Photo By Patricia Dubiel | A Soldier with the 519th Military Police Battalion opens fire during one of the events...... read more read more
Elements of the 519th Military Police Battalion, 16th Military Police Brigade — including the 258th Military Police Company, 41st Transportation Company, 383rd Movement Control Company and Headquarters and Headquarters Company — spent Oct. 1-5 in the field enhancing mission readiness by certifying its platoons on their METLs.
“We want to be well trained on our mission essential tasks because that improves readiness, and (this exercise) provides an (opportunity for) external evaluation for the platoons,” said Capt. Perianne Duffy, operations officer. She planned the exercise and scenarios used for training. “We are also conducting training for certain focus-ready objectives, like medical and counter-improvised explosive device training.”
Lt. Col. Sonja Whitehead, commander, 519th MP Bn, said this was the first time in more than five years that the 41st Trans Co had so many Soldiers taking part in an exercise. “Every deployable 41st Soldier was in the field,” she said. “This was a culminating event the Soldiers had trained for and we used very realistic scenarios to evaluate them.”
The mission set for military police can be varied, and this field exercise reflected that
“We’ve done convoy security and container missions with injects thrown in (opposing forces attack),” said Duffy. “We also did two gap crossings on the way out here — a gap crossing is navigating through a dangerous point (like a low water crossing) using near and far security and staging areas on both sides, breaking up the convoy into chocks and escorting them through the gap with full protection as they go through.”
Other tasks accomplished during the exercise were the establishment of a detainee collection point to process and hold captured enemy combatants; secure transportation of those detainees; base defense and critical site security; tactical convoys; non-combatant evacuation operations; cordon and search (for enemy caches); and secure container loading/unloading operations.
Capt. Blake Estlund, company commander, 258th MP Co, said the exercise evaluation also serves as a rehearsal for a future Joint Readiness Training Center rotation.
“These platoons are being externally evaluated from elements outside of the company, at the battalion level, with the use of other MPs from across post and Operations Group. It’s all part of the training glide path that will eventually work toward a rotation,” he said.
“This training (and evaluation) is important because we are building Soldier readiness on some of the (warfighter) foundations, but also on our specific military police tasks. Everything we are doing out here is specific to MPs, like gap crossing operations and support to convoy security — which support the Army’s two core competencies: Wide area security and combined arms maneuver. Those tasks build into transportation assets and engineer support (which can aid) combat commanders.”
Estlund said he was pleased with how well his company performed during the exercise. “My Soldiers have outperformed any expectations that I had.”
Whitehead said the exercise was the first time military police and transportation Soldiers completed missions together.
“The Soldiers and leaders loved it and it made for some great training,” she said. “We went a step further by requiring cross communication and coordination by these two units — who rarely work together in this capacity — but we believe they would in a combat situation.”
Duffy said the companies did well during the exercise.
“Everyone has done an amazing job,” she said. “I have been continually impressed with how well they have been able to keep up with the pace for all their mission sets.”
| Date Taken: | 10.11.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 10.11.2018 14:28 |
| Story ID: | 296050 |
| Location: | FORT POLK, LOUISIANA, US |
| Web Views: | 123 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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