By Capt. Angela King-Sweigart
326th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

FORT MCCOY, Wis. - The Army's largest finance exercise began its second phase here June 10. Diamond Saber gathers approximately 700 finance Soldiers in a multi-component, real-world two week training exercise designed to simulate conditions Soldiers will encounter when they deploy.

"This training is a good example of an AT snapshot for what a Soldier experiences in a finance deployment cycle," said Army Reservist Maj. Douglas Ottenberg, S3 (training officer) for the exercise, 398th FMC, Fort Belvoir,Va. and a veteran of two finance deployments.

Diamond Saber was organized in two phases designed to mirror the phases in a deployment, a technical train-up, and an exercise phase, he said. The first weeklong phase was the technical train-up, simulating a premob training, Ottenberg said.

Classes covered a range of financial topics including: disbursing operations, commercial vendor services, resource management, and military pay, he said.
The second phase of Diamond Saber is the exercise. During this phase, Soldiers are put through theater- like scenarios conducted by observer-controllers, (OCs) to see how they react and handle certain situations.

The scenarios will cover lessons learned in the previous week, he said.
Staff Sgt. Travis Alexander, senior military pay NCO, Headquarters 230th FMCO, Fort Carson, Col., is one of the OCs for Diamond Saber. Alexander, who recently returned from a deployment to Iraq, said the scenarios are not meant to be easy, so as to give the Soldiers a feel for what to expect overseas. As the exercise phase began, Alexander said he was pleased with the Soldiers' efforts.

An added benefit to the training is the full integration of all three components of the finance corps: Active duty, Reserve and National Guard. Maj. Floyd Lacey Jr., commander, 374th FMC, Wilmington, Del., USAR, said he was looking forward to the opportunity to train with Soldiers from the Active, Guard and Reserve components. "Diamond Saber allows us the chance to learn and leverage off each others' skill sets and experiences," he said.

Capt. Brian Slagle, commander, 395th FMD, Salt Lake City, Utah, USAR, agreed, adding that the real-world setup of the exercise will greatly enhance Soldiers' deployment readiness.

"It's definitely a benefit," he said. "A lot of time our training involves SRPs, ranges or APFTs. Here we have real, financial-specific training, with handpicked Soldiers fresh from deployments to train and provide us real lessons learned from the field."