned.

But the prospect of an attack on NATO is still something the U.S. military — and European militaries — take very seriously.

The Winter Strike exercise involved not only troops at Bolesławiec but across Europe and back home in the states.

Zaczyk said the exercise is also a unique opportunity for a U.S. Army division headquarters to conduct training at this scale.

“At the division level, we don’t get the chance to train as frequently as smaller units do,” he said. “So the scale of it and the ability of it to test our systems is what makes this particularly unique — and when you add the amount of allies and partners that we have participating with us — it makes for a really great training event.”

During the exercise, soldiers were given various simulated scenarios.

“There is anything from an attack, there’s anything from a counterattack, there are air assault missions, it just really depends on the mission set, and realistically we don’t get that information until the simulation turns on and we’re receiving information from higher,” Rodriguez said.

While the purpose of the exercise is to train in real-world conditions, another is to build deeper relationships with NATO allies and partners as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve, which launched after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014.

“Coming out here is part of the U.S.’s plan to help build that cohesion in the Baltic states, especially building those partner relationships, because we all operate in different ways, and we really need to build that to make us a better fighter force,” said Robles.

Army Col. John Mountford, deputy commanding officer for 1ID, told Breitbart News that building interoperability with allies and partner nations means many things:

Really when I talk about interoperability, it’s whether my iPhone talks to their iPhone. That’s a technical aspect of it. The procedural is if I say ‘hello,’ they say ‘hello’ back. But the human aspect is just working together, it’s starting to build those relationships.

We have opportunities in schools where we attend NATO schools together…this is an opportunity to train together. So we learn about each other’s families, we learn about where each other came from, and it just builds commonality among us, and it just strengthens that relationship.

There are also other elements of the 1ID in Poland. The 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT), known as “Dagger Brigade,” is currently deployed to Żagań, a city about an hour and 45 minutes north of Bolesławiec. The brigade recently rotated in to replace the 3rd ABCT, 4th Infantry Division based out of Fort Carson. The deployments last about nine months.

The 1ID headquarters falls under V Corps Headquarters, which has permanent basing in Poznan, Poland. V Corps falls under U.S. Army Europe and Africa (USEURAF).

Currently, there are about 12,000 U.S. troops situated around the country in Poland. There are several hundred U.S. troops based at the Polish military base in Bolesławiec, which the Americans have dubbed simply “Camp Boles.”

“Across Europe, every single day, we have 1ID soldiers out there training with our allies and partners doing really incredible stuff from live fires to situational training then all the way up to staff level training, which is what we’re dong out there,” said Zaczyk.

The soldiers acknowledge that being thousands of miles away from their families for the holidays can be tough but that they rely on each other to keep their spirits up.

“Honestly, the best thing that gets us by is a positive attitude for the most of it. A lot of us have that close bond out here, so that’s really made it a little bit easier and more bearable to actually deal with,” Robles said.

As far as what commanders want soldiers’ families back home in America to know?

“They should be very proud, Mountford said. “All of us here are volunteers. We’ve all volunteered to serve and part of that service is sacrifice. So, no one likes to be away for the holidays, and we’ve all missed way too many special family events being here, but we all understand that there’s a need, and we all understand that we are here voluntarily, and we’re honored and privileged to serve.”

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