Hohenfels training center deploys to Poland
By Arthur McQueen
September 27, 2004
SULECIN, Poland (Army News Service, Sept. 27, 2004) - Soldiers and civilians from the Combined Maneuver Training Center at Hohenfels, Germany, deployed to Poland this month to help with the combined exercise Immediate Response 04.
Nearly 30 trainers deployed from Germany to Wedrzyn Training Area to engage Polish and American paratroopers in challenging training scenarios, while testing the deployability of their own systems.
They employed almost 100 local Polish residents as civilians on the battlefield and Polish military augmented opposition forces. All were outfitted with the Deployable Instrumentation System, Europe, equipment.
The DISE equipment, a GPS-based tracking system for weapons, Soldiers, and vehicles on the battlefield, was used in after-action reports, but could also be viewed in near-real-time, with Soldiers represented by blue circles, OPFOR by red squares, and civilians on the battlefield by green squares.
The system can be reviewed in many different speeds and from any angle. "It provides feedback tools for Soldiers and leaders," said Capt. Chris Ellis, DISE operations officer.
"We track not only movement, but also who shot who, and we can give a Soldier personal feedback if necessary," he said.
"Today's Soldier has so many types of missions to train for," Ellis said, "as the demands on a Soldier increase, the training must also increase to meet those demands."
The feedback on the ground during the action is also vastly more sophisticated than the buzzer of death associated with MILES gear.
"The vest has 17 different verbal cues to give the Soldier," said Ellis. Indications include injuries to legs, abdomen, arms, and head, including an estimated life expectancy.
Receiving medical care returns the soldier to action. If injured in ways that would prevent use of a weapon, that Soldier cannot fire the weapon, but a teammate can pick up the weapon and utilize it.
The flash and sound from the blank ammunition allows the laser to fire, so load and usage of ammo is realistic. The system can also handle much more than a squad.
"It is scalable and deployable, we have had up to 1,000 people in the system at one time, and more than 500 for 24 straight hours," said Ellis.
Reactions from participating Soldiers were positive, even when things turned against them.
"I got killed right off the bat," said Sgt. James Johnson, B Company, 1-508th Infantry, sitting next to a brick building on the edge of the hilly site, and obviously wanting to be in the action with his team.
"It's very challenging -- I like it," he said, describing the training over the sound of gunshots and the Polish Mi-24 Hind gunship flying patrol. Radio traffic confirmed his theory, "There goes another team leader getting shot."
Sgt. Ben Bickford, also of B Company, had just treated a female civilian for a simulated gunshot wound to the stomach. His team treated and prepared three injured civilians for evacuation. The women cried and screamed as loudly as possible, adding stress to the Soldiers' mission.
"It's another condition that we add to the training. It adds to the realism, and is a condition that Soldiers would have to deal with," said Maj. William Duvall, OIC of the Expeditionary Training Team.
Bickford has experience from a year spent in Iraq.
"This is the best MOUT site I've been to, very realistic -- the terrain, streets, subway entrances, and there was no one stronghold. That's how it is there, with people shooting from different directions," he said.
Working with the Polish civilians was a new experience for Bickford and other CMTC trainers.
"Over here, you're going to learn some Polish eventually, meantime, we learn to play Pictionary," said Francis Costas, who organized the COBs, as civilians on the battlefield are known.
"It's challenging. The key is to be flexible, it's not something that is time oriented, it's mission oriented. We sit down with our lead characters, with the interpreters, acting as a pregnant woman, a boy who was injured walking in a mine field, a town leader, and once we put the pieces of the puzzle out there, it all works."
"We enhance the Soldiers, so they can make decisions between right and wrong. It's training, so they're supposed to make mistakes."
The MOUT training demonstrates that assaulting the town without regard to the consequences of collateral damage doesn't work. "It's not running around in the woods here," said Costas.
Polish civilians have had the opportunity to observe the care the Army takes in minimizing damage to civilian property, and innocent people.
"The bottom line is that they understand that it's all about saving lives," Costas said.
"We learn from each other," said Duvall. "From the start, we've had a good experience. We hope to build on this, and establish a relationship you can come back to. It's an awesome experience."
(Editor's note: Arthur McQueen is a member of U.S. Army Europe Public Affairs.)
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