ROKA NCO Academy visits EIB

Courtesy Photo | Master Sgt. Kim, Jin-tae, a instructor from Republic of Korea Army Non-commissioned Officer Academy takes photos at the Expert Infantrymen Badge testing site, Camp Casey, Oct. 20 to gather information for their newly developing training course. They were looking for subjects from EIB that would fit for their soldiers.  

CAMP CASEY, 41, SOUTH KOREA

10.21.2014

Story by Pfc. SeoWon Lee 

1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division

CAMP CASEY, South Korea – Soldiers from the Republic of Korea Army Non-commissioned Officer Academy traveled about four hours to observe the Expert Infantryman Badge testing at Camp Casey, South Korea Oct. 20 and 21.

“Part of what keeps the U.S. and Republic of Korea’s alliance strong is their willingness to share knowledge with each other,” said Sgt. Maj. Anthony Christosmo, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team operations sergeant major.

The ROK army visited because of their desire to establish a Combat Expert Course, by 2015, modeled after EIB.

“By observing what we are doing, and utilizing our plan to form their plans will help the NCO Academy to set up their own plan, and this will certainly strengthen the alliance,” said. Christosmo

The Combat Expert Course is expected to be a great help for improving and maintaining ROKA NCO’s combat skill.

“Currently, it is insufficient for ROKA NCO to get specific qualification or education about combat except for conservative education,” said Maj. Bang, Kyung-tae, a tactical instructor at the ROKA NCO Academy. “Even in the fields, they don’t have many opportunities to train their combat skills. To solve these problems, ROKA NCO Academy was seeking for ways to overcome these limited environment, and we found out that a course like EIB could be a solution.”

Past ROK EIB participants recommended the ROK army build a new program based on EIB. The soldiers thought EIB demonstrated the proficiency of U.S. infantry soldiers, which could apply to their soldiers as well.

According to Bang, the new Combat Expert Course being developed will be somewhat different from EIB. Since it is an initial program, he said the course would be smaller and less complicated compared to EIB.

“This is just my personal opinion, but as this is our first attempt to adapt this kind of test, we would make the course much more simple,” said Bang. “I noticed EIB has a well-built testing system with great installations and organized scenarios. Since we don’t have these scenarios ready yet, we would exclude these scenarios and just try to test each subject by focusing more on individual tasks.”

While the course is still waiting for approval, the ROKA NCO Academy plans to run a trial Combat Expert Course in November.

• Date Taken: 10.21.2014
• Date Posted: 10.24.2014 03:43
• Story ID: 145945
• Location: CAMP CASEY, 41, KR