Exercise Bright Star

Operation Bright Star is held every two years. It is a series of combined and joint training exercises led by United States and Egyptian forces in Egypt. These exercises began in 1980, rooted in the Camp David Accords. After its signing, the military forces of Egypt and the United States agreed to conduct coalition training in Egypt.

It is designed to strengthen ties between the Egyptian Armed Forces and the United States Central Command and demonstrate and enhance the ability of the Americans to reinforce their allies in the Middle East in the event of war. These deployments usually are centered at the large Cairo West Air Base. During the period following the liberation of Kuwait (Operation Desert Storm), these exercises have grown larger and have included as many as 11 countries and 70,000 personnel. Other allied nations joining Bright Star exercises in Egypt include the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates.

The exercise begins with coalition interoperability training to teach nations how to operate with one another in a wartime environment, then continues with a Command Post Exercise designed to help standardize command and control procedures, and then a large-scale Field Training Exercise to practice everything together.

The first exercise, Bright Star '81, was conducted from October to December 1980 (fiscal year 1981). U.S. Army's rapid-deployment unit (Task Force "Strike", 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment) of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and U.S. Air Force personnel were deployed to Cairo West Air Force Base in Egypt for the exercise. This operation was the first deployment of combat soldiers into the region since World War II. Bright Star '81 was initiated by the Carter administration in response to the Iranian hostage crisis as well as Russia's entry into Afghanistan. Learned from this first mission was that a cold-war military was unprepared for the sudden change of geopolitical events in the middle east. Soldiers were issued jungle fatigues in lieu of dessert camouflage (not in U.S. Army inventory in 1980) and hasty air traffic control systems caused for the loss of 14 U.S. Air Force personnel when a C-140 crashed attempting to land. Post-operation briefings affected positive change for future readiness and successful exercises thereafter said, MSG Keefer (retired), the only enlisted member of the debriefing team for Bright Star '81.

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