17 photos show what happens when 82nd Airborne attacks

The vaunted 82nd Airborne Division is America's Global Response Force, tasked with answering the President's phone call when he needs to place between 800 and 20,000 armed and well-trained soldiers into another country on short notice. And a group of 82nd Paratroopers just finished training in Bulgaria in a Combined-Arms Live-Fire Exercise, a CALFEX, giving us a chance to revel in how they operate.

Full disclosure, the author is a former member of the 82nd Airborne, and he is super biased. He's also a former member of the 49th Public Affairs Detachment whose personnel took many of these photos, and he's biased toward them as well. Basically, he's biased as hell and doesn't care who knows it.

(U.S. Army Spc. Justin Stafford)

The training was part of Swift Response 19 and went from June 11-25. The live-fire part was just the last four days of the event. The whole point was to test and validate the Global Response Force concept, deploying the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division to Europe to fight alongside other NATO powers in Europe.

(U.S. Army Spc. Justin Stafford)

Eight nations took part in the training including Italian and Canadian airborne forces. On June 18, these paratroopers took an airfield, and on June 20, they launched air assaults to take a simulated village in the Novo Selo Training Area. Above the paratroopers, helicopters with the 1st Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Infantry Division provided support. The aviators hauled troops and weapons around the battlefield as well as fired on the enemy from the sky.

Simulated attacks, of course. No one really wants to kill the Bulgarians.

(U.S. Army Spc. Justin Stafford)

These combined exercises seek to test all the major individual and collective tasks that units have to accomplish. That's a fancy way of saying they test the individual soldiers and the units at the same time. These tasks include everything from properly caring for a casualty to calling in fires to maneuvering a battalion or brigade against an enemy force.

(U.S. Army Spc. Justin Stafford)

And the combined part of the CALFEX means that everyone gets to play. The Apaches from the 1st Infantry Division provided close combat attack support, but Air Force assets like the A-10 often come to these parties as well. Occasionally, you can even see some naval assets fire from the sea or Marine aviators flying overhead. All of the services have some observers trained to call in fires from other branches' assets so they can work together.

(U.S. Army Spc. Justin Stafford)

It's actually part of why training with other countries is so important. If a paratrooper is deployed into a future war with, just pulling it out of a hat, Iran, then it's worth knowing how to call the British ship in the Persian Gulf for help or for bombs from a jet flying off of France's carrier the Charles de Gaulle.

(U.S. Army Spc. Justin Stafford)

Keep scrolling for a crapton more photos from the 82nd in Swift Response 19. If you want even more photos and videos and whatnot, try this link.