The US Army is training to fight in an environment heavily shaped by the Russian military campaign against Ukraine, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Saturday.
The purpose of this month’s wargame in California is to “prepare for future fights against a major adversary such as Russia or China,” the news agency said.
The role players in the exercise at the Fort Irwin National Training Center in the Mojave Desert speak Russian, AP reports. Around 4,500 soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division are pitted against the fictional “Devonian’ forces – the exercise’s apparent stand-in for the Russians – who control the fictional town of Ujen.
In the drill, the enemy fires rockets and missiles, all while using a sophisticated disinformation campaign to make “false accusations” against American troops. The participants in the drill “have their phones ready to film and post quickly to social media,” the report said.
“I think right now the whole Army is really looking at what’s happening in Ukraine and trying to learn lessons,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told AP. “The Russia-Ukraine experience is a very powerful illustration for our Army of how important the information domain is going to be.”
During the conflict, Moscow and Kiev have repeatedly accused each other of spreading disinformation. Meanwhile, the US intelligence has admitted that its own information about the situation wasn’t “rock solid.” A report by NBC News earlier this month quoted US officials as saying that Washington was publicizing some unverified data as part of the “information war” against Russia.