Fort Bragg's Next Mission: Seizing Syria's Chemical Weapons?

This past summer Fort Bragg's 3rd Brigade Combat Team had  CBS News' David Martin along covering their training mission, the annual Join Operational Access Exercise . Using the JOAX to validate their preparedness and overall readiness capability, the paratroopers became fully operational and set out to assault a compound where chemical agents were believed to be stored.

Col. Mike Fenzel's brigade conducted the training at Fort Bragg as if they were called up to respond to a real world crisis. Fenzel told CBS News, "It's one that we haven't really addressed over the last 12 years because we have been focused on Afghanistan and Iraq."

The commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Maj. Gen. John Nicholson, said it was designed to deal with a real world threat, something the soldiers have encountered during their routine missions in Iraq and Afghanistan over the pasts ten years. 

The JOAX is a seven-day integrated effort between the 82nd Airborne Division and its Air Force partners. JOAX synchronizes the planning and execution of large-scale forcible entry into a hostile area, securing sufficient freedom of movement while facing anti-access and area-denial capabilities of our enemy.

This unified training brings together two infantry brigade combat teams, six Air Force air wings, support elements from fires and aviation brigades and other enablers along with the division headquarters in order to prove the force multiplying value of joint operations.

Read the full story on CBS News here and watch the video footage from Fort Bragg's last JOAX.