FORT McCOY, Wis. -- Training opportunities abound at Fort McCoy for military personnel looking to sharpen the skills needed to accomplish missions or to prepare for deployment.
Terry Hoff, Fort McCoy Range Officer, said Fort McCoy's Home Station Training Lane (HSTL) facilities offer many training opportunities.
Two Home Station Training Lanes, each about eight-kilometers long, replicate an urban environment that includes traffic circles, culverts, overpasses, bridges, divided highways, and more, Hoff said.
"These training lanes will help troops train on counter improvised explosive device (IED) techniques," he said. "We have one of the best-developed counter-IED training areas in the Army."
In addition to the HSTLs, Fort McCoy has seven rural training village simulations and a variety of urban training areas with buildings available for training, Hoff said.
Mobile Urban Training Site-South continuously is being updated and currently has 152 buildings available for urban combat training. Hoff said a co-located search site/exploitation facility has four two-story buildings representing occupied houses. The houses have hidden locations, such as false walls, to provide training scenarios.
A nearby training area currently under construction will add 175 container building facilities to support urban training. Hoff said this site is scheduled to be completed in May and will bring the number of urban environment buildings in this area to 327.
With the expected completion of the Combined Arms Collective Training Facility (CACTF), which is a short distance from the boundary of this training area, by the end of 2012, the installation will have more than 350 buildings for urban training in a single 3.5-kilometer stretch.
"These facilities will help us support training of any troop strength from large exercises to individual units," Hoff said. "We'll be in select company with these facilities. About the only other place that may have this is the National Training Center (in California)."
General construction work on the CACTF is scheduled to be completed by the end of this month.
Hoff said the contract allows nine to 12 months after construction is finished to complete the audio/video after-action review instrumentation components, including advanced targetry and video imaging.
The facility is scheduled to be ready for training in late 2012 or early 2013, he said.
The updated training areas will help Fort McCoy build on its motto of being a Total Force Training Center because the installation supports the training and mobilization of reserve-and active-component military personnel from all branches of America's armed forces, he said.
If units seeking military training opportunities consider Fort McCoy, they soon will learn why the installation has become the training site of choice for satisfying both individual and collective training requirements, he said.
Fort McCoy also has a wide array of ranges/training facilities to support almost any training that can be done by Army units, Hoff said. These include individual and crew-served weapons firing and qualification, such as rifles, pistols, machine guns, artillery firing and many medical scenarios, including a litter obstacle course.
Fort McCoy also has conditioning/confidence courses, rappelling towers, Drop Zones, 46,000 acres of maneuver area, etc., to support training, he said. For more information about training opportunities at Fort McCoy, call Range Scheduling at 608-388-3721/4142.
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