Tanks, Bradleys, aircraft -- and sweat

Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Leah Kilpatrick | Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division fire a TOW missile as one of 13 separate engagements during the unit’s combined arms live-fire exercise Aug. 9. The TOW missile’s range exceeds 3,000 meters.  

FORT HOOD, TX, UNITED STATES

08.09.2016

Story by Staff Sgt. Leah Kilpatrick 

3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division

FORT HOOD, Texas – Tanned, dirt-stained faces. Uniforms caked with dust and salty white streaks – the remnants of a sweaty week spent in hot, dry conditions.
It was a scene that could have played out in Iraq or Afghanistan, but this was no war zone.
Troops from the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division spent about two weeks conducting a combined arms live-fire exercise in preparation for the brigade’s upcoming rotation at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California.
Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment teamed up with Soldiers from 6th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment and 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Brigade to conduct a live-fire assault on targets in Fort Hood’s training area.
“A CALFEX is really an event that tests your ability to synchronize all of your elements – your maneuver and your fire and your air – in time and space,” said Capt. Kellen Petersen, the commander of 1-12 Cav’s Company C. “It’s a great learning event.”
Companies that would normally have been purely infantry or armor were sprinkled throughout with a bit of each in a configuration that many were inexperienced with, said Capt. John Pelham, 1-12 Cav’s assistant operations officer. “In addition to that, they’ve also got attack aviation, tube artillery and mortars. And they’re synchronizing all these assets to fight 13 separate engagements to qualify for live-fire training at NTC.”
The company recently completed gunnery, a training event during which the Abrams tank crews and Bradley crews qualify by engaging targets as teams, squads and platoons, but the CALFEX allowed those Soldiers to train in a way more representative of the way they would fight, said Petersen, a native of Sweet Home, Oregon.
“It’s a chance for the battalion to start working together in a variety of ways that we actually would in combat and to test a lot of our leaders in a forum that they really haven’t been tested before,” Petersen said. “The combined arms warfare concept is based on utilizing as many different assets as possible. We call them forms of contact, whether it’s direct fire, observation, aircraft, you name it – we have all these different tools, and the more effectively that you can use your tools across time and space to have effects on the enemy, the more likely you are to succeed, and the more likely you are to succeed against a more adaptive and competent enemy.”
This CALFEX brought together the combat power of M1A2 Abrams tanks, M2A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Apache attack helicopters, and dismounted infantrymen to fight as a synchronized element. It also brought into use the live firing of both an M58 Mine-clearing Line Charge and a BGM-71 TOW missile.
“This is the most realistic training we can offer at home station prior to going to the combat training center, which provides the most realistic combat training the Army can provide short of an actual combat environment,” Pelham said, “so this is the training gate that we have to meet in order to pass onto the next more complicated level of training at the combat training center.”
While being in the field when the heat index reached as high as 105 degrees can be uncomfortable, the Soldiers came out and worked tirelessly toward the objective.
“The Soldiers – when they’re put into conditions such as this, there’s a nose-to-the-grindstone and work-until-we’re-done attitude, and they’ve earned a break after this,” Petersen said. “Every day they would just get after it, get up and get after it. You couldn’t ask for better from your Soldiers. I’ve honestly never seen guys work harder.”
The importance of training like this has been communicated down to the lowest levels, and the commitment to the mission was evident in their understanding and in their performance.
“I think it helps us work more with the people we don’t always work with,” said Pfc. Thomas Pixley, an infantryman assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1-12 Cav. “The infantry guys are forced to work with the tankers and forced to work with the engineers, and it helps us get used to working across the entire combined arms spectrum, so we have better cohesion.”
“Everybody’s out in the field,” said Spc. Kenneth Coleman, an infantryman also assigned to HHC, 1-12 Cav. “Everybody’s bonding together as a family, because essentially that’s what we are, is a family. And because we’re out here, we get to know each other better, and we get better at the things we’re lacking on.”

• Date Taken: 08.09.2016
• Date Posted: 08.16.2016 00:06
• Story ID: 207202
• Location: FORT HOOD, TX, US
• Hometown: SWEET HOME, OR, US