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    Ready ‘Devils’ 1st ABCT sets a new pace for readiness

    Ready ‘Devils’ 1st ABCT sets a new pace for readiness

    Photo By J. Parker Roberts | Soldiers secure vehicles from Company C, 3rd Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, 1st...... read more read more

    FORT RILEY, KS, UNITED STATES

    03.23.2018

    Story by Sgt. Michael Roach 

    19th Public Affairs Detachment

    FORT RILEY, Kansas — With the new year still relatively fresh, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, was able to bring itself to a level of readiness which would have normally been reserved for the onset of spring.

    In about 45 days of training, 1st ABCT was able to execute a gun line (a calendar which manages training) that qualified subordinate units’ readiness from the individual level to the company level, making them ready for the brigade’s upcoming training exercise Devil Prowl.

    “The purpose behind it was to build a level of readiness for any mission anywhere,” said Sgt. 1st Class Nicholas Bradley Johnson, “Devil” brigade master gunner. “What we had happen whenever we came back from (South) Korea was that we had a large turnover of personnel, and the decision was made that we needed to ensure that we maintained our ability to meet any need that could arise. So that was what drove us to condense down the training to meet a higher level.”

    Johnson, a native of Roswell, New Mexico, who has been with the Devil brigade for seven years, was responsible in part for the development of the gun line as well as the target-based scenarios that 1st ABCT Soldiers faced during the combined-arms live-fire exercise portion of the training.

    “If we would have stayed on our original gun line we would have planned to do this in a three-month period and we knocked it down to right around 45-ish days,” said Johnson, who hadn’t seen a training schedule of this pace before at the unit. “Last I know that anyone had to do this was when we got the orders to go into Iraq for the invasion.”

    At the company level, certifying individuals, crews, platoons and organizations meant spending about 18 days in the field, according to Capt. Jonathan M. Moss, commander, Company B, 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor Regiment, 1st ABCT.

    “For us, it began with going into crew gunnery,” Moss, originally from Portland, Oregon, said.

    Soldiers of the “Bulldawg” company honed their skills for the gunnery skills test before organizing as crews to man their tanks.

    The crews pass a selection of scenario-based tests that are referred to as gunnery tables, which escalate from theoretical to live-fire engagements in which the tank crew will engage and destroy various targets. After each crew is certified, they are able participate in platoon training, followed by company training and so forth.

    “It was a great opportunity for leaders to get integrated and it really gave the platoon leaders the chance to improve the lethality of the platoons and to really basically develop their mission command skills throughout,” Moss said. “What it really did was help us build toward the goal of sustained readiness which is what we’re really looking for at the end of 45 days … That’s where capturing that 45 days makes it a little bit easier, because you get that whole set of who’s there and it’s not spread out so you get that snapshot in time of Soldiers.”

    For Moss, the condensed timeline — while challenging — also served as an advantage in the long run as eight of the 14 vehicles in his formation had new key personnel serving on the crew. Most notably, the platoon force-on-force portion (during which new leaders had to incorporate enablers such as scouts and snipers) offered those new personnel a higher level of familiarity.

    In addition to gunnery qualifications, 1st ABCT also qualified two company elements as immediate reaction companies, according to Johnson.

    “The IRC role is more of a specially selected company; it’s kind of a rotation that happens every three months and it’s part of a global reaction force,” said Capt. Thomas Mussmann, Company C, 3rd Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, 1st ABCT, commander. “Chosen” company, which was selected as an IRC.

    During their rotation as an IRC, Chosen company deployed to the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California, where they integrated with a stryker brigade.

    “It took us about 24 to 36 hours to get onto the train, from the alert to on the train going to NTC,” Mussmann, a Fort Wayne, Indiana, native, said. “It’s one of those things where you’re always ready, but very rarely use.”

    This ability to leave at a moment’s notice meant that Soldiers of Chosen company had to focus heavily on maintenance and be ready to report more quickly than their counterparts across the brigade, according to Mussmann.

    “It definitely makes a difference to our maintenance — there’s definitely a much higher focus on maintaining readiness of equipment,” Mussmann said. “Soldiers will end up sometimes pulling hours that they normally wouldn’t, trying to get stuff working.”

    For Johnson, the benefits that Devil brigade is reaping from the accelerated training schedule happened in contrast to myriad challenges.

    “The benefits are that we achieve rapid readiness in order to deploy anywhere in the world that our country would need us,” Johnson said. “The biggest challenge was the continuous personnel turnover, (which happened) right before we executed and (continued) throughout.”
    To help combat these challenges, the Devil brigade was able to turn to Fort Riley’s Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security, where the civilian staff was able to facilitate the needs of the training.

    The DPTMS “went above and beyond, a whole lot,” Johnson said. “We wouldn’t have reached the training level that we are at, we wouldn’t have reached the training objectives and we wouldn’t have had the facilities available that we would have needed.”

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    NEWS INFO

    Date Taken: 03.23.2018
    Date Posted: 03.28.2018 11:24
    Story ID: 270905
    Location: FORT RILEY, KS, US
    Hometown: FORT WAYNE, IN, US
    Hometown: PORTLAND, OR, US
    Hometown: ROSWELL, NM, US

    Web Views: 438
    Downloads: 0

    PUBLIC DOMAIN