FORT STEWART, Ga. -- The 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, an associated unit of the 3rd Infantry Division, collaborated with 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment Task Force from Fort Benning, Georgia, to conduct a combined arms maneuver live fire exercise June 13, at Fort Stewart, Georgia.
Approximately 150 Soldiers participated in the exercise as part of the eXportable Combat Training Capability rotation 17-04 which serves as the culminating event for the training cycle, to build individual Soldier confidence in battalion and brigade teams, said Col. Matt Smith, 48IBCT commander.
"The value of this level of training -- company level -- is that the leaders at levels of the company, the battalion and the brigade, as well as the Soldiers -- from the junior most riflemen -- begin to see the integration of assets within the brigade that are there to support them," Smith said.
The exercise included a breach by sapper engineers, indirect fire from the supporting artillery battery, attack aviation from the supporting aviation brigade and organic integration of the weapons company.
"When the individual rifleman or squad starts to see that all of that is there to support them, it builds confidence," Smith said.
Weapons used were the M4 Carbine, M249 automatic rifles, M240 Machine Gun weapons, Bangalore torpedoes, M119 Howitzers, Carl Gustaf anti-tank rockets and live M136 AT4 rounds.
"A lot of companies don't get the opportunity to do a live-fire, especially to the level [of this training] with all the different attached assets," said Maj. Matt Greenwood, operations officer for TF 1-28.
Soldiers maneuvered through the woodline to approach three objectives as part of the exercise, Greenwood said.
The first objective included pop-up targets. The second was a few hundred meters farther and included a three-bunker complex the Soldiers cleared before reorganizing and moving to the third objective, where they encountered a five-bunker complex with a c-wire defensive perimeter. The Soldiers took support-by-fire positions and launched smoke grenades at each engagement.
"The level of seriousness and the attention to detail increases when you are shooting live rounds," Greenwood said.
The exercise gave the company commanders the ability to coordinate and work with the engineers and the artillery battery, said Greenwood.
"It gives them great value to work with those external units," Greenwood said.
Lt. Col. David Conner, TF 1-28 commander, said the exercise served to instill preparedness and readiness. Capt. Eric Catalanotti, B Company Commander, TF 1-28 said that the training is all about repetition and preparing the soldiers for what they will experience when they deploy.
"The exercise serves to validate the company as fully trained, fully ready for whatever the Army needs of us," Conner said.
Social Sharing