High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers assigned to the 25th Infantry Division are positioned at the 2-11 Field Artillery Regiment motor pool on Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, July 16, 2025. (Duke Edwards/U.S. Army)
HONOLULU (Tribune News Service) — The 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks is in the closing stages of its annual Hawaii rotation of its Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center training as it puts one of the Army’s first “mobile brigades” to the test.
“This exercise specifically, JPMRC 26-01, is a final validation for our 3rd Mobile Brigade, as the division has gone through transformation and contact,” said division Sgt. Maj. Shaun Curry in a roundtable with journalists Thursday. “When we complete this, the division will turn into the continual transformation underneath the Army’s next step. So the entire division will have restructured itself. Some units have gotten smaller, some units have gotten bigger, and then we’ve given ourselves some tech to move forward.”
The 3rd Mobile Brigade is set to be a blueprint for reorganizing the division, and Army forces more broadly, for high-tech warfare in a potential conflict with China. The unit trained in the Philippines earlier this year with new equipment, including drones and 3D printers, and recently received the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, for its artillery, giving it the range and ability to strike targets across island chains.
The unit is meant to move faster, strike harder and use newer technology as the Army seeks to gain an edge. Army leaders have sought to showcase how the service is adapting its arsenal, tools and tactics based on what analysts have watched unfold in real-world battlefields around the globe — notably in Ukraine — and from the experiences U.S. troops have gained training across the Pacific.
JPMRC includes training in ranges in Hawaii and Alaska, as well as an “exportable” version of the exercise that goes to other countries in the region, which so far has included Australia and the Philippines.
Tensions have ramped up in the Western Pacific as the South China Sea—a busy waterway that nearly one-third of all global trade travels through—has become increasingly militarized over the past decade. Beijing claims nearly the entire sea as its exclusive territory over the objections of neighboring countries, and tensions have been mounting over territorial and navigation rights.
Chinese forces also have ramped up operations around Taiwan, a self-ruled island democracy that Beijing regards as a rogue province.
“(JPMRC ) is our combat training center that we use to train our brigades that deploy into the Pacific region through Operation Pathways,” said the 25th’s commander, Maj. Gen. James Bartholomees. “This is (U.S. Indo-Pacific Command) and U.S. Army Pacific’s campaigning effort to place combat-credible forces into key terrain so that we can rehearse our plans, so that we can train alongside our partners, and then so that we can be ready to respond if needed.”
This iteration of the exercise officially kicked off Nov. 3 and includes troops from the U.S. and seven other countries.
On Oahu, training and maneuvers took place around Bellows Beach, Dillingham Army Airfield, the Kahuku Training Area, the Kawailoa Mountain ranges, Helemano Plantation, Ford Island and the Schofield Barracks East and South ranges. Training also has taken take place at the Pohakuloa Training Area on Hawaii island and on Maui at the Puunene Hawaii National Guard Readiness Center and Kahului Airport.
The exercise originally was also going to include some training in the Philippines, but Army officials said the recent super-typhoon that hit the country changed plans significantly. But Thursday morning, the 25th sent some of its HIMARS on aircraft bound for Wake Island to practice getting them into position.
“It’s basically a HIMARS raid in which C-17 (aircraft) will rapidly land, the HIMARS will offload, conduct a simulated fire mission that they receive en route, they’ll get back on the aircraft and fly back,” Bartholomees said.
“This is a technique that is new to our division as the HIMARS platform has only been fielded within the last six months. It’s a part of our transformation initiative, but is one of the most complex joint training events that we can conduct that display the combat-credible capability of ground army land fires across the archipelago.”
Col. Daniel Von Benken, commander of the 25th’s Division Artillery, or DIVARTY, said he and his soldiers are testing mixing old and new tech, using cannons and missiles mixed with new drones they have been testing in the field that can do jobs from reconnaissance to acting as “loitering munitions,” basically remote-controlled flying bombs that can be piloted directly to a target.
Many of the weapons are new to the soldiers, who taught themselves to use them within weeks. One sergeant said that as members of the “Xbox generation,” the young soldiers have been quick to adapt.
The 25th has been conducting the exercise as the Army and the state of Hawaii continue negotiations over the future of training lands in the islands.
The Army signed 65-year leases to train on several parcels of state land for a mere $1, which are set to expire in 2029. Both the Army and the state have faced lawsuits over the years on how several of the parcels have been used, with issues around unexploded ordnance, toxic exposures, endangered species, ancient Hawaiian cultural sites and other concerns.
On Thursday, Gov. Josh Green announced the formation of a state commission to work on the issue.
“There are other combat training centers across the United States Army,” Curry said. “We have one at Fort Polk (in Louisiana), we have one at Fort Irwin (in California), which is primarily desert, and then one more in Germany … . The reason why we do it here is because none of those three allow us the ability to island hop, which is very important for us if we were called (to the Western Pacific).”
The exercise is slated to wrap up Sunday.
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