Troops from Jordan, three allies train on regaining borders

AQABA — Flying over the Jordanian desert, F-16 fighter jets shattered targets in the sand while tanks rolled across the battlefield and special forces fired anti-tank missiles in a war simulation to regain control of international borders.

Unleashing tank shells, vehicle-mounted guns, attack helicopters and anti-tank missiles, troops from Jordan, the US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey retook territory lost to a fictitious enemy under the Eager Lion joint military exercise — drills with a theme of unconventional warfare. 

“Jabal Al Petra, in southern Jordan, is one of the nine field trainings that we have been exercising in the country in the past weeks,” Director of Exercises and Training and the US Central Command Maj. Gen. Robert Catalanotti told reporters after the war game,where the 20 nations are taking part.

“We tested the abilities of the infantry, aviation and mechanised tanks in the Jordanian desert before launching a special operation in Aqaba, while on the outskirts of Zarqa we have been running special operations and staff analysis with 12,000 coordination forces,” he added.

As part of the attack, 155mm artillery white phosphor shells exploded in the dried-out war-set producing incendiary smoke to mark the target for closer air support aircraft.

Jordanian F16 and Marine FA18 hornets and Air Force F16 attacked target areas in succession gaining ground on the enemy who was reeling from the effects of aerial attack and ongoing artillery fire.

Kornet anti-tank missiles, with a range of over 5km and the ability to shatter even the most heavily armoured tanks,and flattened targets while a chattering of small arms and explosions from rocket propelled grenades shattered enemies’ bunkers.

“The Eager Lion Operation is based on training objectives that made operational requirements and sponsor changes in the concept of modern warfare. It reinforces the new roles of the armies and their unconventional wars,” Director of Joint Military Training at the Jordan Armed Forces Brigadier General Fahed Damen told reporters at the drills.

“We have been concentrating on intensive training on electronic counterterrorism and cyber attacks that characterise the first stages of future war,” Damen said, adding that activities included security operations, protection of civilians, counterterrorism, humanitarian operations for the displaced and refugees, border security and working amid a chemical weapon attack.

Masked Jordanian, American and British commandos rapelled onto the deck of a vessel harboured in Aqaba, Jordan’s Red Sea port resort, from helicopters and boarded from the side by fast attack launch, where acting terrorists held passengers hostage as a part of a special operation.

Troops cleared the vessel from the threat while special forces combat divers, wearing rebreathers, and trained in seaborne infiltration techniques approached the shore paving the way for air and land attacks.

Asked if the drills were a direct message to the civil conflict in neighbouring Syria, fighting Islamist groups, President Bashar Assad’s regime and ongoing turmoil in Iraq, Damen said that the only message from Jordan was preserving security and stability in the country.

Catalanotti echoed the line denying the existence of programmes within the drills that included training activities of members of the Syrian opposition. 

“This exercise is based on coming together unified with a military to military relationship.  We are not involved in training Syrian rebels within this programme and this was not part of our exercise,” he said, adding that Jordan was one of the US’ closest strategic partners and allies.

“We have been so tight with Jordan for many years. His Majesty King Abdullah and our President Barack Obama have a wonderful relationship as well as a military to military relationship.”

The US currently has roughly 1,500 military troops in Jordan, in addition to the approximately 6,000 that recently arrived to participate in the Eager Lion exercise, according to Reuters.

Last year, after Eager Lion 2013 finished, the US left a detachment of F-16 fighter jets and a Patriot missile battery in Jordan, and about 1,000 forces associated with the aircraft and missile system, a move that many saw as forming a potential basis of an assault in Syria, a theory frequently brushed off by officials . 

Catalanotti told reporters that there will be neither American troops that came here as part of the exercise nor equipment that will stay in the Kingdom. “They will all retrograde out after June 9.”

The war games exercise — held for the third time in Jordan in cooperation with the US army — is running from May 25 to June 10.