"Is that a fly-by or are they jumping?" a paratrooper asked another as they set up an M105 howitzer that had dropped from a plane less than an hour ago. A C-17 Globemaster III aircraft was approaching low and slow. The Soldiers stomped around the gun in the cold, dark and snow, making adjustments and preparing it to fire. The C-17 flew over their heads, littering paratroopers into the sky behind it.

"Oh yeah, they're jumping. Heads up! Don't take a ruck(sack) to the head!"

Paratroopers with the 2nd Battalion, 377th Parachute Field Artillery Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, filled the skies with parachutes and artillery rounds Dec. 9-11, 2014, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.

The exercise started Dec. 9 at the JBER Joint Mission Complex. Paratroopers with the Spartan Steel Battalion rigged up to jump and boarded a C-17 aircraft. Another two C-130s carried their equipment for the drop. When the time came, the planes took off and littered the skies above the Malemute Drop Zone with paratroopers and equipment.

"When we jump into an open drop zone like this, we are practicing jumping into hostile territory, and we want to get in, take control of the area and get set up as fast as we can," said Sgt. 1st Class Joshua Burnett, platoon sergeant of 1st Platoon, A Battery, 2/377 PFAR. "The ability to run night-time operations in PFAR is the ability to do our job under the cover of darkness."

The darkness and location also presented difficulty.

"Training at night in the cold makes everything more challenging, from laying the guns, to erecting the OE-254 (radio antenna), to operating the sights on the howitzer to aim them," said 2nd Lt. Benjamin Luedtke, platoon leader of 2nd Platoon, A Battery, 2nd Battalion, 277th Parachute Field Artillery Regiment (Airborne). "By exposing our paratroopers to these challenges, they learn how to overcome them, both from the experience of their fellow paratroopers, and from trial and error."

Temperatures dipped below 10 degrees and the paratroopers' cold weather gear and training were put to the test.

"Field artillery prides itself in being the all-weather fire-support system," Luedtke said. "If the weather is bad, planes can't fly to give you close air support, but rain, snow, sleet or fog, howitzers can always shoot."

"We have to dress differently here than I ever have before, like using layers," said Pvt. William Conrad, an artilleryman with 2nd Platoon, A Battery. "We have special boots and a special heater. Really, up here you're fighting the cold as well as your enemy. I'm from Florida; I'm not used to this yet."

This was Conrad's first training exercise in Alaska. The airborne artillerymen fired their howitzers well into the night Dec. 10.

"The more we do this, the better we become at it," Burnett said. "I love artillery. I love the smoke and sending the rounds downrange. I love doing it here, because this is another one of those environments that we can use to go out and prove that we can operate anywhere in the world."

"The 2-377th Parachute Field Artillery Regiment is the only Arctic airborne field-artillery battalion in the United States Army," Luedtke said. "Our ability to execute training like this: Jumping in, firing live rounds, and operating in the bitter cold and dark, is what gives us our identity. This is who we are."