History The 212TH MP Company was constituted on Jan. 1, 1942, and activated on May 15, 1942, at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Between May 15, 1942, and Feb. 19, 2010, it was activated and inactivated eight times. Between 1950 and 1953, the unit was allotted to the regular Army where it served honorably in the Republic of Korea earning the Republic of Korea Presidential Company Citation. After the Korean conflict, the unit was relocated to Japan and was inactivated on June 24, 1958. The unit then activated on April 15, 1960, in Italy before being inactivated August 16, 1965. On Jan. 10, 1966, the unit was reactivated to provide K9 support in the republic of Vietnam. Prior to being inactivated on Nov. 8, 1972, the unit was awarded the Meritorious Unit Commendation for its actions in Vietnam. On Oct. 21, 1977, the unit was activated in Wuerzburg, Germany, and settled in Kitzingen, Germany, where it performed Military Police Combat support in Support of V CORPS. The unit deployed to Southwest Asia on Dec. 4, 1990, in support of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, during the Gulf War, the unit performed Internment and Resettlement Operations in Kuwait and Iraq. Since Dec. 29, 1995, the unit has deployed to various Baltic Regions including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sarajevo, Macedonia, and Albania. The unit returned June 15, 2000, from Kosovo after supporting Task Force Hawk and Task Force Falcon. The unit deployed to Poland in support of Operation Victory Strike from Sept. 13, 2001, until Oct. 20, 2001. The unit then deployed to Kosovo from Nov. 25, 2002, until July 18, 2003, in support of Operation Joint Guardian from March 2008 until May 2009, the unit deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The unit was then inactivated in Germany on Feb. 4, 2010. Feb. 19, 2010, marks the activation and restationing of the 212TH MP Company at Fort Bliss, Texas.
Victory Strike II was planned and scheduled long before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, but it had a high degree of applicability to the current situation. The exercise’s operational goals were to increase the readiness of V Corps Apache units to conduct deep-strike operations, and to employ the new and highly deployable V Corps Strike CP (command post) in a field environment for the first time.
The brand-new Strike CP has people in V Corps and U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) headquarters excited for a number of reasons. We can’t show you any photographs of its interior because much of it is classified, but suffice it to say that it is loaded with electronic whiz-bang features, many of which use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology. On the outside, it looks much the same as any other CP or tactical operations center—green tents and camouflage nets.
You might say that Sgt. Maj. Brand likes the Strike CP; so does the V Corps commanding general, Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace. He said Victory Strike II revolved around three main pieces from the corps-level perspective, one of which was trying out the Strike CP. “Victory Strike II has given us the chance to validate the Strike CP concept of being a deployable Army and joint CP that is able to execute command and control when it arrives,” Gen. Wallace explained.
The Strike CP is an Army Transformation initiative created by U.S. Army Europe and V Corps to address deployability. The goal was to develop and field a modular-based CP that incorporated all the subsystems of the Army Battle Command System and that could be deployable to a contingency area by C-130 aircraft. It had to be able to function as a first-on-the-ground CP for any level, ranging from a corps advance party to a joint contingency headquarters, and be able to receive and incorporate follow-on, interoperable staff components. And it had to have a small footprint. Operating for Victory Strike II, the Strike CP was a little larger than the size of a brigade CP, about half the size of the corps main CP.
