Exclusive: Welsh Cavalry head to head with elite US Blackhorse regiment

this is the Super Bowl of uh large scale combat [Music] [Music] operations the hardest day that you're ever going to have in the Army is out here in the Mojave Desert [Music] it's named valley of death for many reasons so it takes you beyond the limit hopefully our stealth can outmatch their like BR [Music] Force I'm Sean Che and I'm spending 5 days following the Welsh Cavalry first the queen droon guards in the Mojave Desert as they're put through their Paces at the US Army's largest training area in the world 1200 square miles of brutal terrain the National Training Center is that it is the sign of Rogue Island and you can f the saly plane training area here 8 times over the National Training Center at Fort Irwin in California is one of three three Elite US army training centers the last time we saw the Welsh Cavalry they were at The Joint Readiness training center in the swamps of Louisiana as they endured the gruelling exercise rattlesnake there they faced jono this time they face black horse the 11th armored Cavalry Regiment the black horse Trooper wants to win every fight and I for one and proud wearing the same patch that they do we are the Black Horse Troopers the finest in the land we're going to uh throw a lot at at the Welsh Calvary including uh lots of artillery the job is to wreak havoc on the visiting troops to test them and make them better soldiers we have uh tanks we have bmps we have uh some light infantry some of the uh the special things that we have are some persistent chemical and non-persistent chemical attacks so hopefully they brought their uh their protective masks they do this over and over again and know the terrain Inside Out Behold The Mighty B troop uh Queen's Dron guards and attachments ready to head out to our tackle assembly area B Squadron first the Queen's droon guards are preparing to take them on their boss can't wait to get started once you're there you need to then get eyes into the John Wayne Foothills in a very very cautious manner to ensure that you don't get destroyed ah I mean I professionally I've been looking forward to the opportunity to come to the National Training Center for the best part of 10 years um I don't think there's anything else like it um we certainly don't have anything like this in the UK we're following third troop commanded by leftenant Logan her parents and grandparents all served in the military and she grew up on bases across the world with just over 2 years experience this will be a big test of her leadership I think in terms of our role this is one of the best opportunities we will get to um to to conduct our training um as a reconnaissance force and it's really going to push everyone uh to try and be you know the best soldier that they can and really work on their individual skills and drills and it will test you know the commanders too one of their toughest challenges when the battle begins will be facing What's called the Valley of Death it's named the valley of death for many reasons uh not only is it very difficult to try and cross especially during daytime because it's so vast um but also it's actually very dangerous uh in terms of the terrain what what went through your mind when you heard the title of the when I heard the title of the plays instantly I thinking must be like something going on around there and driving through that you could easily tell because you're very centralized if you get attacked there literally nowhere for you to go and it's very Sandy the sand there is very soft so driving there is very slow as well so I think probably that's one of the reasons why they call it the Valley of Death from the last time I was you if I remember it's just just over the other side of that mountain um we went through here I think it was 24 hours after we crossed the line departure and it was literally lit up like a Christmas tree where everyone was flashing and going off so I'm hoping this time we go over it it's a different story and we can actually manage to get through they normally Drive Jackal vehicles but now they're getting to grips with using American Humvees usually we use our Jacko tool to drive around which is what we we train on we're very comfortable with it but it also has his own down but in the UK it's always raining so and it doesn't have a roof in a certain way the hve is is good because you have the roof and you cover from the dot as well as a driver but the Gunner isn't very much and it has airon inside as well so I'm really looking forward to using that especially in the desert Trooper enjoyer is from Cameroon and has been serving for more than four years which has included a tour of Marley as one of the drivers he's got one of the toughest jobs here but he's feeling confident it's going to be probably one of my major last exercises as a driver and personally I just want to use this as a training opportunity to improve myself more and looking forward now into going to do another job row and potentially helping the young guys who just came as saw who are drivers because they've never driven in terrain like this and I drove in Mari so you're probably one of the most key fundamental players in this in terms of navigating across the terrain yes definitely we are definitely feel the pressure um the pressure is there but I have like a level of experience so I'm not I'm not nervous about it I don't feel any pressure because I've done this already before I just feel like it's a natural thing and I'm just going to do what I do best Sergeant Thomas who's from South Wales and has been serving for 11 and a half years has been on this exercise before but since then some things have changed I come in 2017 and we had the brief yesterday and the OM have said the train they've had the most rain in the last like in 30 years or whatever and the landscape is completely changed so even our Maps we're going to have to judge because it's not going to match on the ground with the Contour because you you've done this before how grueling is it yeah like last time we come we come in the summer month so it was very hot I believe this time the temperature we're going to have the adverse effect of that ways is 20 to the day and 4 degrees in the night so we're going to be warm in the day but then the desert's going to switch on us and then make make sure we get our cold gear out for the night they've done all they can do now to prepare and it won't be long until they have to face black horse what's your message to Black Horse ah my message to Black Horse watch out we'll be exactly where you don't think we are and we'll be behind you before you know it the start of the battle against black horse or H hour as it's known begins at night liutenant Logan's troop need to find the enemy and send back vital intelligence they're experts in stealth so much so we're struggling to find them to check in probably going to be pretty but eventually we track them down evening hey we're looking for thir Tri yeah just hiding over this hill take you over thank you appreciate it guys well we've just arrived and managed to find the Welsh Cavalry it's taken us nearly an hour navigating across this really tricky terrain it's really bumpy there are a lot of other vehicles around as you can see one just in the background there but we've made it uh and now we have to sit tight because in less than an hour the battle will begin M grid is November uniform 4318 97 93 okay and that's just the RV for entrance to the hide okay Sergeant Thomas is taking them through the plan okay actions on IDF okay to hit the floor wait for the bangs Okay to finish count every single bank and then report back to me okay and then report the direction and where the IDF has come from okay actions on CN okay if you do see a CN truck come into or any of that come into player Dawn your respirator de and then waiting out for over the net to find out if it's any other gas which requires to go up to address St three okay which is our suits on okay whilst Lieutenant Logan gathers intelligence from a high point Sergeant Thomas has to be ready to evacuate any casualties should the worst happen so my job will be to push the wagons up onto the top of the crest of the Hill yeah and then I will wait there then I'll be looking on my mvg for an IR syum on the front of the body armor and that's when I'll know it's a friendly force of bringing the casualty to me so I reckon I could get there to probably in about 2 minutes and I'll be waiting ready to receive the casualty and the valley of death is where you'll probably inevitably end up the valley of death is something where we're looking to cross on phase three of the operation which will probably be I I probably say in 48 hours so that's when we'll be looking to crossover if if everything goes to plan feeling confident oh yeah I I think so like the the op has got a lot of the pressure me year I just got to make sure everyone stays alived and sustained Lieutenant Logan and Trooper enjoyer are around 1 kilometer away right now it's just 20 20 27th and we are directly south of TAA Mountain where we are setting our OB location and height location and the enemy from the intelligence we got there north of Thea mountain and they'll be moving south towards our location so we're just setting our op to screen up and we looking or we overlooking the Valley of Death at a minute have you seen anything so far I've C some thermal imy uh through the theral imy of course a heat signature um I'm just trying to identify what that is um so I've detected it and now to identify uh which is what we're doing at the moment I've just uh pre-wed um by our tax system that uh I've identified with the signature and now I've told them to wait out whilst I identify it um just so uh it prevents them from going onto that position if there is anything there we know where they are right now so it is a good thing so we know where to go next and how to plan our way forward um we've sort of got sustainability water food uh enough for 48 hours cuz you know worst case scenario if we need to be here for 48 hours then at least we can it's much quieter than I thought it would be I was expecting H hour to hit and all systems go off but uh yes it's something about the darkness waiting to find out right now from the intelligence we've got right now this is where all the action is going to go down it's going to be really hot this night yeah how fast will we have to move if we're discovered very fast we have to move very fast okay how confident are you that you can avoid detection from black horse good question uh I'd like to say very confident um but again they're very experienced in what they're doing you know this is their 18th rotation in this exercise so they know the ground much better than we do they know sort of where the hiding spots are and what we'd probably be thinking uh as to where we'd be going so in terms of that we have to sort of think slightly outside of the box uh and not always choose the best location but choose the second or third best we can't stay out with them any longer as our presence could expose their position as we head back to our base and leave the Welsh Cavalry all of a sudden helicopters come out of nowhere it looks like black horse is turning up the heat any questions no got it cool let's bounce let's do it so how did it go we've come to check in with major perck a lot has happened to us we're now standing out here on the Northern edge of the Siberian plane a full 48 hours after action began or guess in exercise play where the Coalition forces accompanied funan forces uh to um push the denovan out but it's been difficult we set off on the line of departure headed down into I quote the valley of death um and for some reason I'm a headquarters vehicle but we ended up stumbling into a very very dangerous armored vehicle and ended up taking that by just the two of us which was extraordinary um the winds then kicked up to about 30 40 knots the wind howled down we had dust Stones flying everywhere we couldn't see anything there was confusion and I think the best thing is it was just the most simple things were difficult and the easy things were impossible last night there we were um sat at top our ridges uh looking down into enemy held territory thinking well there should be a walk over we've got this we know how to do this at which point a helicopter came out of nowhere and tore up half Brigade um and disappeared which caught us off guard um didn't see that happening certainly doesn't happen in the UK um that's fine uh we cracked on um then another UAV came past a drone um and that like right better start running fine and then the terrain you you're trying to navigate under a full moon and you suddenly got this huge drop off and the next thing you know you're suddenly in the midst of a platoon of anti- armor Cy you're thinking twice about that um what else have they thrown at us um anti-tank missiles I think this is definitely something we've learned from uh or seen the lessons from from Ukraine and certainly something that we're all learning across the board a tank's not necessarily safe an armored vehicle gives you an awfully comfy feeling and it's not actually that comfy to be in when a Chap's hiding up in the hills with a big missile but what about liutenant Logan and her troop did Black Horse discover them left Logan and S Thomas have been my STS I have to say um they are the last ones standing out of this uh this grueling fight um they made it all the way over the edge of the northern Siberian plane and into I quote the killer escarment um where they have uh successfully reported on enemy forces for the entire time they've been absolutely brilliant I think you spent some time with them in The Ridges just behind you which now seems so close yet at the time was so far and we have come a long long way and now we're getting the rare chance to go behind the scenes with black horse black horse is hands down without a doubt the best mechanized unit within the United States Army they've got some unusual Assets in their Arsenal well this isn't something you see every day a generator attached to an inflatable missile system this is meant to be a service an sa 22 but take a look at the detail here uh you got the missiles if we come around here to the front they've even bothered to do the reflection of the desert in the front window along with windscreen wipers and a steering wheel and they've got several of these this is just one of the things at their disposal to deceive the Welsh Cavalry into thinking that they've got more assets than they actually have I've never seen anything like this before this is one of a number of towns that have been built across the National Training Center where role players are brought in alongside black horse Troopers to make things as realistic as possible for the soldiers being tested though I'm actually not at Liberty to uh talk about our numbers in terms of our actual deception plan but what I can say is that the black horse regiment and BFB as a whole goes out of our way to use deception uh whenever we can right whether that's something as sophisticated as as inflatable uh trucks or build or buildings or vehicles to you know throwing smoke grenades where nobody's actually going right so from the individual Soldier level all the way up to the Strategic level uh deception is definitely built into black horse's uh plan that leads to our success we're at four of seven plus the Brigade main task force Reaper is another asset the intelligence hub for Black Horse on the screen right now is what we believe was the Welsh cavalry about 3 hours ago they were uh doing refueling operations yeah every step of the way we're having multiple analysts uh verify the information that's coming in and decipher what it is people who are a lot smarter than me are able to take very complicated electronic signatures and decipher who they belong to uh what they are communicating uh and what that might mean for the future uh similarly we have analysts who are specially trained on identifying images to some people that photo may look like a few black blobs on a map but um to a trained analyst they'd be able to tell me what variant of vehicle how many people are in that photo what activity is going on uh and even what they may be doing in the future we're in an era of warfare where people who are hundreds if not thousands of miles away are able to identify enemy on the battlefield before the Frontline troops are able to it's unprecedented uh if you think about current conflicts in Ukraine there are people um you know in Europe there are people in the United States who are seeing things approaching the battlefield before the ukrainians and Russian soldiers are um and so what I am in trying to do on the on the intelligence side of the house in task force Reaper is make sure that everything I know is what everything the troopers on the ground know and black horse is about to get a bit more deadly take a look at these new arrivals the latest version of the Abram's main battle tank the M1 A2 set V3 they just received 16 of these and are testing them ahead of using them for the next exercise I came up on the previous model originally and seeing all the advancements that have come from it I can't talk about a lot of them because they're classified in nature but the upgrades on this just make it perform night and day difference I absolutely love itz I want to be in the Cav when they send me throughout exercise Diamond Back the Welsh Cavalry are working with fourth Squadron 10th us Cavalry Regiment or 410 calav call sign Blackjack they have four subunits Apache kamanche Blackfoot and Dakota we've come to meet aache troop it's loud it's big it kicks up a lot of does so we're just a reconnaissance by force so when we show up they know we're there we want them to know we're there and we want them to like peek their heads out that's kind of our main goals I personally love the Bradley some people don't like the Bradley I think it's a great fighting system and something to be on you know it's it's kind of like your mobile home as well so the more you take care of it the more it'll take care of you working with the Welsh Cavalry has been um in one word fantastic extremely professional extremely experienced absolute experts in their field it's not just black horse the soldiers have to contend with there are all kinds of creepy crawlies in the desert uh we've actually had two soldiers bitten not badly uh but they did wake up so what happened um one of the guys woke up with the most enormous creepy crawly on top of his face um which I think gave him a shock uh more so than upful um so yeah I think everything the the environment the enemy uh the sear training demand and the demands of it they really coming to the FL I don't know if it shows I mean I'm knacked but you're still smiling yeah cuz it's good you know if soldiers are developing and they're having fun then we all are we have like tulas some spiders scorpions snakes um I'm really hoping I see like a rattles snake because I've never encountered a rattles snake before I've had because they live just in a desert and where I come from they're no desert so I'm actually excited to see the r snake it's 700 a.m. and we're spending the day getting a bird's eyee view of the exercise I'm flying on a Blackhawk with the Commanding General of forto in exercise Diamond Back is the most realistic large scale combat operation that you're going to find on this side of combat and it is toally the T show the troops being tested face a number of scenarios every move they make across the training area is watched every vehicle and every mission is tracked by their computer systems so that at the end they can unpack the Lessons Learned they're dropping us off close to where the action will be unfolding and while the general invites us for a fry up breakfast we know it won't be long before the Welsh Cavalry working with their American counterparts face one of their trickiest tests here so a river crossing is much like trying to thread a brigade combat team 1,800 Vehicles 4,300 people through the eye of a needle and one once you get to the other side you have to rapidly establish security you got to move very very quickly to get to the other side but you can't afford to Bunch up on the near side because of course the enemy's artillery is on you the entire time there's no water in this desert so a fake River has been marked out with two bridges on each side this test isn't about crossing water it's about how complex it is to get troops from one side to the other the ukrainians recently uh attempted this uh near uh kir on and we recognize just how difficult that is and once you've established the foo held on the far side that's where the real hard work begins because now you have to sustain it and resupply it and continue to expand your lodgment so we are deeply humbled by what the ukrainians are attempting uh in Ukraine now uh and uh we see how hard that is as we try to do it out here black HSE will do all they can to stop them as soon as they try and cross this uh bridge that we have uh over here to the east uh we're going to make it very difficult for them to build combat power on the north side of that bridge uh and every any chance that we get uh to delay and disrupt his movement uh we're going to exploit it so what you see behind us right now is the Brigade is approaching that River Crossing site uh and what they have to do is set the conditions on the far side with artillery and smoke and they're working to do that right now and then rapidly get an initial Force across and once they've secured The Far Side to move very very quickly without creating a traffic jam on the near side to establish a uh a bridge head now as soon as they do that they can expect an enemy Counterattack and that's exactly what we've got prepared for them it's time a number of vehicles begin to make it through this is the Alpha Company of 168 uh armor uh they just came across as the initial element and they are moving to establish a defense uh here on the far side to ensure that they can secure this River Crossing site now that they've seized it what are your thoughts on how they've done it um would you have done it differently this is really really hard uh and uh there's a thousand it's very simple from a distance but there's a thousand things that must go perfectly right to be able to synchronize this many people in an environment where the enemy is trying to do everything he can uh to take away your capability and so uh they struggled with Tempo but now that we're moving we're moving with aggression and it's great to see them attacking very successfully the challenges these soldiers have faced here has added a new layer of experience vital practice for when they have to fight in a real war you said this was the the best training area on the planet has it lived up to that yeah early days I can definitely say yes it certainly is um I think it is the best training era on the planet have they done um brilliantly I genuinely mean that um as a force I think the most important principle is maintenance and morale and throughout it all they've been smiling uh it's serious business but ultimately everyone's still having fun and if you're having fun it means they're learning and if they're learning it means they're getting better at their job their final task to leave their calling card in the valley of painted rocks a tradition going back to the 1980s B Squadron first the Queen's droon guards have left their Mark and hope one day they'll be back Shan gek forces news in the Mojave Desert thanks for watching for more from forces's news like And subscribe to our Channel

Channel: Forces News

Views: 292,767

Keywords: Forces News, Forces TV, British Armed Forces, British, Forces, military, serving, military personnel, Ministry of Defence, British defence, British military, Armored Cavalry Regiment, Armored, Cavalry, Diamondback, Fort Irwin, National Training Center

Id: gt2gmEnPzrk

Length: 25min 39sec (1539 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 07 2023