Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Britney Hiatt | Soldiers with the 1-163rd Combined Arms Battalion, Montana Army National Guard, guide...... read more read more
Armed and ready, Soldiers with the 1-163rd Combined Arms Battalion are lined up in formation as the sun is beginning to go down and receive the signal to head west. Then, reminiscent of cavalry horses kicking up dust trails they charge forward, but instead of horses these Soldiers ride their M1A2 Abrams Tanks and M2A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles to meet what is ahead.
Montana Army National Guard Soldiers arrived on June 11 at Orchard Combat Training Center, Idaho, with the mission to conduct and complete an Exportable Combat Training Center rotation (XCTC) for their 2018 annual training.
“This year we’re focusing on platoon and company training out in the field and it involves everything from the Soldiers on the line with rifles all the way back to the Soldiers that provide their meals and their maintenance,” said Maj. Jeffrey Holycross, executive officer for the 1-163rd CAB.
It’s all in preparation for next year, when the battalion conducts a rotation at the National Training Center (NTC), alongside the 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team from Idaho that 1-163rd falls under, said Holycross.
“We’re bridging the gap between the individual and section level skills,” Holycross said. “From just a handful of soldiers that were working together last year, to next summer when we’ll have several thousand Soldiers in the desert training together. This bridges that gap to build proficiency on the platoon and company level.”
“They are all doing their own separate missions,” said Sgt. Maj. William Frank, operations sergeant major with the 1-163rd CAB.
“We have lane observation controllers (OCs) who watch how the companies are performing or how the platoons are performing and they are specialized in just that one kind of lane,” Frank explained.
“Whether the lanes are on base defense, military operations in urban terrain(MOUT) assault or if it is a maneuver to contact, you can’t do them all at the same time. You have to alternate those training cycles to maximize it across the board,” Frank said. “The OC team will go through the same lane while all these guys take their turn going through the lane to get it validated. They go through three runs on each lane. They do a day lane, they do a dusk lane, and then they do a night lane so it maximizes the training. We’re in essence getting two times as much training by running those extra two lanes.”
Frank added that the adverse conditions help Soldiers learn what they can work through and overcome both physically and mentally.
“Orchard Combat Training Center was made from the pyroclastic flow from the Yellowstone Caldera, when Yellowstone blew up,” Frank said. “So what we’re sitting on is all that volcanic stuff from Yellowstone. It’s dirty, it’s dusty, it’s a harsher area to live in...and you put a lot of extra stress on a person’s body.
“High winds, freak thunderstorms, blistering heat, and oppressive dust, our Soldiers have reacted and responded quite well. We have gone through stuff that you know they have never witnessed before.”
He continued to say, “We have a lot of young Soldiers that are now in our battalions, which is good. Some of them are experiencing this stuff for the very first time...this is good for them.”
This is the first time Pvt. Hunter Liles, a tanker with Charlie Company, 1-163rd CAB, has been with his unit.
Liles said it is a really good first time with the unit because as a new driver doing tank maneuvers everyday over and over again helps it become muscle memory.
“I just replaced the driver for my tank crew so I think this is a real good chance to build that interaction because the other three have been together for a year,” Liles said. “At the same time the whole company being out here builds up each tank crew, the sections together and everyone’s learning how to work with each other.”
Spc. John Daniels, a dismount team member with Alpha. Co. 1-163rd CAB, said being able to perform dismount training from the back of a Bradley was invaluable to his team.
“Our dismount training is typically separate from the crews because you can’t drive around Billings, Mont., in Bradleys,” Daniels said. “This was the first time I’ve even rode in the back of a Bradley.”
“This is good training for our platoon,” Daniels continued. “It really just brought everyone together, from medics to crew to dismounts and getting other parts of the company involved.”
“All of our guys have been doing a really good job working together out here,” Sgt. Victor Wells, a member of A. Co., 1-163rd CAB said. “We actually ended up breaking a track on a Bradley one night and the whole platoon came together and helped out. We were out there until about I think 6:30 or 7:30 in the morning. So it was a long night but we ended up getting it done.“
Frank said that while the unit faced many challenges they had many triumphs.
“A big triumph is watching the medical group from Headquarters Headquarters Company go from a very tight unit to where they now know how to work together with all the battalion medics. They built those relationships to progressively get further and farther into the mass casualty exercises and learn how to do it correctly,” Frank said.
The 1-163rd is comprised of many companies to make all the moving pieces work.
“From Montana we have the entire 1-163rd Battalion, which is five companies: A headquarters company, two mechanized infantry companies, an armor company of tanks, and also our support company,” said Holycross.
According to Holycross, it is not easy to organize training for so many Soldiers.
“Large maneuvers like this are very expensive and very rare,” Holycross stated. “Our Soldiers are very good at the specific pieces we have and the biggest challenge is just putting together all the pieces; how everybody links together and how everybody works together. We’ve been very successful at it, and it’s just seeing how everything works from start to finish.”
Warrant Officer James Bancroft, an automotive maintenance technician, is in charge of the maintenance infantry companies with the 1-163rd and said being at OCTC has offered his teams the opportunity to repair vehicles in the field or recover the vehicle if it needs more in depth work.
“We’ve utilized a lot of assets that haven’t been utilized in many years, such as our welding capabilities and our small arms repair section as well,” said Bancroft.
All of the work and training the battalion has done at OCTC will carry them forward into next years training at the NTC at Fort Irwin, California.
“It’s an immensely large training area and it’s one of the few places pretty much in the world, where we can do brigade level combined arms maneuvering,” said Holycross. “As a result, virtually every mechanized unit in the army goes through it at some point, so it’s your window to be successful and it’s a chance to live train the tasks you’ll need to succeed more.”
All the hard work pays off in more ways than one.
“The Soldiers come back to the state of Montana as a tighter knit team,” said Frank. “They learn to work together, they learn what each person’s quirks are, they learn to adjust and adapt accordingly and they become a more synchronized team. When the state of Montana calls upon these Soldiers they know they’re getting a solid team that’s coming to work and help them.”
The 1-163rd CAB will return home to Montana June 24.
| Date Taken: | 06.22.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 06.22.2018 17:40 |
| Story ID: | 282026 |
| Location: | ORCHARD COMBAT TRAINING CENTER, ID, US |
| Hometown: | BAKER, MT, US |
| Hometown: | BILLINGS, MT, US |
| Hometown: | EAST HELENA, MT, US |
| Hometown: | ENNIS, MT, US |
| Hometown: | HELENA, MT, US |
| Hometown: | KALISPELL, MT, US |
| Hometown: | LAUREL, MT, US |
| Hometown: | MISSOULA, MT, US |
| Web Views: | 940 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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