Soldiers of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, recently embarked on their two-week training cycle in the field at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California.
This time in "the box" is testing the Soldiers and honing their skills in preparation for future missions, according to information from the brigade.
"This is a great opportunity to exercise the brigade's ability to deploy," Col. Timothy Hayden, 1st ABCT commander, said before departing Kansas. "It is one more step toward readiness. It allows the brigade to hone and build confidence into our Soldiers and leaders that they are fully trained and equipped, that they can execute against any threat."
Before men and women of the "Devil" brigade left Fort Riley for the California desert in July, they engaged in a lengthy training process to prepare for the month long rotation. Hayden said the brigade was absolutely ready for NTC.
"The brigade has met all the requirements of the gated training strategy, great team built, full of quality leaders and incredible Soldiers," Hayden said. "We will enter the National Training Center at a high level of proficiency and leave NTC at an even higher level of proficiency."
The first key to the brigade's success is attitude -- a good attitude about learning, getting better every day and learning from the observer-controller-trainers at NTC, Hayden went on to say.
"They are on our team and they are here to help us see ourselves," he added.
The core competences of a brigade combat team -- the ability to set a good sustainment base through the support battalion, mastering and winning the reconnaissance fight, utilizing organic assets and enablers and executing good combined arms maneuver utilizing fires -- will ensure the brigade's success at NTC, Hayden said.
"And we have great Soldiers and great leaders, and a great support base back at Fort Riley and community that allow us to focus on the task at hand," he added.
Part of that support base back at Fort Riley included other units, like the 1st Infantry Division Artillery, which helped prepare 1st ABCT Soldiers and leaders for NTC. Col. Thomas Bolen, DIVARTY commander, hosted a leader professional development session in July for field artillery Soldiers, complete with an overview of the training center's layout and terrain.
It was a valuable training session, said Lt. Col. Richard J. Ikena Jr., 1st Battalion, 5th Field Artillery Regiment, 1st ABCT. It "facilitated creating shared understanding of vital artillery tasks, the terrain we will be operating on and tactics, technics, procedures for the team going into operations at the National Training Center," he said.
Attending that LPD was Staff Sgt. Kyle Jefferson, a Howitzer section chief in the battalion's Battery A. This is his second rotation to NTC. The first was in 2006.
The event was helpful for Jefferson because this is his first time attending as a section chief, and he got a bigger picture of what to expect and insight into what to look for. It helped leaders like him, he added.
Jefferson worked on the basics and crew drills with his Soldiers to prepare them for NTC. That included practicing medevacs, learning how to spot roadside bombs and anything he could think of he's experienced in his 11 years of serving as a field artilleryman.
That time is important because it is the time to learn, Jefferson said.
"When you're there," he said of deployments and high-pressure training center rotations, "that's not the time. ... So it's always best to take the time you get. … Take advantage of your time so that way when you're out in there or out in the game or anything, it's not too late."
The NTC rotation is important so Soldiers and leaders can learn what they need to work on after returning to their home stations.
"I'd rather do the simulation than it not be a simulation," he said. "So it's kind of a big deal so that way we're well prepared to go into the fight and we can fix what we weren't focusing on."
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