Safety on the NTA

Photo By Sgt. 1st Class James McGuire | A North Carolina Army National Guard High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launcher sends a training rocket toward the impact area at Camp Guernsey Joint Training Center May 17. It's a busy time of year at the massive training area so expect some noise and traffic delays. Keep in mind, our soldiers, airmen and Marines are getting better at protecting your freedom because Camp Guernsey provides a place to do that. (Wyoming Army National Guard photo by Sgt. 1st Class Jimmy McGuire)  

GUERNSEY, WY, UNITED STATES

06.21.2016

Story by Sgt. 1st Class James McGuire 

Joint Force Headquarters - Wyoming National Guard

Hundreds of soldiers and Marines from a handful of National Guard and active duty units fired thousands of artillery rounds at the massive impact area on Camp Guernsey’s north training area in May.
It wasn’t much different from other spring and summer weeks on the NTA, except for some additional personnel who are used to being on the breach end of a cannon rather than at the isolated Range Control building, a shack on a hill with a huge window, checking chattered azimuths gleaned from the steady radio traffic, and watching as artillery batteries fired projectiles at assigned targets miles away.
Sometimes different is better.
When he’s not commanding the state’s new infantry company, Capt. Joshua Marshall works full time as the range operations officer at Camp Guernsey Joint Training Center. He thought it might be beneficial to his range safety staff and to the Wyoming artillery units to combine some expertise during large multi-unit artillery exercises at Guernsey, and to add a “red leg” perspective to long-standing and effective safety procedures at range control.
“I think it needs to be a shared responsibility between our field artillery experts, our range safety and the units,” Marshall continued. “Range Control is here to ensure we do everything safely. Anywhere else you go in the Army, safety procedures are on the unit, but we like to add that extra last margin of safety and minimize risk.”
First Lt. Craig Heilig, fire direction officer from Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 2nd Battalion, 300th Field Artillery, was one of the invited artillerymen. He said Guernsey needs its fortified safety rules because of the unique “train as you fight,” credo, a practice that makes it very appealing to artillery units; but a practice that adds a degree of difficulty and planning to each fire mission. Unlike many training areas, where coordinates are pre-planned from a specific firing point to a known target, shooting from random points entails calculating each fire mission individually to hit a precise target, and therefore more coordination with the fire teams and range control.
“Like a battlefield, they can maneuver freely (in the training area) to many different firing positions. It can get hectic,” Heilig said of the training center’s benefit to units wanting a more realistic training experience. “They have a great safety program here, and seeing it from this side really helps make sense of it. Now I understand the why of what they do here, and now we can take it back to our units and explain the process and the why.”
Staff Sgt. Levi Jones, range control safety NCOIC, said it’s great having artillery experts in the mix and it enables him and his small crew to provide better service to the artillerymen using the ranges.
“We have three of us tracking a 50,000 acre, 3-D battlespace,” Jones said. “We’ve had 2,200 rounds fired this week and 24-hour ops. We’ve had four units firing and lots of subordinate units and people stacked upon people out here.
“We get to tap into this wealth of artillery knowledge we have in this state and get a better idea of what the soldiers who shoot at Camp Guernsey want and expect. I’d recommend we make this standard,” Jones, a former infantryman said. “Across the board in the military we speak a lot of languages–most MOS specific–I’m learning (artillery) but I’m not fluent.”
Heilig said he and Staff Sgt. Daniel Hillshafer, operations NCO from Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 115th Field Artillery Brigade, and a conduit with some of the units on the ground during the experiment, would be reporting their observations in regard to range safety at the training area.
Who knows, maybe it will result in a couple of extra chairs installed at the shack up on the hill?

• Date Taken: 06.21.2016
• Date Posted: 06.21.2016 17:12
• Story ID: 201986
• Location: GUERNSEY, WY, US