Photo By Sgt. Brandon Le Flore | Sgt. Tanner Nelsen pulls multiple explosives out of a false wall during a simulated...... read more read more
FORT IRWIN, Calif – With the loud din of a Muslim prayer in the background, soldiers from the 744th Engineer Company and the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, advanced into a building to search materials used to make roadside bombs.
Fortunately, their lives were not in danger as this was part of their training at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, Calif., Aug. 5.
“Bravo Team! Clear the rooms upstairs! Check to see if anyone is hiding up there,” yelled Sgt. Tanner Nelsen, combat engineer and team leader with the 744th Eng. Co., of Ogden, Utah, to his crew as they cleared the building.
Nelsen and fellow soldiers have been training along with active duty soldiers from the 3rd Bde., based in Fort Knox, Ky., to prepare his unit for deployment to Afghanistan.
“This training will be helpful to our unit, the practical exercises provide really good training, and here they have access to equipment that the reserves don’t,” said Nelsen. “I didn’t know so much could be hidden in such tight spaces.”
The 744th Eng. Co. rarely has an opportunity to train with Active Duty units with such realistic simulations. But for this particular simulation soldiers had the unique opportunity to search buildings in a desert atmosphere with actual interpreters and role players from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“This was my first experience going inside of one of the buildings they have here, but I think it’s head and shoulders above the training we’ve had in the past if only by having actors here who are native to the country we are going to,” said Cpl. Jacob Hunsaker, a Logan, Utah, native and combat engineer with the 744th Eng. Co. “I think the environment they have created here makes it feel a lot more realistic than other training places I’ve been. That’s really going to help us out a ton,” he added.
The practical exercise was even more realistic by incorporating religious memorabilia and other items to provide an atmosphere similar to what soldiers from the 744th Eng. Co. may encounter.
“We’re working in buildings that have the language and religious items in the houses so we can learn how to work with those,” said Hunsaker.
The main objective of this search training is to prepare soldiers identify potential threats and combat the manufacturing of improvised explosive devices. The training accomplishes this at its core by training soldiers on what to look for in vehicles, homes and throughout neighborhoods.
“This class was designed based on the terrorist war in Ireland … Soldiers will be able to leave here and train their platoon so they can actually non-kinetically knock on a door, talk to the head of household and systematically search the building,” said Gary Nielsen, retired Cavalry scout and Tactical Site Exploitation/Search instructor at NTC.
Soldiers participating in this type of training are taught to employ unique modalities to conduct the most effective search possible, which will be useful for the 744th’s deployment to Afghanistan.
“If you use the same process every time you conduct a search, you’re less likely to miss something, so it’s better to do the step-by-step process so you know that you got everything,” said Nelsen.
“(In Afghanistan) we’re working on not only finding that triggerman and getting rid of that IED but also finding the bomb makers, finding where their caches are so we can attack the network, get those bomb makers out and unearth the caches,” said Hunsaker, “If you get one bomb maker you could take a thousand IEDs off the road.”
Search training prepares soldiers to identify clues in and around a house that may provide an idea of what the home owner does. In the past, this type of training was not always as in depth.
“You can look back on your career and your time in Iraq and realize that you missed a lot when you were out there because when I deployed to Iraq we had no training on actual searching,” said Nelsen. “When I deployed, we just piled all the stuff in the middle of the room.”
“We’re learning here what we need to do to collect evidence properly,” said Hunsaker. “With biometric systems we’ll be able to track people and determine if they have been involved in an attack.”
“So, now when we find command wires or find an IED we’re going to be looking to find evidence from the IED instead of detonating it, which will change how we react to finding an IED than maybe we did before,” Hunsaker added.
The 744th Eng. Co. will soon deploy to Afghanistan to perform route clearance operations and this training provides an opportunity to not only learn to identify IED predicators but to also work alongside active duty soldiers in a simulated training environment.
“It’s cool to get different sides of the spectrum; (active duty soldiers) have a different story to tell than I do and they do this more often than I do. I think both of us bring something new to the table,” said Nelsen.
Soldiers from the 3rd Bde. also benefitted from combined training at NTC.
“The reserve soldiers know a lot of infantry essentials so we were able to easily work as a team,” said Sgt. Nicanor Amper, cavalry scout with the Apache Troop, 4th Squadron, 3rd Bde. 1st. Inf. Div., “They know what they’re doing.”
While this isn’t the only training soldiers from the 744th Eng. Co. will participate in during their time at NTC, it’s one of the most important.
“I’m learning to find IEDs better so that we can protect more soldiers,” said Hunsaker.
| Date Taken: | 08.07.2010 |
| Date Posted: | 08.07.2010 14:27 |
| Story ID: | 54126 |
| Location: | FORT IRWIN, CA, US |
| Web Views: | 350 |
| Downloads: | 145 |
This work, Active and Reserve train together for common goal, by SGT Brandon Le Flore, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
LEAVE A COMMENT