JBER artillery battalion completes 11th Airborne's first battalion live-fire evaluation

A Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson artillery battalion has finished the 11th Airborne Division's first battalion-level artillery live-fire evaluation, wrapping up 16 days at the Donnelly Training Area near Delta Junction on Thursday after firing more than 600 rounds, the Army said.

The evaluation, called Artillery Table XVIII, tests whether a battalion can deliver coordinated artillery support for a mobile brigade combat team. The Army said the 2nd Battalion, 377th Parachute Field Artillery Regiment met all its training objectives during the Oct. 13-29 exercise.

The battalion moved more than 400 paratroopers and 100 tactical vehicles 350 miles north from JBER to Donnelly. Crews worked through temperatures as low as zero degrees Fahrenheit, winds of 35 knots and 12 to 18 inches of snow.

Before the battalion evaluation, each of its three firing batteries, Alpha, Bravo and Charlie, first had to pass its own battery-level live-fire evaluation, firing hundreds of live rounds.

In the final evaluation, opposing forces staged hit-and-run attacks on artillery positions, but the main threat was simulated enemy counterfire, which the Army called one of the greatest threats to modern artillery. Paratroopers had to fire at the same time from scattered, remote positions, then move their howitzers to new firing points before the simulated enemy could shoot back.

The unit has been building toward this at Donnelly for more than a year. A July 2025 Army account described platoon-level live fire by the battalion there, training meant to prepare it for later battery-level evaluations, as well as an air assault gun raid in which Chinook helicopters carried artillery crews to difficult terrain.

This kind of evaluation normally requires outside evaluators from a division artillery headquarters, which the Army said the 11th Airborne is set to stand up next year. Until then, the division brought in evaluators from the 17th Field Artillery Brigade and artillerymen from the 7th Infantry Division at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.

"This exercise laid the groundwork and established the model for what battalion-level evaluations will look like for the 11th Airborne Division, and ultimately for our DIVARTY when it stands up next year," said Lt. Col. Ian P. Grundhauser, the battalion's commander.

"This evaluation proved that we can mass fires, maintain tactical survivability against a modern threat, and deliver devastating, precise lethality in some of the most unforgiving, Arctic conditions on the planet," Grundhauser said.

The battalion has returned to JBER.