BYDGOSZCZ, Poland – The 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division gathered with more than 800 soldiers and civilian military experts from 25 NATO Allies and partner nations, to participate in Exercise LOYAL LEDA 2024, a 12-day combat readiness evaluation exercise hosted at the NATO Joint Force Training Centre in Bydgoszcz, Poland from March 3-14, 2024.

The scenario, an Allied Land Command-sponsored, land domain, tactical level, virtual command post exercise, is based on a compelling Article 5 scenario encompassing a wide range of modern warfare challenges, including those deriving from space and cyber domains as well as hybrid warfare.

“It’s a scenario no one hopes is ever executed in real life, but a situation NATO Allies must be ready for,” said Lt. Col. Wycliffe Nieboer, 1st German-Netherlands Corps G7. “This training event allows us to exercise our interoperability and identify those areas that require further refinement.”

Tasked with conducting joint collective defense operations at the corps and division levels, the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, playing as the 1st Armored Division response cell, worked alongside staffs from the 10th Mechanized Division, 4th Romanian Infantry Division, and the 1st German-Netherlands Corps to respond appropriately to a hypothetical adversary’s aggression against a NATO member country.

The exercise forced the 2ABCT 1AD staff to replicate a division staff, forcing every warfighting function to think two levels up on how the division fights in the scenario. The exercise also forced the brigade to anticipate what the 1st German-Netherlands Corps needed from U.S. forces to align combat objectives.

U.S. Army Col. Dwight D. Domengeaux Jr., the commander of the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, stressed the importance of having an American formation, especially a regionally aligned formation, participate in the exercise.

“It shows the U.S. commitment to NATO, specifically to strengthen our interoperability and mil-to-mil efforts in the strategic domains,” said Domengeaux. This exercise allows our military and NATO to identify the challenges and resolve them before we have actual combat to build an effective and lethal coalition.”

In many cases, NATO units such as the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team and 1st Armored Division serve a critical role in the host nation’s force structure. U.S. soldiers are embedded in every echelon of the NATO command structure and serve alongside service members from partner nations.

“This exercise helped put a cap to what has already been a successful rotation executing our mission essential tasks while deployed,” said Domengeaux. “We’ve gained experience and built trust working alongside our NATO Allies, and because of that, individual soldiers and their families should be proud they contributed to the readiness of the European Theater.”

The 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team maintains many combat-capable forces in Europe. It exists to deter aggression; if deterrence fails, stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our Allies and partners against that aggression. The 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, is forward deployed to Europe in support of the 3rd Infantry Division, V Corps at Drawsko Combat Training Center, Poland.