MANILA TRAINING CENTER, Iraq " Squads of 1st Kurdish Regional Guard Brigade soldiers conducted ambush and movement training at Manila Training Center in Kirkuk province, Iraq, June 23.
Halfway through a four-week training cycle, U.S. Division " North Soldiers of 1st Advise and Assist Task Force, 1st Infantry Division, evaluated the performance of the students and the Iraqi instructors leading the tactical and technical classes.
Each training lane at MTC requires soldiers to build on skills from previous classes, progressing from individual and buddy team movements to platoon and company-level tactics.
“We usually start with the classroom stuff,” said Staff Sgt. David Benoit, Battery A, 1st Battalion, 5th Field Artillery Regiment, 1st AATF. “We continue to build on our teaching so that they can get to the point where they are able to go out and execute the more complex movements and employ the more complex concepts.”
Having already completed dry fire and live fire training on how to move on an enemy objective in buddy team and fire team elements, the KRGB trainees progressed to higher level movements.
“The training today was squad movement and react to contact and ambush,” said 1st Sgt. Jared Muse, senior enlisted leader of Battery A. “This training will help these guys out tremendously; it will teach them how to tactically move as a squad and either egress … from a larger enemy force, or go in for the kill in the event that they get enemy contact.”
Soldiers of Battery A attend each training event to provide overwatch and assistance as requested, but leave actual teaching duties and leading of the Kurdish troops to Iraqi instructors.
“The fact that the Manila Training Center cadre are the ones that are facilitating and conducting all of the training here is great for us,” said Muse. “It gives us the leeway that we need to continue to our role as advisors while these guys continue to sustain their own training.”
Muse said the progression of the training helps fulfill the goal of U.S. forces as Operation New Dawn continues.
“This really is very close to the end-state that we want to see " the local security forces sustaining their own training and conducting their own missions without needing us at all,” he said.
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