Cav unit trains with 82nd Airborne

Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Brandon Banzhaf | Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division line their vehicles up in preparation to be loaded onto a railcar Oct. 20 at Fort Hood, Texas. The unit is sending its vehicles to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La., to have them validated as they train with the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division as part of the Global Response Force.  

FORT HOOD, TX, UNITED STATES

10.27.2015

Story by Sgt. Brandon Banzhaf 

3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division

FORT HOOD, Texas – Soldiers with Company C, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division loaded their vehicles onto railcars heading to Fort Polk, Louisiana, for their upcoming rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center Oct. 20 here.

As the Immediate Response Company in support of the Global Response Force, Company C, 2-7 Cav. is working with the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division during the month-long training exercise.

“JRTC provides the company the opportunity to be validated as a part of the GRF,” said Maj. Christian Cook, a Saint Louis native and executive officer of 2-7 Cav. “This will give them an opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise receive, as well as expose them to how we as an armored formation interact with both light infantry formations and Stryker formations.”

The company is shipping via railcar everything they will need to support their JRTC training mission. This includes more than 20 vehicles with a mixture of M1A2 Abrams tanks, M2A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and other support vehicles.

“We want them to use their vehicles so they can validate the vehicles they will always use,” said Staff Sgt. Brian Darling, an Austin native, and mobility noncommissioned officer for the brigade. “Shipping their equipment by rail is the most cost efficient way of transporting them, because you can get more vehicles on one shipment.”

With the deployment of a company’s worth of Soldiers and their equipment to JRTC, 2-7 Cav. will use this opportunity to learn from training center observer controllers.

“The deployment and redeployment of the company will allow the Soldiers in the JRTC not only validate with outside agencies,” said Cook. “It’ll allow the Soldiers to invest the time and energy and really see for themselves what they are capable of in an accelerated time frame.”

• Date Taken: 10.27.2015
• Date Posted: 10.27.2015 17:15
• Story ID: 180088
• Location: FORT HOOD, TX, US
• Hometown: AUSTIN, TX, US
• Hometown: ST. LOUIS, MO, US