Photo By Chad Ashe | Soldiers from 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, through the use...... read more read more
FORT POLK, La. - The first resident training course at the Joint Readiness Training Center for regionally aligned forces culminated recently with 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division attending a cultural dinner hosted by their counterparts from Bangara — a fictitious country from West Africa who have been hosting the unit on Fort Polk, La. The five-day course brought some 'Spartan' Brigade Soldiers back from a recently completed JRTC rotation.
The training team from Operations Group, JRTC, created the immersion-based scenario using similar security cooperation ties of partnered West African countries supported by U.S. forces. By design, the problems are not focused in a certain country so the scenario can grow to meet any inject or event that has occurred within the region. Role players from West Africa were used to recreate the realism needed to recreate the culture and French language Soldiers would face in their upcoming deployment there.
Maj. Duane Bailey, Regionally Aligned Forces Training Team Director assigned to 3rd Battalion, 353rd Regiment, has studied lessons learned and tailored this event to meet the same demands a unit would face deploying to the country. He said normally the training is conducted by a mobile training team that would travel to other posts to conduct a three-day course. Bailey said the course is an improvement because it gets the unit away from home station so that competing events wouldn’t interfere.
The unit undergoing training traveled to Fort Polk by bus to go through point of entry training here at JRTC, which included customs, medical screening, and security checks. Once arrived, the unit would tour the embassy of Bangara and receive a briefing on the fictitious country. Additional parts of the training included working with an interpreter, tasks to perform a country brief on a West African country, and conduct a brief to the country’s ambassador.
1st Lt. Trevor Hehn, Heavy Weapons Platoon Leader for 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 2IBCT learned French in high school but refined it in Paris while living with a host family for five months attending school. But not until his training here did he use it for military training purposes.
Hehn said when he was dealing with his host nation counterpart, there was a challenging realism to the scenario. He said he was thrown off-base when his counterpart did not have time for him for a meeting he requested.
Spartan Brigade will be supporting U.S. Africa Command whose mission is to become partners, build sustainable capacity, and support joint forces in order to disrupt transnational threats and promote regional stability in Africa.
“We may be there to help them. We may be there on their request, but that doesn’t mean that when we show up in their office it’s going to be an easy transition into that advise and assist role,” said Hehn.
The role player commander thanked the Soldiers for their training over the last week in Bangara. They thought the training went well, and appreciative for the training they received.
“They are just adding more realism, more depth to our scenarios—like JRTC is famous for,” said Bailey.
“My biggest takeaway is what exactly the RAF mission is. I feel like I may not have the best idea of what we are doing, because I don’t know what my specific job is going to be. However, I do know that I feel much more confident about supporting the RAF mission,” said Hehn.
| Date Taken: | 10.01.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 10.02.2015 09:52 |
| Story ID: | 177864 |
| Location: | FORT POLK, LA, US |
| Web Views: | 296 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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