The heartbeat pulsing in your ears is almost as loud as the sirens reverberating through the building. Your eyes strain to focus through the endless onslaught of smoke. With back against the wall, you mentally assess your surroundings and prepare to make your move.
Sound like a typical Reserve weekend to you?
While the primary function of every Navy Operational Support Center is to maintain deployment ready Reserve Sailors, NOSC Madison, Wisconsin, is going a step further by providing a mobilization exercise condensed into a two-day hands-on training, dubbed MOBEX.
In October, almost a hundred Madison Sailors traveled two hours north through Wisconsin farmland to participate in the fourth annual MOBEX, held at U.S. Army Garrison Fort McCoy. For years, Madison Sailors have trained at Fort McCoy with their individual units and with the Army Reserve during joint exercises. In 2015, however, unit leadership decided to pursue a NOSC-wide training exercise to let Sailors experience real-life field environments.
Lt. Christopher Hanson, who served as NOSC Madison’s officer in charge for the 2018 MOBEX, said his own deployment experience stressed the importance of the training. “Several of us have deployed downrange and know that the need for Reserve Sailors to mobilize as individual augmentees will continue,” Hanson said. “We wanted to develop a training plan similar to what they would see at Navy Individual Augmentee Combat Training, so our Sailors know what to expect when they get there.”
Proper resourcing of an effective and efficient training location was a challenging task, but the convenience of an Army site made the decision simple. “Fort McCoy is a hidden gem when it comes to training,”said Hanson. “These days, cost-reduction is just as important as training effectiveness. The ranges, dining facility, barracks and transportation on base come at no cost to the Navy. Our only expense was the bus here, making this one of the most cost-effective training evolutions I’ve seen.”
Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Grande, NOSC Madison’s commanding officer, immediately supported the unique concept. “I loved the idea,” he said. “MOBEX allows Sailors to receive practical training they can’t find in an online course or a classroom setting. More than that, it allows our subject matter experts in diverse fields such as combat medicine, improvised explosive device recognition and small arms tactics to prepare Sailors before they get orders for mobilization.”
After disembarking the bus, Sailors were issued linens and military field rations, known as MREs, or Meals, Ready-to-Eat, assigned a barracks room and then directed to a training range. The first evolution was a mixture of active shooter scenarios, combat medicine, medical evacuation and IED identification.
Master-at-Arms 1st Class David U’Ren was selected as the training officer for the exercise to leverage his extensive tactical training and instructor experience from his civilian job as a federal police lieutenant. His training team put together various evolutions for MOBEX with an emphasis on everyday lifesaving skills Sailors could use in their military and civilian lives.
“We wanted to stress the importance of how to deal with an active shooter,” U’Ren said. “An active shooter can be in your own hometown, or even in Afghanistan as a blue-on-green scenario. The training was designed for them to see all sides of the active shooter scenario and what to do when law enforcement arrives and enters. Our Sailors can look at this training and say ‘Hey, this is really important. I need to stay calm. I need to take care of myself and everyone around me if I can.’”
The active shooter and security scenarios were held at Fort McCoy’s Collective Arms Combined Training Facility, the installation’s high-tech urban combat training area. The facility regularly hosts numerous Army units, as well as the FBI and local and regional law enforcement teams. It offers a unique training capability where role players can manipulate their surroundings to best protect themselves and those with them, such as kicking down doors and forming barricades against an attack.
The active shooter training included school scenarios as well. Sailors were randomly placed in classrooms, bathrooms, hallways and locker rooms. Hoping to establish complacency, event organizers waited 15 to 20 minutes before sending two role-playing active shooters into the building to start a simulated attack.
The scenario taught Sailors the traditional run, hide or fight response for an active shooter. Using technology, it also provoked realistic emotional responses to the drill. “The buildings can turn on smoke, sounds and actual smells to create a realistic, chaotic environment,” U’Ren said.
Any mobilization training would be incomplete without the crowd-favorite HMVVW Egress Assistance Training, a ride in a simulated vehicle roll-over experience. Madison Sailors took turns crawling out of the upside down cabin of a military vehicle suspended on a giant metal rotisserie-like frame.
“Vehicle accidents and rollovers occur in both civilian and military life, so this training will help our Sailors no matter where they are,” said Chief Equipment Operator Mike Rhoades, the 2018 MOBEX senior enlisted leader.
The last stop was at the Engagement Skills Trainer simulator. This full-size video game-style training allowed Sailors to get the full-feel and weight of an M9 pistol and M4 rifle in a controlled shooting range and simulated combat scenario. The training team started with basic weapons handling skills and introduced those with less experience to a familiarization range. Those who were more practiced ran through a shoot-don’t shoot domestic scenario.
“It is not a qualification, by any means,” said Rhoades. “But, our Sailors are able to practice handling, proper safety and getting comfortable with the weapons. When you go downrange, you never know what kind of situation you might get into.”
Sailors, like Yeoman 3rd Class McKenzie Miner, saw real value in the exercise. “We can do general military training until we are blue in the face, but those only have the capacity to make us think about what we would do in different circumstances,” she said. “Hands-on situational training like MOBEX allows the ‘think’ to be followed with the ‘act,’ which in a real-life situation could be the difference between life and death.”
According to Grande, the training is invaluable. “The diverse training conducted here results in a sense of accomplishment and fosters esprit de corps among full-time support and drilling Reservists more so than almost anything we can do at the NOSC on a given weekend,” he said.
NOSC Madison’s MOBEX is not only raising the bar for a typical drill weekend, but is developing Reserve Sailors who are ready to win in mobilizations around the world, as well as in their own civilian lives in and around America’s Dairyland.
This article was first published in The Navy Reservist magazine Volume 18 Issue 4.