money Q&A: 82nd Airborne Division command team talks All American Week, training and innovation
FORT BRAGG — During the past few years, the 82nd Airborne Division has been marked with rapid, no-notice deployments.
The division is one of Fort Bragg’s largest units and is the command for three brigade combat teams, a sustainment brigade and a combat aviation brigade.
The 82nd Airborne Division specializes in joint forcible entry operations and provides the nation’s Immediate Response Force, which has a mission to deploy worldwide within 18 hours of notification.
The force deployed to Poland last year in support of NATO during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it was during that deployment in March 2022 when Maj. Gen. Christopher LaNeve took command of the division.
More: 18th Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division changes commanders while on Europe deployment
Command Sgt. Maj. Randolph Delapena joined the command team this past February.
The Fayetteville Observer sat down with the 82nd command team Tuesday at Fort Bragg to talk about the division’s upcoming All American Week, training in the division and innovation amongst paratroopers.
How did you each end up airborne, and what does it mean to be a part of the division’s legacy?
Delapena: I’m about 26 years in, and served in this division for about 20 of them. Why I serve goes back to what the division is and who the division is — the standard bearers of being a disciplined, fit soldier.
For more of Delapena’s response, see an upcoming edition of The Fayetteville Observer.
LaNeve: I was (previously deputy commanding general of operations) here with multiple tours with the division ... It really is the paratroopers themselves, the noncommissioned officers, the young junior leaders inside this organization that makes you want to come back over and over again. For me, honestly, this is my dream job. I get to come in every single day and spend time on Ardennes with the paratroopers in this division, all 19,000 of them.
All American Week is usually held in May each year to honor past and current paratroopers. What does it mean to continue the tradition next week?
LaNeve: We did it off-cycle last year because I took command in Poland, and we came back and wanted All American Week to recognize the division … It’s not only recognizing our veterans and gives us an opportunity to recognize those who we’ve lost, but it also gives us an opportunity to honor those who are serving in the division. They’re tied to the legacy of those who came before them. We had a lot of veterans come last year off-cycle, but we’re really looking forward to this year, the standard, normal week. Right now, it sounds like a lot of people are coming. We really are excited. It’s really an opportunity to not only celebrate those paratroopers who are serving right now, but to honor our legacy. We’re focusing this year on Grenada and hoping to bring back a lot of our veterans from that conflict.
More: 'Always airborne': All American Week ends with 82nd Airborne Division review at Fort Bragg
More: Grenada veterans return to Fort Bragg
The division has been involved in several no-notice deployments. How is training currently looking?
LaNeve: This division is and always will be the 911 response force for our nation. It’s in the blood of the division. We have a requirement to have a brigade on the ready that can fly out at a moment’s notice and get anywhere in the world with the division command that will go with it, and then there’s that next requirement to have the next brigade ready to be able to follow on. Frankly, that’s a tough price to pay, maintaining readiness, but also the paratroopers who join the 82nd want that challenge as well. They want to be known as the first force to go … We keep a brigade trained, another brigade on alert and a third brigade to help them fill in the tasks as we prepare the other brigades. It takes the entire division to do that, not just three combat brigades, but it takes the aviation brigade, our sustainment brigade and our DIVARTY (division artillery). All have a part of this cycle to prepare a brigade combat team for whatever the nation asks of us.
More: 'It’s been a long 140 days': Family, friends welcome 82nd Airborne Division troops home from Poland
Can you talk a little more about the training cycles? There’s been recent training at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and the Cobra Gold exercise.
LaNeve: We do a lot of home-station training building up to that to a culminating training event here at Fort Bragg and then we test how well they’re prepared at one of our combat training centers ... As they come back from that and they get their equipment ready, they come back and go on alert.
Cobra Gold was something different. We’re trying to expand different operational environments for our paratroopers to train them. Last year, the winner of All American Week from all the competitions was the Red Falcons out of 2nd Brigade. As the battalion that won the most events, we gave them an opportunity to go to the Jungle Warfare School in Hawaii and then go to Thailand as part of that operation and it was great for the battalion. They actually did a long overwater flight in flight rigging and jumped into Thailand with the Thai army. … It also demonstrated our ability as an airborne unit to be able to jump in anywhere and integrate pretty fast with our allies and partners ... Great opportunity with Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Army Pacific and our Thai counterparts.
The 82nd always seems to be tapped for field-testing equipment, and modernization seems to be the latest buzzword. What does that mean or look like for the 82nd?
LaNeve: One of the great things about a paratrooper is they will give you feedback. They figure out any flaws, but they also figure out a way to make the best out of the piece of equipment... There are a lot of ideas that come up. What we're trying to do is harness all those good ideas and test it. If it can make something better for the paratrooper across the division, then we want to implement it … We're trying to transform the whole division as fast as possible and we're trying to make the division lighter. We're trying to make it more lethal and as fast as possible, and some of this comes from taking command in Poland and seeing what's going on in Ukraine and knowing that we got to change as fast as possible. ... Paratroopers are coming up with ideas to make things better … If you take a look at Green Ramp (it's) been there since the 90s, and the wooden benches out there have never been changed. Those wooden benches were created for the T-10 parachute, but for the last couple of years, we wear the T-11s. … It was going to be millions to replace the benches, but a couple of paratroopers looked at it and said, 'Wait a minute, if we just add a couple of boards, specifically in one spot it would cost us about $18,000.' Those two boards actually lifted the pack tray of the T-11 higher and took all the pressure off of the paratroopers. That's innovation as well ... We’re taking a look at what do we have to build to be able to harness the technology and the ideas, so we created the Gainey Company.
For more about the Gainey Company, see an upcoming edition of The Fayetteville Observer.
More: 'The demand is not going down': Fort Bragg, Army leaders look toward future of Army
What’s on the horizon for the division?
LaNeve: We have a no-fail mission for our nation. We’re always ready, and we’ve proved that multiple times throughout our history. After All American Week, I’ll fly with sergeant major and a team and we’ll go to Normandy and take part in the 79th anniversary of D-Day … The paratroopers that jumped on D-Day and set the conditions for D-Day, those paratroopers aren’t any different than the paratroopers at Green Ramp today getting ready to do a jump to prepare to do a jump anywhere in the world … The makeup of our division is different than what the makeup was back then, but our division is much better through innovation, through how the country has equipped us and through our training. I’m incredibly confident in the ability of this division to answer any call the nation has.
Delapena: We get out every day and run down Ardennes and Long Street and ... it’s hard to get out there any day of the week and not get motivated … as soon as you hear them and they’re yelling and motivating each other and pushing each other to the limits of physical fitness, you’re filled with energy for the rest of the day … There’s no doubt that they’re ready. I tell them all the time I’ll put a squad of paratroopers against a whole brigade in the Army … if you drive down Ardennes right now and look to the left or right, there’s no doubt you’ll see a squad or platoon just out there drilling, whether it’s a motor tube that they’re setting up and going through a drill, or movement and maneuver drills. They could have just sat in the barracks and done nothing, but they’re out there training — using all their time to prep themselves and make themselves better and faster — and they’re competitive ... They’re ready for All American Week … That’s another good part of All American Week is to see how passionate they are to win.
Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: What's going on with the 82nd Airborne Division right now
