FORT DEVENS, Mass. (Aug. 14, 2015) -- On his first day of work as the Range Control chief at Fort Devens a decade ago, Keith Jackson climbed up a ladder and into one of the old wooden range towers sprinkled across the South Post complex.
The Soldier inside asked him if the tower was safe. Jackson shifted his feet to quickly check.
"The whole thing starts swaying, and I'm listening to the wood crack," Jackson recalled. "I condemned them all. I condemned every tower on South Post. That's how I introduced myself."
Over the years at Devens, Jackson never stopped listening to Soldiers. He recalled standing in a light mist one day and asking a Soldier how to improve the range that he had just shot at.
"He said, 'You're kidding, right?' I said, 'No, I'm serious,'" Jackson said. "He says, 'You don't get it, do you?'"
The Soldier pointed out that they were talking in the rain because the bleachers were uncovered.
"I just went on this big spree (of covering bleachers) because a private told me," Jackson said. "I like listening to privates."
Ten years later, much has changed at the Fort Devens Range Complex. Jackson kept making improvements long after all the towers were replaced and the bleachers were covered.
"When I came here … the thought process of training was still Vietnam-era/Cold War-era training," Jackson said. "You go to a range, you fire around, you get off the range. That's not how we train today. We are one of the most modern range complexes in the Army."
Jackson, an Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran who retired from the Army as a sergeant first class in 2005, has spent the past decade overseeing the explosive growth of the nearly 5,000-acre Range Complex on South Post. Over that time, the Army Reserve has poured more than $50 million into improvements there, with even more to come.
Fort Devens serves as a training resource for thousands of Army Reserve and National Guard Soldiers from throughout the six New England states and beyond. The Marines, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, and state and local police also use the state-of-the-art complex's 25 ranges, 28 tactical training areas and 29 facilities.
"We train all the branches," Jackson said. "Fort Devens is the only federal training base in all of New England. That puts a lot of responsibilities on us."
The Fort Devens range staff, which emphasizes safety and environmental stewardship, has a combined 100 years of military experience between its members.
"Now that is critical in this job," Jackson said. "You have to look for specialties. We have the knowledge, still. These guys, they get it. Their No. 1 focus is on training the military. That's it."
That staff runs a host of ranges that have been upgraded to electric systems from pneumatic systems that used to freeze for months during harsh New England winters.
"The targets wouldn't actuate at that point," Jackson said. "We've replaced them all. Now they're fully electric. They're awesome ranges."
The Fort Devens ranges can accommodate pistols, rifles, machine guns, hand grenades, grenade launchers and mortars. The complex's tactical training areas can be used for land navigation, orienteering, field training exercises, and air drop. One of its more impressive facilities is an automated live-fire shoot house.
"You won't see this shoot house anywhere else," Jackson said. "There's video cameras in there; everything is recorded. When you finish your training at the end of the day, I will give you a copy of that CD of all the recording that we did so you can go back to home station, put it into your computer and say, 'This is what we did right. This is what we did wrong.' It's a great training tool."
Also found on the complex is what Fort Devens calls the Tactical Training Base. Run by Product Manager Force Sustainment Systems at Natick Soldier Systems Center -- which refers to it as the Base Camp Integration Laboratory -- the base features two 150-man Force Provider camps. One is set up with current technology; the other bristles with new systems being tested. Over the past five years, tens of thousands of warfighters have stayed on the base while training at Fort Devens.
All the improvements to the Fort Devens Range Complex over the years have paid off in impressive usage numbers. Over the past three years, throughput at the complex stands at 335,931. Jackson expects fiscal year 2015 to finish strong.
"I honestly believe we're going to break … 130,000," said Jackson of the FY 2015 throughput. "That tells you that we are training."
And training warfighters -- and listening to privates -- are what Jackson and his team are all about.
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