{"id":559746,"date":"2025-07-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=559746"},"modified":"2025-07-29T14:47:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T14:47:21","slug":"washington-guard-brigade-trains-at-raven-focus-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=559746","title":{"rendered":"Washington Guard Brigade Trains at Raven Focus 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n U.S. Army Spc. Meadow Wilkins with Charlie Company, 181st Brigade Support Battalion, 81st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Washington National Guard, triages a patient during mass casualty training at Yakima Training Center, Wash., July 20, 2025. Mass casualty training is crucial for preparing medical teams to triage, stabilize, and evacuate patients in combat environments, thereby enhancing their readiness for large-scale operations.
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\n U.S. Army Spc. Meadow Wilkins with Charlie Company, 181st Brigade Support Battalion, 81st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Washington National Guard, triages a patient during mass casualty training at Yakima Training Center, Wash., July 20, 2025. Mass casualty training is crucial for preparing medical teams to triage, stabilize, and evacuate patients in combat environments, thereby enhancing their readiness for large-scale operations.
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\n U.S. Soldiers with Charlie Company, 181st Brigade Support Battalion, 81st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Washington National Guard, transport a patient during mass casualty training at Yakima Training Center, Wash., July 20, 2025. Mass casualty training is crucial for preparing medical teams to triage, stabilize, and evacuate patients in combat environments, thereby enhancing their readiness for large-scale operations.
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\n U.S. Army Spc. Julian Warner with Charlie Company, 181st Brigade Support Battalion, 81st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Washington National Guard, administers aid to a patient during mass casualty training at Yakima Training Center, Wash., July 20, 2025. Mass casualty training is crucial for preparing medical teams to triage, stabilize, and evacuate patients in combat environments, thereby enhancing their readiness for large-scale operations.
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\n U.S. Army Pfc. Eric Harden with Charlie Company, 181st Brigade Support Battalion, 81st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Washington National Guard, triages a patient during mass casualty training at Yakima Training Center, Wash., July 20, 2025. Mass casualty training is crucial for preparing medical teams to triage, stabilize, and evacuate patients in combat environments, thereby enhancing their readiness for large-scale operations.
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\n U.S. Soldiers with Charlie Company, 181st Brigade Support Battalion, 81st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Washington National Guard, triage a patient during mass casualty training at Yakima Training Center, Wash., July 20, 2025. Mass casualty training is crucial for preparing medical teams to triage, stabilize, and evacuate patients in combat environments, thereby enhancing their readiness for large-scale operations.
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YAKIMA TRAINING CENTER, Wash., \u2013 More than 1,500 Soldiers with the Washington National Guard\u2019s 81st Stryker Brigade Combat Team converged at Yakima Training Center this month for Raven Focus, a collective, high-intensity, field training exercise.<\/p>\n

Held from July 14 to July 24, Raven Focus capitalized on the two weeks of annual training that National Guard units typically receive to give Soldiers a more thorough and intensive training experience than the usual drill weekend.<\/p>\n

Raven Focus marked the first time the 81st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, or SBCT, had trained together as a brigade since July 2018, pushing Soldiers and leaders to collaborate with units and staff they don’t typically interact with and learn to operate as a cohesive team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been able to see all the things we\u2019ve done really well\u2026we\u2019ve found a few things we need to work on as a team,\u201d said U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Jacob Baur, an ammunition logistics non-commissioned officer with the 81st SBCT. \u201cWe\u2019ve been able to work that process from start to finish out here in the field, where we would\u2019ve never been able to do that on a regular drill weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Headquartered at Camp Murray in Tacoma, Washington, the 81st SBCT comprises nearly half of the Washington Army National Guard, with two regiments located in Oregon and California. The unit consists of artillery, infantry, engineering and support and logistics assets.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a lot of these Soldiers, they\u2019ve never seen an operation like this,\u201d Baur said. \u201cThey usually work at a company level, and now this is a brigade level. So they\u2019ve been able to see the relationship between the brigade and the battalion.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Spc. Mariia Pecherytsia, a combat medic with C Company, 181st Brigade Support Battalion, Raven Focus, was her first annual training experience, and she was impressed by the scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve done cross-training with other companies [to see] what capabilities they have,\u201d Pecherytsia said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think we usually get to do a lot of that interaction with the other companies, so now this is giving us the bigger picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to Washington National Guard Soldiers, the event was augmented by service members from partner nations, including the Royal Thai Army, Canadian Army and the Bulgarian Land Forces. These military-to-military engagements facilitate the sharing of knowledge and expertise between U.S. Army personnel and their counterparts overseas through the U.S. Army Subject Matter Expert Exchange program and the Department of Defense National Guard Bureau\u2019s State Partnership Program.<\/p>\n

Raven Focus was designed to provide training opportunities that exceed the standard, according to the 81st SBCT senior leaders.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we train and fight like everyone else, we\u2019ll be just like everyone else,\u201d said Col. Craig Broyles, commander of the 81st SBCT. \u201cWe want to be better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Training collectively as a brigade creates unity of purpose, regardless of warfighting function, enabling subordinate units and ultimately strengthening the organization as a whole.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is probably one of the things that sometimes gets forgotten by the military, and that\u2019s the support behind the mission,\u201d Baur said. \u201cAnd these guys are here doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.nationalguard.mil<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TheNationalGuard<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/x.com\/USNationalGuard<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 \/ 6 Show Caption + Hide Caption \u2013 U.S. Army Spc. Meadow Wilkins with Charlie Company, 181st Brigade Support Battalion, 81st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Washington National Guard, triages a patient during mass casualty training at Yakima Training Center, Wash., July 20, 2025. Mass casualty training is crucial for preparing medical teams to triage, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559748,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-559746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=559746"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":559755,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559746\/revisions\/559755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/559748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=559746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=559746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=559746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}