Kevin T. Black, Tarik Fulcher, Ethan Christensen, Daniel Gaston and Joshua Ratta
In 1981, the Army created the National Training Center and gave it a critical task: to prepare units to “win the first fight.” Central to that task is an OPFOR—the opposition force—that presents rotational training units with realistic military problems. But doing so is a moving target. The perpetually changing character of warfare demands a dynamic opposition force capable of developments in technology and in tactics, techniques, and procedures. How is the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment “Blackhorse” adapting to meet that imperative? And what can units expect when they encounter Blackhorse OPFOR at the National Training Center?
A few months ago, Major Zackery Spear and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Culler took to the digital pages of the Modern War Institute to call for the US Army to adopt reconnaissance-strike battle as a tactical construct in order to properly implement multidomain operations, as well as for the Army’s combat training centers like the National Training Center (NTC) to create dedicated reconnaissance-strike complex formations to teach rotational training brigades how to survive and win in such an environment. At NTC, this is not some far-off imagined future, but an emerging cornerstone of how the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment gives units their worst day in the desert. It takes the form of the regiment’s Centaur Squadron—a purpose-built reconnaissance and security formation that combines legacy manned and new unmanned platforms to answer priority intelligence requirements, continually challenge brigade combat teams across all nine forms of contact, and preserve Blackhorse combat power for key periods of operations while attritting and shaping a brigade prior to main body contact.
Reconnaissance and Strike on the Modern Battlefield
Professional discussions about combat training centers typically focus on how difficult a rotation can be for training units. But making it difficult is itself immensely challenging for the OPFOR unit, which must ingest observations from real-world conflicts and incorporate them rapidly into its own operating procedures.
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