Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team take cover during an air assault operation as a CH-47 Chinook departs during a training event at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 22, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — As winds kicked up and temperatures dropped midday Friday, dozens of Infantry Squad Vehicles loaded with soldiers and gear streaked across Fort Campbell’s training grounds headed back to the main post ahead of Winter Storm Fern.
Top leaders at the Army post that straddles the Kentucky-Tennessee border decided days earlier to pull 7,000 101st Airborne Division soldiers out of the field where they were conducting the unit’s largest annual home station training event, Operation Lethal Eagle. After more than a week in the field, conducting a large-scale air assault and initiating a force-on-force battle, division leaders ordered an operational pause in the training and instructed the troops to pack up their gear and head home until the storm and its aftereffects were cleared.
“The forecasters here, the local community and the emergency services have all informed us that this has the potential to be a dangerous storm with widespread power outages and extremely dangerous cold temperatures,” Army Brig. Gen. Travis McIntosh, the deputy commander of the 101st Airborne, said Friday as his soldiers headed home. “Therefore, it only makes sense … that we reunite these soldiers with their families during that time to weather the storm.”
By the time the last troops were out of the field Friday evening, temperatures had plummeted into the low teens at Fort Campbell. By Sunday evening, more than 4 inches of snow blanketed areas, and sleet and freezing rain left roads nearly impassible, according to local officials. Installation officials kept most of the base closed at least until Wednesday.
Moving a division of soldiers out of the field and lining up the training scenario to make it work properly were huge efforts, McIntosh said.
As it became clear the storm would hit Fort Campbell and as prognosticators predicted a potentially historic weather event — including some predictions beyond 16 inches of snow — McIntosh had his planning team look at ways the division could make the most of the training while ensuring their troops’ safety from the storm.
Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team prepare for a nighttime assault on an enemy position during Operation Lethal Eagle at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 22, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team load an Infantry Squad Vehicle and prepare for a nighttime assault on an enemy position during Operation Lethal Eagle at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 22, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team conduct an air assault operation out of a CH-47 Chinook during a training event at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 22, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team prepare for a nighttime assault on an enemy position during Operation Lethal Eagle at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 22, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team prepare for a nighttime assault on an enemy position during Operation Lethal Eagle at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 22, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team prepare for a nighttime assault on an enemy position during Operation Lethal Eagle at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 22, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team prepare for a nighttime assault on an enemy position during Operation Lethal Eagle at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 22, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team cross a Fort Campbell, Ky., field after conducting an air assault in a Marine MV-22 Osprey during Operation Lethal Eagle on Jan. 23, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team prepare for a nighttime assault on an enemy position during Operation Lethal Eagle at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 22, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team prepare for a nighttime assault on an enemy position during Operation Lethal Eagle at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 22, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
Planners sped up the fight. The major air assault movement to emplace the 101st’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team for an attack on the opposing force played by the division’s 2nd Mobile Brigade Combat Team was moved to occur 30 hours earlier than initially intended, McIntosh said.
That allowed the units to conduct the major training movement — the 101st is the Army’s primary air assault unit — ahead of the storm, so they could be pulled from the field at a natural breaking point for the training operation. Instead of pausing for 24 hours after the 3rd Brigade attack to conduct an after-action review, the soldiers went home to shelter from Fern with their families or at their barracks.
“It’s a very deliberate planning effort, and so we gave our entire operational planning team that effort for about a 72-hour time frame,” McIntosh said. “You can’t move a division’s worth of soldiers without a deliberate plan.”
Division leadership had yet to determine when troops would return to the training grounds on Tuesday, as local efforts to clear roads continued and forecasts called for high temperatures to remain at or below freezing for the coming days.
Officials hope to return the soldiers to the training exercise in the coming days to conduct live-fire training and prepare for a spring rotation to the Army’s Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La.
Col. Ryan Bell, who commands the 2nd Brigade, said he did not think the unusual pause in the middle of a major training event would impact his unit’s ability to focus on the training once they return to the field.
“They’ll pick right back up,” Bell said. “Even if the weather’s bad, the battalions are going to focus on leader development and doing some of the training they need to get ready for JRTC. It’s an opportunity for them to reset and get their maintenance straight and really for our junior leaders, they had a good couple days in the field, which is hard to train for, and we hadn’t done in a while. So, there’s a lot of lessons learned already, and this lets you go back and reinforce the good things and make some quick adjustments, so we’ll come back out practicing the right things.”
Army CH-47 Chinook helicopters sling load Humvees and Infantry Squad Vehicles into a clearing on Fort Campbell, Ky., during the 101st Airborne Division’s Operation Lethal Eagle training event on Jan. 22, 2026. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)
