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FORT RILEY, Kan. - Tank guns crashing, machine guns chattering and artillery booming were the sounds Soldiers from the “Dagger” brigade made as they completed more than two months of situational training exercises and a combined arms live fire at the post’s maneuver training and range areas.
The exercise, which took months to plan, involved all battalions of the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley’s garrison support organizations. From Soldiers of the 82nd Engineer Battalion building a complex obstacle to Soldiers of the 299th Brigade Support Battalion supplying fuel and ammunition to the virtual environments at the close combat tactical trainer to the post’s range operations personnel cordoning off the maneuver area, the exercise showed the full range of the brigade’s and post’s teamwork.
“This exercise is an external evaluation package for each company,” Col. Miles Brown, 2nd ABCT commander, said. “In one burst of explosive activity, we ensure a unit is ready for deployment, capable of conducting a movement to contact in a live-fire scenario, and introduce realism with close combat air, unmanned aerial vehicles and artillery fire.”
“At the same time, battalion commanders and staffs at echelon are executing mission command, ensuring units have the logistics, fire support and airspace needed to operate,” Brown said.
Units at Fort Riley routinely train on warrior tasks and battle drills and vehicle proficiency and driving skills in the maneuver area. For Tom Black, the range safety specialist at Fort Riley range operations, an exercise like this requires more than just reserving the land to train.
“We like for units to come to us about six months out from the start of the exercise,” said Black. “That way, we can work with commanders and build the exercise lanes in the way they want to train their Soldiers.”
“We take an area that is not normally used for live ammunition and turn it into something commanders want,” Black continued. “Fort Riley’s maneuver area and impact area aren’t the biggest in the Army, but the difference between us and other posts is we have areas you can maneuver in.”
According to a 2013 economic impact summary, Fort Riley has more than 92,000 acres of training area, with more than 75,000 available for heavy maneuver units like 2nd ABCT.
“If you’ve got heavy brigades, you need to be able to train heavy brigades, and Fort Riley’s maneuver areas are going to become even more important as the Army moves back to a conventional fighting force,” said Black.
Soldiers of 2nd ABCT are preparing for a late winter rotation at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, which certifies brigades as ready for the nation to call upon.
Brown knew the exercise contained the key element he wanted his Soldiers and company commanders to see prior to training at Fort Irwin: Disciplined initiative.
“One of the critical things of the lane that we built it is it gave the company commander the opportunity to exercise disciplined initiative in the conduct of the lane,” Brown said. “He could go slow, go fast, go left or right, dismount infantry where he wanted, clear an area, bypass an area, secure an area by fire, isolate an area; commanders had the ability to train their formation how they wanted.”
Despite not having as much area as other Army installations, Fort Riley’s terrain provides challenges not seen in other maneuver training areas.
“The terrain here is challenging, much more challenging than places like Fort Bliss,” Staff Sgt. Igor Stanisic, an infantry squad leader with A Company, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, said. “Fort Riley has all of the terrain features: Hills, valleys, ridges, depressions, draws, spurs, wood lands and streams.”
The enemy can’t see a formation when it uses the terrain properly, said Stanisic.
Capt. Mike Tax, Stanisic’s company commander, could not agree more.
“The terrain at Fort Riley provides good masking and is challenging to move mounted formations,” Tax said. “More land is always better, but what’s cool for an armored formation is being able to play around in the micro terrain here.”
“I came from light infantry in Alaska, and it’s humbling coming to mechanized infantry where time and space are much different,” Tax said. “You’d be surprised how a little 10-foot undulation in the terrain will allow you to hide a platoon of tanks or Bradley Fighting Vehicles.”
Tax knows that Fort Riley’s facilities and support personnel are available when and where he needs to train his Soldiers.
“Our contacts at range control routinely tell us, ‘If you dream it, we’ll build it for you to go use,’ and the mission training center has every training simulation you can imagine, which is phenomenal,” said Tax.
For the maneuver world, Fort Riley has the opportunity and availability to conduct any training a commander wants, said Tax.
The economic impact summary also details Fort Riley’s training facilities, from rifle and machine gun ranges and the state-of-the-art Digital Multi-Purpose Range Complex to digital training facilities and ample airspace for UAVs, helicopters and C-130 Hercules transports.
The report calls Fort Riley one of the Army’s Regional Collective Training Facilities for use by active, Guard and Reserve units, which fits the Army’s total training concept and makes Black’s job busy.
“With the way Fort Riley is set up, we can have the Combat Aviation Brigade shooting aerial gunnery at the DMPRC with Apaches and Kiowas; Soldiers shooting door gunnery in Black Hawks and Chinooks, qualifying with M16/M4 rifles, M9 pistols, and M203 grenade launchers at range 1 to 4, and firing artillery into the impact area; and 1st Sustainment Brigade training on the east side of Riley’s maneuver area, all at the same time as a brigade combat team is training in a combined arms live fire lane,” said Black.
The loud noises of a live-fire exercise draws the attention of many of Fort Riley’s neighbors, including Monte Miller, the chief executive officer of Rocking M Media.
Miller, who operates radio stations throughout much of western Kansas, was part of group of Kansas State University journalism students who viewed the CALFEX first-hand Nov. 19.
“The noise doesn’t bother me a bit,” Miller said. “Living now a few miles east of Fort Riley for the past 14 years, I do not find the noise objectionable, and as a veteran, I know training is taking place for a good cause.”
As 2nd ABCT Soldiers prepare for NCT, the “Big Red One” is engaged in multiple operations, including 1st Infantry Division headquarters and 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team in Kuwait and Iraq, and the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team involved in the regionally aligned forces mission to Africa.
Fort Riley’s training facilities and understanding with the local community made Brown happy he was at Fort Riley.
“The fascinating thing about Fort Riley, which I have never seen anywhere in the Army, is Soldiers and leaders have the ability to go out and do as best as you can, the right way, and it forces units to train not just how to operate at NTC, but how to perform in combat,” Brown said.
Photos for this article can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/2abct1id/sets/72157648771968320/
| Date Taken: | 12.08.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 12.12.2014 12:56 |
| Story ID: | 150184 |
| Location: | FORT RILEY, KS, US |
| Hometown: | MANHATTAN, KS, US |
| Web Views: | 608 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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