Training Facilities

FINDING THE SPACE TO DO LIVE FIRE THESE DAYS ISN’T EASY BUT IT IS NECESSARY.

The White House budget request for fiscal 2007 appropriations for USSOCOM places a big emphasis on training facilities. The establishment of U.S. Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC) drives some of this military construction.

MARSOC Detachment One would utilize temporary facilities for command and control as well as training until the establishment of permanent operations facilities at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and headquarters facilities at Camp Lejeune, N.C., according to fiscal year 2007 Military Construction Project Data from the Department of Defense.

“The MARSOC has unique training and operational requirements that are exclusive of Marine Corps requirements,” the data document states. “The MARSOC will require isolated facilities for training and mission preparation. Additionally, the detachment will have unique connectivity requirements. Third echelon maintenance will be required for many non-USMC system end items.”

The Defense Department must step up its efforts to secure training facilities, particularly as the lack of facilities that replicate specific environments degrades mission readiness, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), titled “Military Training: Funding Requests for Joint Urban Operations Training and Facilities Should Be Based on Sound Strategy and Requirements,” released in December 2005.

“Based on feedback from ongoing operations, DoD has made several adjustments, including constructing urban structures, using civilian role players, and adding training on techniques to counter emerging enemy tactics. People the GAO interviewed cited the need for more live-fire capability, larger numbers of role players, information gathering and cultural awareness training, and training with newly fielded equipment,” the report concluded.

The report actually focused on the need for joint operations and how much more prepared military services could be if they were to train jointly.

“Despite DoD’s increasing emphasis on the importance of training for joint urban operations before deployment, few opportunities currently exist for training that places troops from different services on the ground working under a joint headquarters,” the report said. “Joint and service doctrine both require forces to be prepared to operate jointly across the full range of military operations. Various factors account for the lack of joint training opportunities, such as the services’ focus on service-specific skills, the lack of an overall strategy requiring joint urban operations training, specific training requirements, and a formal mechanism to schedule joint training at service facilities.”

Meanwhile, defense contractors specializing in training facilities construction, management and maintenance have foreseen these training needs and have stepped up to provide the training opportunities required for special operations forces whenever the military requests assistance.

TRAINING CROSSROADS

Several defense contractors, such as Blackwater USA of Moyock, N.C., have constructed impressive training facilities and compounds tailor-made to SOF needs. Chris Taylor, Blackwater vice president for strategic initiatives, told Special Operations Technology that Blackwater’s 7,500 acres of training grounds in Camden County, N.C., can fulfill critical requirements for special operators.

“They are looking for one-stop shopping,” Taylor explained. “They don’t want to have to go to a small range one day and then go to a driving track from another company down the road another day and then go to another place that’s got a shoot house or a MOUT [military operations on urbanized terrain] facility at another place.”

More than a three hours’ drive from Fort Bragg, the Blackwater training facilities offer a 1,200-yard known distance range, a threemile tactical driving track, runways for transporting people and supplies, live-fire shoot houses, and the MOUT facility for urban operations training.

With these resources at hand, military customers can pick and choose elements of training to fit their mission needs, Taylor noted. “For special operators, it is always about customized training. They know the environment in which they are getting ready to deploy. They know what their mission set is. So they want the flexibility to design their own custom training program,” he said.

Sometimes, warfighters simply want to lease facilities and conduct weapons training, personal security detail training, tactical driver training and other specific elements. But because they can live on the training grounds for extended periods, military trainees can replicate actual mission scenarios. Blackwater supplies roleplayers or anything else required to make a training session authentic.

That authenticity springs partly from the expertise Blackwater employees gain as advisors to military units as they often deploy directly into areas where troops are fighting. Thus, they have the opportunity to experience many missions firsthand and incorporate their insights into the training facilities.

“One of the greatest things about the Blackwater training center is it is the crossroads of training between local, state and federal law enforcement, big military, special operations forces and friendly foreign nations,” Taylor commented. “That almost informal exchange of tactics, techniques and procedures—‘how do you do this? What do you think about that?’ That goes on here every day.

“And then our own lessons learned from having our own people deployed all over the place all around the world, taking those lessons learned and creating a best practices program so we can inject them into our training, keeps us on the cutting edge. It allows people to get the training they need to survive in today’s environments,” he added.

And Blackwater can offer training with very short notice if required. Using an asset-scheduling program, the company trains an average of 700 personnel a day to meet a host of specific needs.

“We are pretty much on top of what most people need, so those assets are always made available. It’s not about ramping up. If you tell me you want to come here in two weeks and you want this, that and the other, and it’s available, then it’s yours,” Taylor said. “If you need to show up tomorrow for four days of range time because you have been called out to deploy rather quickly, then it’s yours if we have it. It’s that easy.”

COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS

Another of the nation’s most expansive training grounds for SOF operators sprawls throughout the Florida panhandle. The Northwest Florida Training Center for Homeland Defense, established, managed, and marketed by L-3 Communications, offers a variety of environments where troops can participate in live-fire training and assault courses and conduct operations in riverine and coastal environments, MOUT facilities and even airports.  Kim Brown, operations manager of the Intelligence and Special Operations Division of L-3 Communications Government Services, told SOTECH that the vast training grounds and varied landscapes afford excellent opportunities for joint services training. “One of the main concepts of the training facilities that we have tried to arrange is to provide a full spectrum of joint special operations training. We provide an unrestricted and realistic combat scenario area, where they can train to realistic threat targets in a realistic environment,” Brown said.

The highly customized offerings cover the gamut of special operations training including high-definition target training, protection training for VIPs and convoy training as well as others. Randal Mains, quality assurance director at the Intelligence and Special Operations Division, told SOTECH that the breadth of training offered at the training center is made possible by the support of the local communities in nine Florida counties as well as the state government.

“Whatever training scenarios warfighters need, we do what we can to facilitate it. Working with the cooperation of the state and local governments around here, we have not run across many things that we have had to say no to. We can figure out somewhere around here to do whatever task they want to do,” Mains remarked.

Logan Barbee, a University of Florida Extension director who recently retired from special operations civil affairs, works closely with L-3 on the training offerings at the center. He stressed that local cooperation provides a great number of opportunities not available in many other places.

“We went to all of the county commissioners, state government and federal government. We went to the school boards and all of the different organizations in nine counties. We went to the governor. Based on what L-3 wanted to do in north Florida, we received endorsements from 80 percent of the constituents in north Florida in the nine counties surrounding the rivers. The rural areas and the towns, from the school boards to the county commissioners, endorsed the concept,” Barbee elaborated.

In addition to real villages and towns and buildings for training, troops can take advantage of half a million acres of national forest nearby.

Barbee pointed out that the University of Florida offers a Community Rural Development Program that can augment regular training—something particularly useful for civil affairs personnel. The program dates back to the 1930s and has grown into a platform where warfighters can learn about managing infrastructure and providing services.

“It’s very successful. We have converted it into some training programs where we actually train our soldiers to become more like a county agent, where they do community and rural development with a firearm,” Barbee said. “I grew up in the civil affairs program without any training. Most of my soldiers had little or no training in community development. So we were looking for training opportunities. This provided all sorts of scenarios from digging wells, drilling wells and hands-on training. They didn’t have any training. They had to learn to do it themselves.”

Barbee estimated that about 20 percent of the special operations community comes into these situations with the hands-on skills required to tackle them.

“They may be ready to be soldiers, but to actually win the hearts and minds and to take advantage of opportunities to represent America in those foreign countries really takes a lot of training,” he commented.

MOBILE SOLUTIONS

Of course, not everyone who requires training can make it to the continental United States to receive instruction or travel to fixed sites. Indeed, once deployed, it may be difficult to send special operators anywhere to receive extended training.

Fortunately, mobile solutions can provide training where required exist to meet those needs. Seattle-based Advanced Interactive Systems (AIS) manufactures modular live-fire ranges with integrated simulators that can deploy wherever the warfighters may be, Rick Leavitt, an AIS program manager, told SOTECH.
 
“You could go into shoot or no-shoot or any sort of tactical scenario,” Leavitt explained. “It is projected onto a self-healing screen in a modular range. Then, using live fire, you can do training. You could do building clearing. You could work checkpoints. You could do sniper shooting. You could do close quarter stuff where you have to make a decision on whether or not you have a good guy or a bad guy and whether or not you are going to take a shot or not.”

The self-healing screen permits trainees to shoot directly into images. When shot, the simulated bad guy on the screen falls accordingly. The range can then score trainees on how well they do, factoring in how many shots a trainee fired, how many shots the bad guy fired, and other elements of the simulated engagement. Instructors can conduct after-action reviews to examine the decisions made by military shooters.

“You also have a video image of the shooter, so you can tell whether he was taking proper cover and concealment, whether he was in his proper shooting position, everything he was doing,” Leavitt said. “In addition, if you replay everything on a moment-bymoment basis, almost on frame-by-frame, you can tell him, ‘okay, what did you see here? Why did you shoot this person? Here is the image. Why did you shoot this person or that person? Why did you make this decision?’”

AIS sells the commercial ranges directly on a General Services Administration schedule. At least one has been deployed to a forward area at present, and warfighters can load the modules onto planes and send them wherever they need to go. ♦

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