26 ARMY n July 2008

Photographs and TextBy Dennis Steele

Senior Staff Writer

July 2008 n ARMY 27

or soldiers deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Na-

tional Training Center (NTC) is the crossroad between

Hollywood and hell—a back lot simulating the brutality

of combat, replete with fake blood, sudden explosions

and plot twists triggered by soldiers’ responses

to the situations thrown at them.

NTC, situated on the vast desert

expanse of Fort Irwin,

Calif., uses props, pyro-

technics, makeup, actors,

set designers, directors and

elaborate scripts—the tools of

moviemaking—to prepare

Army units for the rigors of com-

bat in Iraq and Afghanistan by

making the experience as realistic

as practical while collapsing more

worst-case scenarios than could

be experienced during a combat

tour into two weeks of field training.

Second Lt. John Mullany, a pla-toon leader in Company A, 2ndBattalion, 8th Infantry Regi-ment, wades through smokeduring a mass-casualty trainingscenario staged at the NationalTraining Center (NTC), Fort Irwin, Calif., as the 2nd BrigadeCombat Team (BCT), 4th In-fantry Division (Mechanized),prepares for deployment to Iraq.

For decades, NTC was renowned for its force-on-forceconventional warfare maneuver training, but it hasswitched gears over the past several years to meet theneeds of the current fight, offering full spectrum trainingthat concentrates on counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare,

which often calls for nonkinetic action,spending money instead of blood andnegotiating the cultural labyrinththrough rapport and rapprochement.

There are as many tea-sipping nego-tiation sessions at NTC today as fire-fights, which mirrors the real world ofcounterinsurgency. And in NTC’s widevalleys, where hundreds of armoredvehicles once clashed in a maneuver-warfare knife fight against a foe em-ploying Soviet doctrine and weapons,forward operating bases, joint securitystations, villages and even goat farmshave been constructed to simulate con-ditions and missions faced in Iraq andAfghanistan.

Currently, there are seven for-ward operating bases and 13villages in the NTC trainingarea, replicating a provincialarea, and improvements arebeing made with each rota-

tion. Nearly three years ago, the vil-lages started as clusters of shippingcontainers and mostly make-believe asNTC scrambled to shift training em-phasis. In time, a more realistic settingemerged: first, by visually modifyingthe containers externally to look morelike buildings and adding, layer bylayer, what NTC officials call texture—bits of details and construction add-onsto make training more realistic, every-thing from signs, rubbish and knick-knacks to mosques. Today there’s evena warren of tunnels under the largervillages to replicate burrows or sewersystems, which insurgents can use tomove around and stash arms.

More elaborate town complexes arebeing incorporated. The Defense Ad-vanced Research Projects Agency re-cently completed a project to build amultiblock urban area using construc-tion materials from Iraq to preciselyreplicate a city segment of shops andapartments. NTC, meanwhile, is build-ing a next-generation expanse of multi-level structures that, when connectedto an existing village, will be a town

complex with about 400 buildings.The villages are the backdrop for exercising, observing

and mentoring units up to the size of a brigade combatteam in the intricate, overlapping facets of counterinsur-gency. The goal is to test and improve staff skills, collective

28 ARMY n July 2008

A 2nd BCT, 4th Infantry Division,soldier drags a role-player casu-alty out of the kill zone duringan iteration at NTC’s medicaltrauma situational trainingexercise (STX) lane.Toadd realism to the STX,the role player is anactual double-amputee whosewounds havebeen simulatedthrough Holly-wood makeuptechniques.

and individual skills and mind-sets—and especially intelli-gence gathering, analysis and dissemination that coun-terinsurgency requires.

(The 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized),from Fort Carson, Colo., was undergoing training for deploy-ment to Iraq during the NTC rotation covered in this story.)

Training is tweaked according to whether a unit willbe deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan by incorporatinginto the exercise playbook specific up-to-date enemythreats and current U.S. military tactics, techniquesand procedures respective to the unit’s deploymentdestination. Hundreds of civilian native-language

speaking role players (primarily Arabic speakers for Iraqand Pashto for Afghanistan) replicate the governmentstructure, religious hierarchy and civilian population of thedeployment region. Their roles range from provincial gov-ernor to police chiefs, shopkeepers, laborers and insurgents,and they are suitably costumed to simulate the deploymentregion. Most civilian contract players come from San Diego,where a role-player network has sprung up to meet theneeds of NTC and the Marine Corps’ Twentynine Palms,Calif., training center.

During every training rotation, soldiers from the Fort Ir-win-based 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR) augmentthe civilian role players and represent about 50 to 70 percentof the total number of role players participating in any giventraining rotation. Soldiers assume roles that are not languagecritical as well as insurgent roles that call for military skillsand the possibility of actual long-term detention. Company-

30 ARMY n July 2008

A simulated improvised explosivedevice (IED) explodes beside aHumvee. The debris is cork, and theexplosive charge is smaller than amidsized fireworks device, but NTC’sspecial effects contractors can makethe visual and sound effects seem real.

SFC Michael Kile, thelead medical observer-controller (OC) at NTC,evaluates a unit at themedical trauma STX lane.

level leaders from the 11th ACR manage the villages—ensur-ing that the demands of the scenarios and scripts are met tothe finest detail and overseeing life support for the role play-ers. Most role players live in the villages for 14 straight days.

The 11th ACR’s roles call for soldiers to adopt nativeclothing and somewhat native habits, which include notshaving for the duration of the training period.

Asked if that made the veins on his head pop out, thecommand sergeant major of the 1st Squadron, 11th ACR,Edd Watson, laughed and said, “It’s almost like re-bluingmyself after 20 years. Instead of asking a soldier, ‘Whyhaven’t you shaved today?’ I now ask them, ‘Why haveyou shaved?’ Instead of asking them why they didn’t pickup a piece of paper, I have to ask them why they did.”

Coalition operations at NTC also replicate the real com-bat situation, and the Iraqi army role players needed gen-erally are provided by augmentation units that deploy toNTC for the duration of the training rotation.

(Soldiers from the 4th Battalion, 555th Engineer Group,also based at Fort Carson, played Iraqi army elements dur-ing the rotation covered here.)

Missing from the cast are children, who are not among therole players because of safety concerns, and dogs, whichmight get eaten by coyotes that roam the training area.

During the 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division’s rotation,more than 1,700 role players were in the training area, in-cluding 1,110 from the 11th ACR (210 of whom played mem-bers of various anti-Iraqi forces), 300 from the 555th Engi-neers (Iraqi army), 300 civilian foreign-language speakersand 25 “professional civilians on the battlefield” who playtop-level roles such as U.S. civilian advisers to the training

unit, State Department employees andthe like. The NTC public affairs officealso finds journalism student volun-teers for each rotation to act as embed-ded media.

Atraining rotation lasts 21 days.The first week replicates theRSOI (reception, staging, on-ward movement and integra-tion) phase as the incomingunit draws equipment and at-

taches sensors to vehicles. NTC gets arolling start on training during theRSOI phase, however, by conductingclasses on advanced search techniques,cultural awareness, and robot andother specialized equipment operationon Fort Irwin’s main post before theunit moves into the training area.

Most of the second week is dedi-cated to live-fire exercises, commandpost exercises and situational trainingexercises (STXs). The STXs put sol-diers through training lanes that runthe gamut from improvised explosive

device (IED) detection to mass casualty medical care. (Themedical STX lane employs role players who are actual am-putees. With some gory touches by a team of Hollywoodmakeup artists, their wounds appear realistically fresh. Adouble-amputee who is a regular role player at the lanesaid a few soldiers have gotten sick at first sight of him.That’s realism.)

32 ARMY n July 2008

SSgt. Thomas Coons, a Wolf Team OC, sets up the graphicsand video for an after action review (AAR) on a ruggedizedlaptop computer. OC teams are equipped with portable kitsthat include a large display screen so they can produce AARsin the field and give real-time feedback to the training units.

Soldiers from the 2nd BCT, 4th Infantry Division, use a wrecked vehicle for coverduring training.

July 2008 n ARMY 33

Across the training area, the observer-controllers (OCs)from NTC’s Operations Group conduct up to 420 STX laneiterations during each rotation, each followed by an afteraction review (AAR).

The culminating event of a training rotation is the fullspectrum operations (FSO) phase, which is the mission train-ing “controlled free-play” segment during which the brigadecombat team assumes control of its area of operations andtries to handle everything that isthrown at it. And a lot gets thrown.

Throughout the FSO phase, OCs ac-company each individual element ofthe unit undergoing training (frombrigade headquarters staff sections toline platoons) and stay with that ele-ment more or less around the clock toobserve, coach, mentor and apprise sol-diers on an ongoing informal basis andthrough additional AARs followingspecific events.

Almost every NTC observer-controller’s previous assign-ment was in Iraq or Afghan-istan, and OCs bring thatexperience to the table. AnOC assigned to shadow a bat-

talion commander in most cases justcame from battalion command in oneof the combat theaters, for example,and the same goes for OCs at the com-

pany level and so forth. OCs also periodically return to acombat theater during their tenures to receive briefings,conduct interviews and generally evaluate conditions andchanges to make training as fresh and relevant as possibleand to incorporate the latest threats and evolving Ameri-can tactics into the training.

The role of the OC has changed considerably from theforce-on-force training days. Today, OCs view themselvesas mentors and coaches rather than evaluators.

“The days of the green notebooks and white gloves havegone away; there’s not time for that. This is the last stop fordeploying units, so every second is valuable,” said Lt. Col.Gary Brito, the senior trainer on NTC’s Bronco Team. “It’sa partnership today. We call it full spectrum OCing.”

OCs continue to be the final referee authorities, determin-ing casualties, for example, and they are the on-scene safetycontrollers to ensure nobody really gets hurt. Today, theyalso act as producers/directors who ensure that trainingevents happen at the right time and place, altering action tofollow the unit’s responses to particular events. They canturn some events on and off, depending on what the unitdoes, and sometimes they can move a scenario along if it’snecessary by covertly nudging the unit. In OC-speak, it’scalled “throwing some chicken”—offering a small piece ofbait to entice soldiers into situations that could maximizetheir training opportunity. But if the soldiers don’t take thebait, they don’t, and a negative event could be the conse-quence. Everything depends on the training unit’s actions—the choices it makes.

PFC Jacan Phillips from Troop B, 11thArmored Cavalry Regiment (ACR),plays the role of an Iraqiinsurgent.The Fort Irwin-based 11th ACRprovides soldiers tofill most of the role-playing positionsduring a training ro-tation, centering onroles that are notnative languagedependent andthose of in-surgents.

A 2nd BCT, 4th Infantry Division, squad lines up in prepa-ration for a clearing operation in one of NTC’s villages.

“We won’t make a threat happenjust because it’s on paper,” Col. Britoexplained. “There must be a causeand effect.”

If soldiers use information to finda weapons cache, for example, itdisposes of the potential threatposed by the cache. If they don’tfind the cache, however, theweapons subsequently could be

used to attack them. The more goodthings soldiers accomplish, the fewerbad things happen to them—the car-rot-and-stick reality of the counterin-surgency environment into which thetraining unit will deploy and operatejust months after leaving NTC.

“What we try to do is hammer thefundamentals of COIN. We want togive them absolutely the most realistictraining that we can, short of combat,”explained Maj. Rod Morgan, an armorcompany team trainer. “Our trainingmakes sure they know what they willface as individuals, and through COIN[training] we also can better achieveour goals in theater,” he said.

Maj. Morgan added, “Who we seeas OCs nowadays are soldiers who al-ready have a lot of combat experienceand who may think they know allabout it. We try to mitigate that bytelling them, ‘Hey, we’ve all beenthere. But what you saw during yourfirst tour may not be what you seeduring your second tour.’ It’s reallylike the beaches of Normandy; everysoldier on the beach had a differentexperience, and every soldier today

34 ARMY n July 2008

Top, Arabic-speaking Americans playing theroles of village leaders assemble outside a

building at one of NTC’s training villages.Center, 2nd BCT, 4th Infantry Division, sol-diers discover a trapdoor leading into a tun-

nel maze under an NTC training village.

Stonework appliqué turns a shipping con-tainer into a more realistic building duringwork to expand one of NTC’s training vil-

lages. NTC has used variously config-ured visually modified containers to repli-

cate buildings, but many permanentbuildings also are being added as NTC

expands its training village network.

has had a different experience, depending on where hewas on the beach. Just because they were there, theyshould try to understand that they don’t know everything;they just know about the spot on the beach where theywere before.”

“To me, if I can focus on helping them get through theirfirst 100 days [in theater], that will give them time to ac-quire the basic skills and really know all the company-bat-talion level systems,” said Lt. Col. Ronald Metternich, thesenior light infantry team trainer. “The first 100 days iswhen people adjust to a specific area and start to under-stand the insurgency in their area, and it’s also the timewhen they face their biggest threat because the enemy testsnew units. But they have to get into theater with theirgame faces on and roll out the gate, and that’s where we asOCs come in. We try to prevent unnecessary casualties andunnecessary escalations of force and prepare them to getthem through that first 100 days.”

Sgt. Maj. John Carpenter, the light infantry team’ssenior enlisted trainer, added, “If soldiers only takeone thing from the training here, I would like it tobe that each individual soldier understands hisstrategic impact. That is the hardest thing to getsoldiers to understand: that their individual ac-

tions have an impact on the Army; that every soldier on the

36 ARMY n July 2008

SSgt. Mary McLean—749th Explosive

Ordnance Disposal(EOD) Company,

242nd EOD Battal-ion, 71st EOD

Group, 20th Sup-port Command—

prepares charges todispose of a realunexploded ord-

nance hazard dis-covered duringtraining at NTC.

The claw of a Buffalo armored vehicle begins to probe apossible IED during a road-clearing STX training scenario.

streets represents all soldiers and America. If they leaveNTC understanding that, it’s success.”

Beyond that, Sgt. Maj. Carpenter also said his train-ing focus is on the fundamentals, specifically thenine tenets that compose the list known as individ-ual skills in a COIN environment: negotiations;cultural understanding; language skills; counter-IED [tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs)];

countersniper [TTPs]; rules of engagement and escalation offorce; detainee operations and evidence collection; tacticalquestioning; and “Every soldier’s a sensor or ambassador.”

OCs are the frontline trainers, but NTC’s OperationsGroup staff does the immense amount of work that producesthe elaborate overall script for each training rotation. It iscomplex, to say the least, incorporating 112 major events.

A training rotation script is several hundred pages long,defining roles and laying out hundreds of threads. Threadsare interwoven and interdependent details that are se-quentially fed into play.

It will take a lot of words to explain it, but threads depictthe heart of the cause-and-effect side of NTC’s training ef-fort, so hang on. It’s an oversimplification, but this is howa thread line works:

Daily activities in each village and the activities of eachmajor role player in that village (thread lines) appear onscript pages given to the 11th ACR’s manager in charge ofthat village.

38 ARMY n July 2008

Covered with simulated blood, PFC Jonathan Saiz,an A/2-8 Infantry medic, treats a wounded role player.

Spc. Justin Scantling, Company A,2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment(A/2-8 Infantry), leads a casualty roleplayer out of the smoke of a simulatedvehicle-borne IED incident at theNTC’s Medina al Jabal training village.

July 2008 n ARMY 39

In Village A, on Training Day 1, Thread Line 1 (the mayor),the town manager sees that early in the morning, the threadcalls for someone to go the joint security station and tell thefirst U.S. soldier he sees that the mayor wants to meet withthe company commander at noon. Hedispatches the café owner role player todeliver the message. If the soldier whohappens to be at the gate when the caféowner shows up (and doesn’t get ner-vous and shoot the guy) grasps that theIraqi guy at his gate has a message anddoes the right thing, for example, bycalling for his squad leader and the pla-toon’s translator (another role player),and the squad leader uses the transla-tor correctly and everybody else in-volved does the right things, the com-pany commander eventually gets themessage and decides he wants to go tothe meeting (another right thing).

T he Village A company com-mander advises his battalionheadquarters that the meetingis scheduled (right thing). Thebattalion commander under-stands that such a meeting is

important for his overall effort (rightthing) and decides to send his sergeantmajor to attend the meeting, too (rightthing, maybe, maybe not). He neglects,however, to move up the timetable forroad clearance to ensure the sergeantmajor gets to the meeting safely (wrongthing). An IED hits his vehicle on theway to the meeting and kills his driverand gunner.

The company commander, how-ever, arrives at the meeting safe andsound.

After the company commander ac-cepts the offer of tea from the mayor(right thing), the mayor offhandedlyremarks that his cousin Ali told himthat three al Qaeda fighters are mov-

ing into Village Z, 10 miles away (which is the thread goalof everything leading up to that point).

If that tidbit of information is reported to the battalionheadquarters and then to the brigade headquarters, and the

A TV news crew from NTC’s Operations Group (playing the role of an Arabicnews network) interviews SFC Michael McKinney, an A/2-8 Infantry platoonsergeant, immediately following a training scenario. Video and interviews from aday's training are edited and compiled into a news program that is fed throughfiber-optic cables to tactical operations centers of the brigade undergoing training.

SFC Spencer Luckett, an OC with NTC’sWolf Team, left, gives a written counter-insurgency test to Pvt. 2 Gary McCoy, Pvt.2 Joshua Hasselbacher, Pvt. 2 Kale Clayand Pvt. 2 Andrew Alexander of Battery A,3rd Battalion, 16th Field Artillery (A/3-16FA) as the 2nd BCT, 4th Infantry Divi-sion’s training rotation nears completion.

Lt. Col. Douglas Cardinale, center, commander of the 2-8 Infantry, conducts apress conference alongside Coalition security forces and civic leader role players.Media relations and information operations play large parts in NTC training.

brigade staff subsequently passes it to the battalion respon-sible for Village Z (all right things), and right things con-tinue happening until the information reaches the companycommander in Village Z, that commander then knows thatal Qaeda guys are moving into his town along with thename of Village A mayor’s cousin (Ali) who knows some-thing about it. If the Village Z commander makes the effortto locate Ali (a right thing), and he is successful, Ali will givehim more information about the al Qaeda guys, such as adescription of their car, which puts the commander in Vil-lage Z on track to find them. Other crumbs of informationavailable in Village Z could help the effort—or that addi-tional information might make Ali’s story unravel and leadU.S. soldiers to believe that he is one of the al Qaeda guys.

Nevertheless, if the al Qaeda cell isn’t quashed byDay 3, another part of the thread kicks in: The alQaeda guys drive over to Village C (where the U.S.company commander may or may not have re-ceived the description of their car). If the al Qaedaguys aren’t interdicted within a certain amount of

time after entering Village C, they kill the pro-Coalition po-lice chief there—and that starts a whole new thread of causesand effects, maybe with an anti-Coalition police chief takinghis place and subsequently selling weapons to an insurgentwho goes over to Village A and kills the mayor there, bring-ing the whole thread full circle.

40 ARMY n July 2008

An insurgent role player and a soldier from A/3-16 FA shoot it out during close combat training in NTC’s Abar Layla village.

Second Lt. Matthew Pierce, A/3-16 FA, maintainscommunications during a training scenario.

July 2008 n ARMY 41

If the al Qaeda guys are arrested or killed on their way toVillage C—even by sheer luck or accident—that threadstops cold. The police chief and mayor live. But even ifthe al Qaeda guys are detained and the detention pack-ets are not done correctly, they could be released to cre-ate havoc again because of that technical mistake.

Individual threads require the training unit to do theright things at multiple levels to stop increasingly negativesecond and third levels of effect from happening. Eachtraining rotation requires hundreds of such threads withcauses and effects built into them, all scripted in advanceby the Operations Group staff.

Col. Randal Dragon commands the NTC Operations

Stacked shipping containers compose part of the training village Al Jaff. Al Jaff is one of themost austere of NTC’s 13 villages that have been constructed in the training area since 2004.It represents the first phase of NTC village construction, which quickly emplaced training vil-lages to meet the counterinsurgency training requirements of units deploying to Iraq andAfghanistan. Subsequent phases have added layers of “texture” that more closely replicatevillages in those areas, and ongoing and future construction phases (scheduled to be com-pleted this year and next) will expand the efforts tremendously.

Left, Sgt. Trisha Baize—Troop D, 1st Squadron, 10th Cavalry—checks calibration of Fido equipment. Fido sniffs out the presence ofexplosives. Sgt. Baize was given Fido training as the 2nd BCT, 4th Infantry Division, underwent the reception, staging, onward move-ment and integration (RSOI) phase at Fort Irwin. To make the most of a unit’s training time at NTC, soldiers receive specialized train-ing during the RSOI phase before moving to NTC’s training area for STX lane training and the culminating full spectrum operationstraining exercise. Right, a soldier captures an image of an insurgent role player’s eye on field biometrics equipment. The detentionprocess (which includes taking biometric information) is heavily drilled at NTC. A detaining unit must have detention procedures downpat (including evidence collection, logging and transfer and statement writing) to get detainees held and, later, convicted of crimes.

Group. He said, “If the unit can put the pieces together, itcan develop the intelligence necessary to drive operations,and that’s what we’re after.”

He said texture reaches further than exterior appearanceof the villages: It involves inserting into the training aspectssuch as the cultural dynamics, network of family structures,religion, traditions, the rule of law, economics, governmentand the communications network along with many other

aspects. Those aspects must be built into the overall train-ing scenario.

The Operations Group also fields TV crews that role-play Arabic television networks, filming events and con-ducting on-the-spot interviews, which are put together asnews programs and sent via fiber optics to televisions inthe training unit’s operations centers, where commandersand staff officers see news clips of their own soldiers and

42 ARMY n July 2008

An NTC Operations Group news videographer records live training incidents for a newbroadcast. A separate team of contractor videographers record video for AAR purposes.

An NTC OC moni-tors the controls in

an AAR center. Thesophisticated sys-tem allows OCs to

present multimediaAARs that increasetraining value. Sev-

eral semiperma-nent AAR centers

(air conditionedand heated) havebeen emplaced inthe training area.

the sometimes negative spins put on what their soldiersdid that very day, often requiring them to devise methodsto counter the negatives through an information campaign.

“We exercise every part of the fight—lethal and nonlethal.Our goal, however, is to replicate, not duplicate, the opera-tional environment,” Col. Dragon said.

“Our training puts an exponential number of tasks on ouryoung leaders,” he added. “And as a result, we have becomean amazing learning venue.”

Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittardcommands NTC, and he im-presses on every NTC trainerthe need to improve everyfacet that affects soldiers’senses—to hit them as much

as possible with the sights, sounds,smells and feel of the combat zones towhich they will be deployed.

Gen. Pittard said that he hopes inthe near future to expand the numberof role players by 300 to 400. “We’regoing to put out 2,000 role players,” he

said. He wants to increase the already expanding militaryoperations in urbanized terrain (MOUT) facilities to createa “national urban warfare complex—a 600-building citywhere you can get lost.”

Gen. Pittard also said there are plans to build a task force-level live-fire facility some time in fiscal year 2009, and therewill be a system in place soon to track every individual ele-ment in the training area: “Every entity, whether it is a sol-dier, civilian, cat, dog, IED, cache, even OCs.” The goal is to

44 ARMY n July 2008

An NTC OC team conducts an open-air AAR using a Humvee-portable system. The portable systemsallow training teams to put together and present multimedia AARs anywhere in the training area.

MSgt. Joseph Jacobs, the senior enlistedWolf Team trainer, overwatches an ongoingtraining scenario. Nearly every OC at NTCcame directly from a combat assignment,

and OCs regularly visit combat areas dur-ing their tenure to get the latest information

and structure training accordingly.

July 2008 n ARMY 45

have a system capable of tracking upto 15,000 individual elements.

NTC also plans to construct 50 mo-bile search buildings incorporatingHollywood set-design technology.

“With the containers we have now,there are really not too many places tosearch, and we need to force soldiersto use the search techniques we havetaught them,” Gen. Pittard said.

Meanwhile, Gen. Pittard said he isexploring the interagency training po-tential at NTC with the State Depart-ment, Central Intelligence Agency, Na-tional Security Agency, Federal Bureauof Investigation—“everybody who is astakeholder in the Middle East”—tocreate interest in multiagency use ofthe training area and to possibly bringadditional funds from those agencies.

“We have created the most realistictraining environment in the UnitedStates,” he said. “The question now ishow to make the best use of it.”

The impetus at NTC is to dreambig—Hollywood big.

Although it would be tricky tofinesse a way through the bu-reaucracy and existing regu-lations, Gen. Pittard said thatNTC’s future might includean outright partnership with

Hollywood—a limited deal underwhich a studio could build a state-of-the-art urban back lot in the NTCtraining area to be used for occasionalperiods of filming and the rest of thetime used to train soldiers. The com-

An OC peers down on a stack ready toenter and clear a building in one ofNTC’s training villages. The individual atleft is a soldier from the 4th Battalion,555th Engineer Group (Fort Carson,Colo.), role-playing an Iraqi army soldier.Coalition operations are emphasized atall levels during an NTC training rotation.

A 2nd BCT, 4th Infantry Division, soldierguards an insurgent role player after hiscompany conducted an operation tocapture high-value targets identified bygood intelligence. Intelligence gathering,analysis and dissemination are prioritytraining objectives at NTC because intel-ligence is expected to drive operations.

manding general also would like to bring a Hollywood as-sistant director on board to expand the special effects.

“We must make training as realistic as possible,” Gen. Pit-tard explained. “We have gone beyond the days when an OCcould just throw out a smoke grenade and tell soldiers theywere under attack—and even looking at what we haveachieved up to now, the explosionsaren’t big enough, the special effectsaren’t special enough. Hollywood isjust two hours away, so what we havenow is just a start. The premier combattraining center in the world must havehigh standards.”

The payoff for NTC’s efforts toachieve those high standards is bestexpressed by the users.

“The level of intensity here is ex-tremely high,” said Col. Butch Kieve-naar, commander of the 2nd Brigade,4th Infantry Division, as his brigade’straining rotation was coming to aclose. “The facilities here allowed us toachieve all of our training objectives,and the environment enabled my

brigade and battalion staff to become very strong,” he said.“You really can’t train yourself. Although we train at

home station, we don’t have the assets to do the simula-tions that can be done here, and here I can train the wholebrigade at one time, not just elements of it,” he added. “Wereally couldn’t do this without the CTCs (combat training

46 ARMY n July 2008

SFC Raymond Pequeno III, an OC with NTC’s TarantulaTeam, uses his “god gun” to check the sensor systemworn by a soldier. It’s called a god gun because its elec-tronic pulses can take lives (in the simulated sense ofsetting off a sensor to indicate being hit) and also bringsoldiers back to life to continue participation in thetraining scenario (by resetting their sensors).

Pvt. 2 Sabrina Hester, a medic in A/3-16 FA, bandages the simulated wounds

of a role player after a drawn-out fire-fight between her unit and insurgents

in the Abar Layla training village.

centers). Our Army leadership hasmade a large investment in the CTCsover many years, and that’s still pay-ing dividends.”

The dividend was pretty easy to spotone night at the joint security station inan NTC village called Medina al Jabal.

Second Lt. John Mullany, a pla-toon leader in the 2nd Bri-gade’s Company A, 2nd Bat-talion, 8th Infantry Regiment,sat on a bench, gnawing on apork chop that the company

logistics package had delivered severalhours earlier. It was long past sunset,and the rest of the platoon had finishedeating long before. Even the guys look-ing for second helpings had come andgone. It had been a long day.

During the previous 18 hours, hisplatoon had been hit with a mortar at-

48 ARMY n July 2008

Soldiers from the 2nd BCT, 4th Infantry Division, approach a possible insurgent hideout during the brigade’s NTC training rotation.

Sgt. Cole West (A/2-8 Infantry) pro-vides security for a task force-level

press conference staged at NTC.

July 2008 n ARMY 49

tack, snatched up several high-value insurgents, located ahuge weapons cache and treated and evacuated a dozen ormore civilian casualties during an hour-long mass casualtyscenario, compete with smoke, fire, blood, screams, angerand hysteria.

Lt. Mullany had been a platoon leader for about twomonths, including the nearly three weeks he had spent atNTC.

“The realism, like what happened today, really put meout there to see where I am,” he said between bites. “The

platoon has gotten a lot out of it, Ithink. It’s really been good training forthe guys, all the way from the MOUTsite we trained on before we came outto the box to patrolling the city.”

He stuffed the cardboard tray andthe remnants of his dinner into a trashbag and picked up a box of milk forlater.

“They say every day at NTC isequal to seven days in real time,” henoted. “Considering the past 24 hours,I think it’s a lot more than that.”

The lieutenant pushed himself tohis feet, using the table, and adjustedthe body armor, radio and all the restof the gear that was strapped ontohim.

“The main thing is that everybodyhas worked well together,” Lt. Mul-lany said, getting set for what mightbe another long night.

“And I’m pretty proud of them.” M

Pvt. 2 DeAndre Gray (A/2-8 Infantry) watchesfor threats at one of NTC’s training villages.

Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard, left, NTC and Fort Irwin commanding general, and Col.Randal Dragon, commander of NTC Operations Group, conduct a discussion dur-ing the culminating event of the 2nd BCT, 4th Infantry Division’s training rotation.