FORT McCOY, Wis. -- Training areas at Fort McCoy continue to evolve to include a mixture of areas including urban, rural and woodland environments, said Terry Hoff.

Hoff, Range officer for Fort McCoy’s Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security, said the new mix more accurately portrays what Soldiers will face in the real world, including deployments and contingency operations.

“We are continuing to develop training areas that best support what our customers request,” Hoff said. “We still can offer them the forest/woods setting, if that’s what they need.”

The installation now has seven rural training villages, including agricultural villages. Hoff said the areas replicate what they may see in many areas of the world.

Many of the buildings/structures included in the training areas are container-type facilities, built/provided by Allied Container Systems and Military Wraps.

The buildings can be configured in many different ways to provide buildings troops would most likely encounter.

Some of the rural areas also have or will have crops planted nearby, he said.

The more urbanized areas, including Mobile Urban Training Site (MUTS)-North, will include new facilities, such as the container-type facilities replicating structures, such as market places and prisons, he said.

The facilities also include realistic facades, such as Military Wrap or Architectural Simulated Finish.

MUTS-South provides other training opportunities, with a larger urban terrain footprint, he said. MUTS-South now has 138 container-designed buildings to support urban training.

Many of the buildings are multi-story/multi-container buildings.

MUTS-South will allow units to train up to a battalion task force, as well as smaller-scale training, including convoy training, he said. “We can use the area to move units through an urban environment.”

The new structures at MUTS-South meet National Training Center standards and include hiding areas that Soldiers must account for during the training, replicating the real-world conditions often encountered during deployment, he said.

Another new urban training addition is the Search/Site Exploitation Facility.

“The four buildings at the Search/Site Exploitation facility will allow units to train to conduct search training in a simulated inhabited building,” Hoff said. “These multi-story buildings have been constructed with hidden compartments.”

Hoff said DPTMS continues to modify and upgrade the training areas to meet the needs of the units and Soldiers that come to Fort McCoy for training. All of the training facilities are available for training use by Soldiers at Fort McCoy for two days or longer, he said.

A project to provide power to the ranges in the North Impact Area that don’t have electricity is under way, and future projects will upgrade/update the targetry on Ranges 18 and 101.

For more information about training areas at Fort McCoy or to schedule facilities, call Range Scheduling at 608-388-3721.