Soldiers from 24th Ordnance Company, 87th Division Sustainment Support Battalion, 3rd Division Sustainment Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, conduct demilitarized training with quality assurance ammunition specialists from Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield on Fort Stewart, Georgia, September 9.
The purpose is to train the magazine platoon on the requirements to identify, handle and store ammunition allowing them to safely support the 3rd Infantry Division units during training.
“Demilitarization is one of the tasks that my 89B {ammunition specialists} and my 89A {ammunition stock control and accounting specialist} need to be proficient at in order to accomplish their war time and peace time missions,” said Capt. Joshua Moore the commander of 24th OD.
To prepare their troops for the training Moore reached out to ammunition specialist subject matter experts.
“For the demilitarization training we checked out the training and evaluation outline as well as coordinated with the quality assurance specialist for ammunition surveillance {QASAS} at the ASP for emergency destruction,” said Moore.
The QASAS assigned to Fort Stewart then participated by conducting classes to train Soldiers.
“QASAS oversee anything ammunition related,” said Kenneth Harwell, the lead QASAS at the Fort Stewart, Georgia, ASP. “I received a call that some of the newer troops needed guidance on identifying ammo so, I put together a presentation to give them the basics.”
The presentation consisted of basic knowledge such as color coding, but the biggest take back from the presentation was learning how to properly identify ammo.
“The most critical thing during the training was learning how to identify ammo by lots of numbers,” said Harwell. “It’s very specific to us so we can identify ammo in malfunctions so that we can make sure the troops don’t get bad ammo.”
The QASAS work with the Soldiers in hopes that they learn from the training and are able to apply what they’ve learned in real-life scenarios.
“I’m glad I can work with 24th OD to help them and try to get them to work out of ASP,” said Harwell. “Hopefully when the Soldiers see a round loose on the ground they can identify what it is.”
The training went more in-depth than the training the Soldiers received from Advanced Initial Entry Training.
“This differs from advanced initial entry training because it generalizes more on the color use. I learned more regulations towards ammunition,” said Pfc. Alejandro Costas an ammunition specialist assigned to 24th OD.
Usually, demilitarization training needs to be accomplished annually, but 24th OD goes above the call of duty by training their Soldiers more than what is required.
“We try to knock it out bi-annually just so that they maintain proficiency in demilitarization of ammunition,” said Moore.
Leading up to the event, senior leaders are continuing to take part in instructing and mentoring their Soldiers to prepare them for their event.
“We’re coordinating with the 38th Ordnance Company,” said Moore. “They’re going to come and teach some classes on proper and safe handling of demolition and we’ll have senior leaders at their demolition range a week prior to ours and they’ll have senior leaders at ours.”
The training leads to an upcoming culminating event where the Soldiers will put to use the skills they learned during the training.
“This is part of our training progression that’s going to culminate with our live fire demolition range on Nov. 8-9,” said Moore. “All Soldiers will have the opportunity to prepare their own demolition charges to simulate the emergency destruction and demilitarization of war time stocks in the event that ammunition is deemed to not be in use and needs to be removed from the military surplus or if there is fear of the ASP {ammunition supply point} is being overrun during the war time operation.”
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