Surrounded: Camp Buehring's MOUT trainer prepares troops for urban combat

Photo By Sgt. Thomas Day | Soldiers from 7th Cavalry Regiment practice clearing procedures during training at Camp Buehring.  

CAMP BUEHRING, KUWAIT

01.31.2007

Story by Sgt. Thomas Day 

40th Public Affairs Detachment

By Sgt. Thomas L. Day
40th Public Affairs Detachment

KUWAIT — Camp Buehring's Kuwait Armed Forces Training Center, also known as the "Training Village," is where Soldiers can make a mistake without deadly repercussions. It's up to people like DJ Robinson to make sure they learn from their mistakes before taking to the battlefields of Iraq.

Robinson, a Department of Defense contractor with Orlando-based General Dynamics Information Systems and Technology, holds the controls to the Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) system, which Third Army/U.S. Army Central uses to train troops who are headed to Iraq for urban combat. The Cleveland native triggers the obstacles with a joystick and a touch-screen.

"It's meant to create the same type of scenario that they would face up north," Robinson said. He brings in various noises to throw the Soldiers off-kilter, and he does this by simply touching the option on the screen labeled, "Don't Shoot!," "Bomb!," and other commands. He can trigger the voices to speak in English and Arabic.

"We give them the full gamut of what they run into," he said.

Closer examination of the MOUT trainer reveals a set of cameras, placed like security cameras at a bank.

"Everything the Soldiers do down range, inside and outside the town, is monitored by these cameras."

And everything monitored by the cameras is monitored by the unit commanders, seated inside a room with a flat-screen television. The MOUT trainer feeds real-time images of the exercise from up to two dozen angles.

"They get to see what each squad is doing," Robinson said.

Staff Sgt. William Glander of Berkshire, Mass., a section leader entering his second tour in Iraq, said he had "been trying to get my guys in for training like this for a year now."

Of added virtue to leaders like Glander is what the MOUT trainer system can do after the exercise. After the unit is finished, the staff burns a DVD with every camera angle covering their movements.

Like a football coach and game film, leaders can sit down with their Soldiers and go over the exercise with a DVD recording of the training, "so they know what exactly their leaders are talking about," Glander said.

• Date Taken: 01.31.2007
• Date Posted: 01.31.2007 11:35
• Story ID: 9018
• Location: CAMP BUEHRING, KW