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The fighters dismount at dawn, moving swiftly and silently through valleys shrouded by morning fog. They creep towards an isolated stone building, where they know an enemy lies in wait. Using jagged ridgelines to conceal the column, the leader sets his men in a rough line and takes a small party forward to get within sight of the small building. With a hoarse shout, he signals the attack. Ragged lines sprint forward, and the battle begins.
The scene took place in 2016 during the culminating mission of a training exercise in Western Mongolia's Bayan-Ulgii Province, but the year just as easily could have been 1216. The attackers are members of Mongolian Armed Forces 084 Special Task Battalion, accompanied by Soldiers from 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne). Eight centuries after Mongolia's birth, the linkage between the Soldiers of STB 084 to the elite Mungadai horsemen who fought in the vanguard of Genghis Khan is clear.
Instead of the territorial conquest of the Khan's days, today's Mongolian soldiers focus on national defense, disaster response and contributing to international counterterrorist and peacekeeping efforts. Mongolian SOF glean extensive experience from their support to Operation Iraqi Freedom, their contribution to the NATO mission in Afghanistan, their participation in UN peacekeeping efforts in South Sudan and a multitude of bilateral military training events.
Mongolian SOF employ this incredible breadth of experience in regular combined training with U.S. Special Operations Forces. Soldiers from 1st SFG (A) train alongside STB 084 in Joint Combined Exchange Training Balance Magic, a SOF-specific bilateral exercise. At the direction of Pacific Command and Special Operations Command-Pacific, 1st SFG (A) deployed to Mongolia to train with STB 084 and other SOF units, to share lessons learned from training and combat in other theaters, and to build interoperability between the two elements. The Mongolians give as much as they receive, providing a unique training experience by demonstrating survival techniques, how to ride and pack camels and horses and sharing tactics derived from their military history as a Soviet satellite.
MONGOLIA IN CONTEXT
The Mongol Empire once...