CAMP DAWSON, KINGWOOD, W.Va. –
The West Virginia National Guard, in partnership with the Department of Defense’s Irregular Warfare Center, hosted distinguished visitors during the Ridge Runner/Ridge Healer Irregular Warfare Exercise (IWX) at Camp Dawson in Kingwood, West Virginia, on April 15, 2025. Participants were varied across the irregular warfare spectrum, all with an interest in Ridge Runner IWX, a special forces multi-domain exercise for both U.S. Forces, as well as Allied and Partner Nation forces, tailored to specific evolving threats and scenarios faced by modern special operations and conventional forces.
“The United States must prioritize a strategy of denial to prevent regional hegemony,” said WVNG Adjutant General Maj. Gen. James Seward. “This involves creating a robust coalition of states capable of exerting power to deter aggression. I'm not aware of any other exercise that does it quite the way we do it here in West Virginia.”
The Adjutant General was joined by Colby Jenkins, performing duties as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, and Irregular Warfare Center (IWC) Director Dr. Dennis Walters for opening remarks to an audience that included Dr. Sandra Hobson, Director, Secretariat for Special Operations.
“If you can remember anything that I say today, I hope you remember three words - this is important,” said Jenkins.
For the past 20 years, Jenkins said, our nation has been focused on counterterrorism, but irregular warfare and operating globally in the grey zone has never gone away. Today, while it might appear quiet, the need is great for those who can operate with that expertise and skill set.
“The demand of where we are meeting China, not only in Asia, but around the world, is very real,” Jenkins said. “That's why this is important. The skills and the exercises that you're participating in now, that you're training others in, that you're taking back to your nations, is right where we need to be.”
“For the past couple of years, we've been working very closely with the team here at Ridge Runner to prepare our own forces and our allies and partners to function in some pretty complex environments,” Walters said. Since the IWC inception in 2022, they have been building global functional area networks built around concepts such as contested logistics, defending the homeland, non-traditional intelligence, non-traditional communications, and medical support to the regular warfare.
With the Ridge Healer platform, they’ve been able to pull ideas into the operational and strategic realms. This medical network now includes hundreds of individuals, both military and civilian, international and home space, as well as a couple of university medical centers.
Thanks to that, IWC pulled a cross functional team together and deployed it to Eastern Europe to work with a partner nation to train them and their civilian doctors in providing medical support to their country under extreme conditions.
“That's Eastern Europe, so I'll leave it to you to decide what extreme conditions mean,” Walters said, “but that same capability that we're building inside that partner nation will be available to U.S. Forces in the event that we're finding ourselves operating in contested or semi-contested environment.”
Built into the foundation of the Ridge Healer is the idea that we train those civilian doctors of partner nations, Walters said, and then we bring them here to West Virginia for continued training and validation.
“If you take that medical example, and then you look at the other networks we're building around contested logistics, communications, intelligence and all the other things that factor into IW, the idea is to bring all of that package together and exercise it here inside the Ridge Runner/Ridge Healer complex, and then take that and make that a true national level capability,” Walters said. “So, we got a lot of work to do, but we've got a great team and a partnership here with the West Virginia Guard and my own team at the Irregular Warfare Center.”
“There's nothing better for lethality and preparedness than the Ridge Runner, Ridge Healer programs of the West Virginia National Guard,” Seward said.
“The fact that we're here in West Virginia is not by chance,” Jenkins said. “It's because we have leadership [in the WV National Guard] who know this is important, who stand up and make it possible. So, on behalf of our nation - the little slice that I represent -thank you. Thank you, West Virginia.”
Ridge Runner IWX 25-01 featured more than 500 participants and observers from four nations. The official exercise ran through April 16, 2025, across five lanes throughout West Virginia and one lane in South Carolina. The exercise is jointly supported through the IWC and provided a training and validation platform for the Special Operations Detachment- Europe, Headquarters and Headquarters Det., 2/19th Special Forces Group (A), Forward Support Co. (E Co.), 2/19th SFG(A), elements of the 9th Psyops Bn., 4/10th SFG(A), 4/7th SFG(A), elements of the 10th Air Support Operations Squadron, and the 130th Airlift Wing and its 167th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron.