Operation Hood Strike brings all three Army components together for massive water crossing training at Belton Lake 

FORT HOOD, Texas (KWTX) - Soldiers from Fort Hood and beyond spent all last week conducting a massive training operation at Belton Lake. Operation Hood Strike demonstrates how the active-duty Army, reserve and National Guard troops work together.

“We’ve been doing Hood Strikes for over a decade and it’s a crawl, walk, run phase for us in training. Where we come up and we get planning and it’s kind of that one time of year, it’s our Superbowl, we can come through and engage and integrate all the different pieces of the United States Army,” said Lt. Col. Travis Shahan, commander of 961st Engineer Battalion, U.S. Army Reserve.

The objective is to get troops and equipment across massive bodies of water like Belton Lake.

“We’ll push over and when that Abrams hits that beach head, they’ll push forward to secure the near side. Simultaneously, you’ll have other reserve elements at the other slips and then active-duty slips over there, having bays dropped to them in the water from Texas Army National Guard chinooks and they’ll be building those bays and rafting from there,” Shahan said.

Using rafts that are seven sections of a bridge, soldiers are able to get vehicles like Humvees and other armored vehicles across the water and begin the assault.

“Raft whatever maneuver elements we need across the water gap in order to seize the objective and secure the far side of the water base,” Shahan said.

The massive operation takes coordination. At the Tactical Operations Center, soldiers use maps and sand boxes so everybody in the operation can see it from a large scale and know where they fit in.

“If you’re working through here at an office it’s actually pretty easy to plan this stuff but if you’re out here and the aircraft are flying near overhead at midnight and we haven’t slept very well, and we haven’t showered in a while, it’s much harder when you’re out here trying to execute,” said Maj. Salem Maud, battalion executive officer.

When complete, soldiers will have a full bridge across the water. The first location is a landing site to get armored vehicles to the other side of the water, where they can conduct the assault and create that full enclosure bridge.

All of this is being controlled from a hidden bird’s eye view.

“The wet gap crossing site commander can overview the entire AO. So, I can give the go, or no go, for boats to get in the water and push or reduce in case we need to. Maybe the enemy saw us,” Shahan said.

The operation proves that all three U.S. Army components can work together to get the job done.