Photo By Staff Sgt. Leon Cook | Spc. Wade Meldrum, a soldier with the 502nd Military Intelligence Battalion, changes...... read more read more
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JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. – A small convoy of soldiers from the 502nd Military Intelligence Battalion came in contact with a larger force of enemy infantry early in the morning of Aug. 27.
The convoy took up a defensive position along a berm with its vehicles and engaged the enemy with small arms.
After a long skirmish, the handful of soldiers in the convoy successfully stopped the enemy advance, but only at the cost of many casualties and the disabling of the convoy vehicles. They were forced to leave their now-useless vehicles, fall back to a secondary defensive position and wait for the quick-reaction force to arrive.
The situation grew dire. Reconnaissance drones showed the enemy regrouping for another attack. The beleaguered U.S. soldiers were low on ammunition and had lost their freedom of movement with the loss of their vehicles.
Reconnaissance soon showed the enemy advancing to attack and destroy the weakened convoy. The soldiers frantically radioed headquarters, demanding to know when the QRF would reinforce them.
When the QRF arrived, they quickly assessed the situation and advanced to the original defensive line to secure the vehicles. They had just enough time to assume hasty fighting positions and evacuate the wounded before the enemy was upon them.
It sounds like a nightmarish scenario to live through, or the plot of a good war movie. Instead, it was the scenario played out by soldiers of the 502nd Military Intelligence Battalion in a squad live-fire exercise.
“Being an intelligence unit, we don’t get a lot of time with maneuver elements before we get integrated downrange, so doing stuff like this is important to help us understand how we’re supposed to move with them,” said Sgt. Sara Diehl, team leader of Human Intelligence Collection Team 2-1. “It’s important for us to know basic warrior tasks and drills as well as our intelligence jobs.”
In the training, a squad-sized element acting as the QRF received the mission, conducted rehearsals, tactically marched approximately two miles to the range, and then rapidly executed the live-fire portion of the exercise.
“We gave the troops we were training the operations order and made sure they rehearsed, but we made them do it back at the battalion and walk here. We wanted them to be surprised when they saw the actual range, just like a QRF wouldn’t always know what to expect,” said Lt. Col. Justin Haynes, commander of the 502nd MI Battalion.
Once the QRF had evacuated the simulated casualty, the enemy attacked in the form of pop-up targets 300 meters away. Each target was only up for a short time, and if a target wasn’t hit during that time, a closer target would pop up, simulating the enemy advance.
“I think the best part of this training was that we were actually using live rounds,” said Spc. Jerred Morgan, assistant team leader of HCT 2-1. “It gets soldiers into the pattern of war, that someone can get hurt if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Complicating matters for the defenders, some soldiers had very limited lines of sight. Due to the contours of the range, only the soldiers in the gunner’s hatch of the two Humvees could see every target: other soldiers could only see and engage the most distant targets.
“This kind of training is based on the team and squad leaders. It’s put on them to get their teams and squads ready for this,” Diehl said. “It’s pushed down to the lowest level of leadership, which I think is how it should be done.”
Targets continued to pop up until the squad expended all ammunition. Each squad was given their ratio of total targets versus targets hit. Squads had a friendly rivalry for the best score. The competition was intended to push each Soldier to be at their best.
“This kind of training is important for me,” Morgan said. “Because of this training, I feel confident that I could take over as team leader if I needed to.”
| Date Taken: | 08.27.2013 |
| Date Posted: | 08.28.2013 19:41 |
| Story ID: | 112794 |
| Location: | JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, WA, US |
| Web Views: | 372 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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