Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Stephanie Widemond | A member of the opposing force prepares to engage the soldiers navigating the lane...... read more read more
CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea – The training area was small and forgiving, allowing the soldiers of 229th Signal Company, Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Sustainment Brigade, to make mistakes and grow from them. The soldiers trained on their individual and squad-level warrior tasks and battle drills, a set of skills taught to soldiers enabling them to survive in a combat environment.
“We are primarily signaleers, but we are still soldiers at the end of the day,” said Sgt. Daniel Bailey, the lead trainer for the situational training exercise. The STX lane incorporated multiple warrior tasks during a simulated patrol to recover a fallen comrade.
“It was essentially glorified hip pocket training,” Bailey said.
Hip-pocket training focuses on teachable moments based on situations that a soldier may encounter. The STX lane took the soldiers out of the classroom and put in a real world environment, down to the smallest detail.
Specialist Elliot Ser, a systems operations maintainer with the unit, set up the improvised explosive devices on the lane, in order to give the soldiers a taste of the deployed environment.
“I created a pressure plate with minimal indicators and put it in such a place that if the soldiers weren't paying attention or maintaining situational awareness they would encounter the IED,” said the Levittown, New York native. His IED took out one member of the five-person team. A team consisting only of privates. Most of the team came to Korea straight out of AIT and basic training.
“There was no leadership. They had to think for themselves. We designed the lane this way to identify strengths and weaknesses,” said Bailey of Las Vegas, Nevada. He said that he wanted drive home the point that even though it is not Iraq or Afghanistan, Korea is still a hostile environment. The armistice that has been in place been North and South Korea could pull soldiers out of the garrison environment and onto the battlefield.
During the IED portion of the training lane observer-controllers stopped the training to reiterate the “train as you fight” concept.
“We all need basic soldiering. It's a way to build confidence,” said Bailey.
The warrior tasks focus on shooting, moving, communicating and fighting. They include land navigation, reacting to direct fire, and performing voice communications for medical evaluations. The battle drills include reacting to contact and reacting to an ambush. The observer-controllers combined these drills and tasks into a seamless lane to give the young soldiers a holistic picture of what they may encounter in a deployed environment.
In a training area is where mistakes are made, and learned from.
“The more effort I and my team put into the lane, the better the training environment and the more of an impact the training has,” Sgt. Bailey said.
| Date Taken: | 02.17.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 02.17.2016 07:22 |
| Story ID: | 189020 |
| Location: | CAMP HUMPHREYS, KR |
| Hometown: | LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, US |
| Hometown: | LEVITTOWN, NEW YORK, US |
| Web Views: | 172 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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