FORT BENNING, Ga., (Dec. 17, 2014) -- Students of the Infantry Basic Officer Leadership Course and the Armor Basic Officer Leaders Course put their knowledge and skills to the test Dec. 5 at Patriot Military Operations in Urban Terrain Site and the Good Hope Training Area. The courses came together to conduct combined arms fighting on the battlefield.
"It's a pretty big culminating event; it's a part of the leader forge that IBOLC and ABOLC students go through," said Capt. Greg Shoemaker, IBOLC D Company commander.
The exercise is one of the final phases of IBOLC prior to graduation, Shoemaker said. The officers studied for essentially 17 weeks prior to the exercise.
In the training, two separate companies from IBOLC and ABOLC competed against each other, one company acting as defense and the other as offense, Shoemaker said. In addition, the Maneuver Captains Career Course students lead the companies as an opportunity for them to serve as company commanders in a realistic scenario.
"Some of the big things we're trying to get from this is to create the adaptive leader, who understands the available assets and is able to integrate and implement (and who) understands their limitations and capabilities," Shoemaker said.
The lieutenants had access to tanks, an unmanned aerial system called a Raven, dismounted different weapon capabilities and different weapon systems, Shoemaker said. The Raven is used to give the students a full aerial view, but they also used scouts to get their reconnaissance to be able to attack the opposing side.
The companies spent time preparing, going through their troop-leading procedures, issuing operations orders, digging their fighting positions -with help from engineers from Kelley Hill, Shoemaker said - interlocking their sectors of fire and making sure their entire plan was synchronized.
Lt. Shawn Gray, Delta Company, 1st Platoon, 2nd Squad, said he was a quick-reaction force, while the rest of his platoon was covering the flanks for the Armor units.
"In terms of setting up the units, we have seven steps to establishing an engagement area, which is what they utilize to figure out where to place units (and) figure out where kill zones are ... " Gray said. "One thing we're learning real quick is how to work with Armor units; while I'm still more at the squad level, it is kind of easy to tell how Armor and Infantry can work together."
Gray said the big open areas are covered by Armor, noting that Infantry in an open-wide field is not a good thing.
Most students have already served in leadership positions, but Gray said that in this exercise, IBOLC students had another chance by serving as either platoon leader or platoon sergeant.
A senior platoon trainer for IBOLC, Cpt. Whitt Dunning, said Infantry students are seeing the benefit of a combined arms fight with reconnaissance, Infantry and Armor and how they all work together on the three-dimensional battlefield.
"A grid square, one kilometer by one kilometer is a big place for an Infantry platoon," Dunning said. "When you're mounted when you're in a tank, a Bradley, or even a Humvee, the battlefield gets a whole lot bigger.
"(Infantry students) are seeing, for the first time, you have to make plans far out in advance not only in terms of distance but in a limited amount of time."
Students of ABOLC had leadership positions as either scout platoon or tank platoon, said Cpt. Robert Chapman, tactics officer for ABOLC.
As a part of the Armor force, Chapman knows the benefits to having Infantry when in the battlefield.
"In the Army, we're all one team and we all work together. Once they go into the force, if they're reconnaissance, they're going to be in support of other elements, whether it is tanks or Infantry," Chapman said.
The combined arms exercise is not standard, Shoemaker said, but work is being done to try to sync up the BOLC classes in the future so that these exercises can be conducted more often.
Friday and Saturday, were attack days, then Sunday was part of the planning process for Monday when Infantry officers set out on a 16-mile road march to Selby Hill Combined Arms Collective Training Facility. There, the officers carried out a company attack on an urban environment, Shoemaker said.
"I think the course has evolved a lot; these exercises are great," Shoemaker said. "I wish I would have had it when I was going through the course."
Social Sharing