North Carolina National Guard soldiers with the 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT) conducted an “all units” drill here, on Oct. 13, 2017 in preparation for Exportable Combat Training Capability (XCTC) program.
The XCTC program is an instrumented brigade field training exercise designed to certify platoon proficiency in coordination with First Army.
“We are going through crawl, walk, and run phases to get units ready for deployment,” said Col. Robert Bumgardner, commander of the brigade. “You rise to the level that you train at,” he said. “We need to train at a higher level.”
XCTC training lanes are customized to meet the commander’s objectives. These lanes may include ambushes, company hasty attack, platoon movement to contact, brief recon missions, vehicle recovery and more.
“With training we can synchronize out efforts across all the battalions down to platoon size elements. There are a lot of working parts and having all units training at one time gives us the ability to catch issues we might not have had,” Bumgardner said.
Communication is a key part of training according to plans officer Maj. Benjamin Wynn.
“We need to exercise mission command—to practice communicating with NCNG units in North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia,” Wynn said.
XCTC provides an experience similar to Combat Training Centers for Guard Soldiers to minimizing cost and time away from home and jobs.
The end goal of XCTC is to ready the 30th ABCT for the National Training Center (NTC) which further qualifies the brigade for deployment.
“We are just in the regular season right now,” Bumgardner said, “XCTC is like the playoffs, but NTC is the Super Bowl.”