FORT SILL, Okla., July 12, 2018 -- Skies over Fort Sill's Henry Post Army Airfield are humming with helicopters.
This makes the fourth time that a team from 2nd Battalion, 291st Aviation, has come to Fort Sill from Fort Hood, Texas, to serve as observer/controllers for the pre-mobilization training of deploying National Guard and Army Reserve units.
The training audience, as officer in charge Capt. Samantha Huie calls it, is 2nd General Support Aviation Battalion (GSAB), 211th Aviation Regiment headquartered in the Salt Lake City suburb of West Jordan, Utah. Commanded by Lt. Col. Chad Koon, its task force is comprised of some 1,400 Soldiers in 14 states ranging from the East Coast to Hawaii.
About 500 of those Soldiers, roughly 300 of them pilots, are currently on Fort Sill for their premobility training. Two Army National Guard aviation specialists working in the flight operations cell, Spc. Jamiel Ogden of Alabama and Spc. Arin Merrill of Salt Lake City, provided a rundown on the rotary-wing aircraft they brought with them: six CH-47F Chinook helicopters based out of Alabama and Georgia, as well as four UH-60M and two UH-60A/L Black Hawk helicopters and seven HH-60M medical evacuation versions of the Black Hawk, most of them based out of Utah. 2-211th GSAB has six more Chinooks in training at Fort Hood.
The battalions have been here for two weeks and have two more to go.
"Everything that they're doing during our mobilization is actually something that (2-211th GSAB's) command has prepared and planned. We do that so that they have stake in it as well, because we want to make sure we are validating them on what needs to be trained and validated prior to them going overseas," Huie explained.
During its stay, 2-211th GSAB will conduct many night flights so that the chopper pilots can get used to flying with night vision goggles. Lt. Col. Marcus Hay, commander of 2-291st Aviation, said most of the missions they will execute in theater will be at night.
The 2-211th GSAB is expected to deploy to Iraq in mid-August for a nine-month tour. Its premobility training will cover all kinds of exercises to ensure that personnel are certified on the skills needed to deploy. Before leaving Fort Sill, Soldiers will have to pass a culminating training exercise that starts July 15.
Meantime, their evaluators from Fort Hood have a parent brigade -- 166th Aviation Brigade -- that is in the process of being stood up. The brigade will handle the administrative load so that its two subordinate battalions -- 2-291st Aviation and 3rd Battalion, 351st Aviation -- can focus on the mission of providing pre- and post-mobilization training for the reserve component.
Interestingly enough, the 166th came to Fort Sill twice before to do precisely what 2-291st Aviation is doing today. The bulk of the brigade spent the summer of 2008 here training aviation assets for deploying units. In June of that year it assisted the 479th Field Artillery Brigade in training aviation assets of the 34th Infantry Division in air combat, air assault, and other tactics related to aviation.
The 166th Aviation Brigade began the process over again with premobilization training for the Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB), 28th Infantry Division, at Fort Riley, Kan., before returning to Fort Sill in late January 2009 for the CAB's post-mobilization training. It moved to Fort Hood July 15, 2009, and remained there until its inactivation June 24, 2015.
About a year and a half ago, the Army made the decision to reactivate the 166th Aviation Brigade, said its brigade commander, Col. Ronald Ells. The activation ceremony at Fort Hood won't be until Aug. 17 and only 130 of its 218 authorized slots have been filled at this point, but its battalions are already executing the mission.
Ells traveled here July 8-9 to tour the sites where 2-211th GSAB's training will take place. It included a tactical operations center and a hangar at Henry Post Army Airfield where six cockpit simulators are housed inside three trailers. These will be used for over-water training and aviation survival equipment.
Other sites being used include Frisco Ridge for air movements, Rabbit Hill for downed aircraft recovery training, Ketch Lake for possible hoist missions, the Urban Assault Course for a time-sensitive target, and a mock Afghan village for a hasty assault with less than four days of planning time.
There's even a site across the ridgeline north of McKenzie Hill Road that will be used as a degraded visual environment and also for marksmen to practice dual-door gunnery.
An existing Mow-Way facility has been turned into Mow-Way Forward Arming and Refueling Point (FARP) for choppers in need of hot fuel. Some arming and refueling will occur at Rabbit Hill and Frisco Ridge as well.
Mow-Way FARP is also the temporary site of a Mobile Tower System. Huie said this is an expeditionary system that can be driven in with a humvee. It can be set up or taken down in an hour, and it provides some of the capability of an air traffic control tower.
If any helicopters require maintenance support while they're here, they can get help from D Company, 2-291st Aviation. The maintainers include both Army Reservists and Dynacorp civilians based at Fort Hood. Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Hatch is here as the quality assurance representative for Dynacorp, but Huie said he's also her team's test pilot. After a helicopter has been repaired, he's the one who flies it to make sure it was fixed properly.
Representatives of the visiting aviation units offered praise for the favorable treatment Fort Sill has given them. At Fort Hood, they tended to get lost amid the hustle and bustle of 1st Cavalry Division and its four maneuver brigades. Here, they become the focus. And Fort Sill just keeps getting better at working with them as time goes along. Huie, who was here on a similar training mission in 2017, had this to say to her higher-ups:
"I think it's been exponentially greater This has all been relationship-based. I think the team set a good relationship base with the (Network Enterprise Center), (Logistics Readiness Center), and the (Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization, and Security), and we've just expounded upon that since then Whenever we need something, (DPTMS is) always there. (Henry Post Army Airfield Manager) Rob Turner specifically."
The aviators have had support from virtually every organization on post. They get 20 Marines a day to play opposing force rolls or security on medical evacuations. Huie said they've also had Air Defense Artillery and Field Artillery (FA) Basic Officer Leader Course students; Soldiers from the 75th FA Brigade and its 100th Brigade Support Battalion, the 434th FA Brigade; 428th FA Brigade's 2nd Battalion, 2nd FA, and joint terminal attack controllers.
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