'Barely able to get it done': Fort Bragg rep requests Immediate Response Force buildings

FORT BRAGG — If war broke out tomorrow, Fort Bragg's representative in Congress questions whether the installation's Immediate Response Force has all the resources it needs.

The Immediate Response Forces is the nation's rapid response force, which is comprised of paratroopers from one of the 82nd Airborne Division's brigade combat teams and is able to rapidly deploy within 18 hours.

For the first time since 1989, the response force received rapid deployment orders on New Year's Eve 2019, following the Iran-supported Kata'ib Hezbollah militia attacks on the American embassy in Iraq.

Rep. Richard Hudson, whose district includes Fort Bragg, testified before the Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction on May 20 about the deployment.

As paratroopers prepared for the deployment last year, they spent most of the day traveling across the post from location to location gathering equipment instead of spending their limited time on briefings or preparing for the mission, Hudson said.

"If war broke out tomorrow with a near-peer adversary, I'm not sure if we would be able to replicate this feat," he said.

Hudson is asking that the Appropriations Committee consider two Fort Bragg projects — a strategic deployment complex and a tactical equipment maintenance facility — be funded in the next fiscal year.

He told the committee there is not sufficient infrastructure surrounding Pope Army Airfield "to facilitate the timely collection of personnel and equipment in preparation for a deployment."

"To put it bluntly, we were barely, barely able to get it done just thanks to the sheer willing determination of every soldier and the incredible leadership of their commanders," he said.

The estimated costs for either facility is not yet known, and neither is included in the Army's proposed $173 billion budget that Army officials requested be included in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.

"I know again you have a lot of competing needs and not enough money to go to every need, but I would ask that you look beyond just the top line information coming out of the Pentagon and look at this unique capability and the investment it's going to take to make it possible that we can continue to have this capability at Fort Bragg," he said.

Hudson said that since 2010, Fort Bragg has received funding for only one military construction project for conventional forces.

"These investments purchase time and options for the national command authority," Hudson said. "Time is impossible to buy in a crisis. You have to invest today."