The Army announced the latest rotation of units in Europe and the Middle East, including the return of a combat team that lost three of its soldiers in a Lithuanian training accident last month.
The 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Calvary Division from Fort Cavazos, Texas will replace the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division from Fort Stewart, Georgia. During the 3rd Infantry Division’s training in Lithuania, three soldiers were killed in an accident in March after their vehicle drove into a deep pond. Their disappearance prompted a week-long search of a local swamp with help brought in by the Lithuanian military. During their deployment, soldiers from 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division were deployed to several eastern and central European countries, including Poland, Estonia and Lithuania.
The swapping of units are part of regular rotations of roughly 6,000 American forces deployed to locations across Poland and the Baltic states. As part of Operation Atlantic Resolve, soldiers head to Europe for nine months at a time and join multinational training events with regional U.S. Allies like Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania.
3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Calvary Division, approximately 3,500 soldiers, recently wrapped a stint at the national training center to prepare for the deployment, a 1st Cavalry Division spokesperson told Task & Purpose.
Additionally, soldiers from the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division based out of Fort Riley, Kansas are also headed to Europe this summer. Like the soldiers from 1st Cavalry Division, these soldiers completed a rotation at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California in February to prepare for the upcoming deployment.
They are replacing 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division soldiers based out of Fort Bliss, Texas who headed to Poland last December and joined exercises across Eastern Europe.
The 4th Combat Aviation Brigade, 4th Infantry Division will head to the Middle East to support ongoing operations against the Islamic State group. The region saw more action over the last month when the U.S. stepped up attacks against Houthi rebels in Yemen after a three-month hiatus.
In the year prior, soldiers assigned to Central Command were fighting a two-front war against both the Islamic State group and Iranian proxies launching drones and rockets from Iraq and Syria. The attacks on U.S. forces were prompted by Israel’s war against Hamas, U.S. officials said. The ongoing attacks were mostly thwarted with the exception of a Jan. 28 drone attack in Jordan that killed three U.S. soldiers.
The 4ID soldiers will replace the 101st Airborne Division Combat Aviation Brigade. Nearly 2,000 air assault soldiers from the 101st brigade deployed to the Middle East in February after a year’s worth of training for long-range, large-scale air assault operations, including nighttime missions. While in the Middle East they flew heavily around Erbil, Iraq.