NEWS

R.I. National Guard unit deploys to Middle East

Mark Reynolds
mreynold@providencejournal.com
Sendoff ceremony for Rhode Island National Guard's 115th Military Police Company on Saturday. [U.S. Air National Guard / Staff Sgt. Deirdre Salvas]

The Rhode Island National Guard’s 115th Military Police Company has deployed on an overseas mission to support an evolving U.S. military mission in the Middle East known as Operation Spartan Shield.

On Monday, the Guard announced the company’s deployment in a news release accompanied by photos from a Saturday sendoff ceremony in North Kingstown attended by Gov. Gina Raimondo, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, U.S. Rep. David N. Cicilline and others.

The unit’s rotation comes amid reinvigorated discussions about President Donald Trump’s plans for the U.S. military in the Middle East.

Earlier this month, a drone-strike ordered by the president killed the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, in Iraq, raising tensions to a level that many analysts likened to the brink of a new war. Iran countered with a missile attack on two Iraqi military bases hosting U.S. troops.

The deployment of the 115th is part of a scheduled rotation of deployments overseas, according to the Guard's news release.

“They will be conducting routine military police missions in support of Operation Spartan Shield throughout southwest Asia,” it said.

In 2017, U.S. Army Lt. General Michael Garrett described Spartan Shield as an effort “to deter regional aggression and malign influence in the region.”

A news posting on an Army website said that Spartan Shield “is U.S. Central Command’s means to deter regional aggression and stabilize countries within the region. From Egypt to Pakistan, Kazakhstan to Yemen, the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility is strategically important as well as volatile.”

A different posting on Army.mil, later in 2017, described the mission as “a combined forces contingency operation…” in one “of the most dynamic regions of the world.”

U.S. vital interests in that region include: “the free flow of resources through key shipping lanes, the defense of our homeland against the pervasive and persistent threat of terrorism and extremism, and the prevention of the proliferation of (weapons of mass destruction).”

A more recent report, written by the U.S. Army’s 34th Infantry Division, as it turned over its Spartan Shield responsibilities to the Army’s 38th Infantry Division, said that the mission is “designed to maintain a US military posture in Southwest Asia sufficient to strengthen our defense relationships” and “build partner capacity.”

The 34th’s commander, Maj. Gen. Benjamin J. Corell, wrote that the division, known the “Red Bulls,” had served in Kuwait and neighboring nations to deliver “lethal U.S. military force within the region if required while providing deterrence to regional adversaries.”

Based at Camp Fogarty in East Greenwich, the 115th was formed in 1951. Forty-nine members of the 115th served in Vietnam in 1968.

The unit deployed during the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, and it also endured a grinding deployment to Iraq in 2003.

Over a 12-month period, the 115th performed almost 1,600 missions, according to the Guard.

"America's citizen soldiers have always answered our nation's call to duty," the commander of the 118th Military Police Battalion, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Floyd, said in the news release.

"That legacy of service has made our nation and the world a safer place. Today the 115th Military Police Company begins another chapter in that legacy."