Soldiers on White Sands Missile Range took on insurgents in an immersive training exercise held Sept. 21 through 25 on White Sands Missile Range and Fort Bliss. Soldiers from the 2nd Engineer Battalion spent the week long training exercise in on the various range areas on and around WSMR conducting an immersive free form training exercise, allowing the Soldiers to practice important skills like route clearance and urban operations. The Soldiers also found themselves working through other challenges that they could one day face when deployed including working with indigenous forces and interacting with civilians on the battlefield. The Soldiers spent three days running a typical, but large in scope, training exercise. "We started with basic missions, we wanted to get a feel for running 24 hour operations," said Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Chris Benson. After the Soldiers were used to running continuous operations, the exercised changed. The opposing forces stopped receiving orders from exercise controllers, and both the battalion Soldiers and opposing forces were given the freedom to plan and conduct their own missions. "We\'re giving them guidance and limits, but they are actually executing mission and making their own tactics techniques and procedures," Benson said. This freedom not only allowed for more immersive training, but also encouraged the Soldiers to think out of the box and solve problems on their own. One problem that confronted the Soldiers was when they took detainees. While they had not planned on taking anyone into custody, they did, and as a result had to establish a secure location to keep them. While the Soldiers had certain reasonable limitations and guidelines put on their training to prevent them from disrupting normal operations on main post, these restrictions were incorporated into the training to help the soldier maintain perspective and the feeling of being in a foreign country. The cantonment area was renamed Sheeda Najaf (Arabic for "Snow Sand") on all the Soldiers Maps and was treated as a major urban area. Some areas had to be treated differently then the rest of the range, and those restrictions were incorporated into the exercise scenario. "Sheik Cox is a big dog in the area, so we don't want to disturb him," Benson said speaking of the Cox Ranch located near WSMR's cantonment area. In some areas Arabic-speaking contractors were brought in to play the role of civilians or indigenous forces. This interaction brought a different angle to the exercise that Soldiers would have to deal with. While preparing to eat lunch Sept. 24 members of the 595th Sapper Company found out the difficulties of civilians first hand. Pulling up in front of a training building used as a community center for the exercise, the Soldiers stopped and starting getting out MREs and going over their plans for later in the day, only to be chased off by a mob civilian role players. A large hurdle that the Soldiers had to overcome when working with the role players, and some members of the opposing force was the language barrier. "We speak Arabic only, so they have to rely on the interpreter a lot more," said Walter Ficca a role player team leader with Totatlic Management Inc. Benson said that it was the high level of cooperation from the Range that allowed his unit to run the immersive training which will help prepare the battalion when they next deploy, currently expected to be early next year. "We've been able to leverage a lot of resources and accomplish our training objectives," said Benson, explaining that many different organizations on post such at the Directorate Public Works loaned equipment and expertise to the Battalion to ensure they were able to do things like build a forward operating base. "I don't think we could have done an exercise like this at another installation," Benson said.
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