Photo By John Crosby | Staff Sgt. Thuan Ho, Cincinnati, Mortarman and squad leader in Mortars Platoon,...... read more read more
EDINBURGH, Ind. — Ohio National Guard soldiers of 2nd Squadron, 107th Cavalry Regiment headquartered in Hamilton, Ohio, conducted annual training at Camp Atterbury, near Edinburgh, Ind., Aug. 7 through Aug. 17.
These Buckeye soldiers participated in a combined-arms, live-fire squadron sized training exercise, as their annual training culminating event, which took close to two years of preparation. The unit has been to Atterbury almost every month this year, spending drill weekends preparing for this culminating event.
“The whole point of a cavalry squadron is to be the eyes and ears of our brigade,” said Squadron Commander Lt. Col. James Eriksen Jr., Westchester, Ohio. His squadron belongs to the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 28th Infantry Division “Keystone”, headquartered in Pennsylvania. “Our whole job is to jump in front of the brigade and collect intelligence, information and record enemy troop movements.
“This is precisely why we’ve made this live-fire exercise to stress breaking contact. We’re training our soldiers, as scouts, to avoid engagements when we can, so that we can get in somewhere, collect intelligence and send it to higher headquarters.”
His squadron’s first week of annual training began with 20 squadron gun-truck crews equipped with M2 .50-caliber machine guns qualified at the mounted vehicle gunnery range.
During their second week at Atterbury, the cavalry squadron transitioned to the next phase of their annual training; the culminating combined-arms exercise held at the Infantry Squad Battle Course.
The exercise presented a range of challenges for the troops to overcome. They were required to tactically approach their target, conduct surveillance, report to higher, use smoke mortar-fire to break contact, bound successfully back to the starting line, and treat and evacuate a casualty.
“In all we have nine collective tasks spread out through 800 meters,” said Capt. Nick Palmer, Columbus, Ohio, Troop C commander and range officer-in-charge. “We’re trying to maximize our time and space.”
Palmer said he appreciates this type of traditional scout training.
“The value of this range is that we’ve been doing things in small urban environments for so long that we’ve kind of gotten away from operating in a rural environment, and doing our linear doctrinal mission,” said Palmer. “We’ve done area security, everybody’s practiced urban training and everyone’s practiced kicking in the doors. All of that training is fun, it’s sexy; it’s great.
“But I think this exercise is waking a lot of guys up to the fact that when you come to do your job, it’s not always sexy. Being a scout requires a lot of discipline. There’s a lot of crawling, there’s a lot of getting down in the dirt, a lot of slow and deliberate movement. This exercise is allowing us to take that first step to getting back to our traditional job, getting back to doctrine.”
Each team ran the range three times, using the walk, crawl, run training method. The crawl phase was a slow familiarization step without ammunition. The walk phase allowed for the troops to speed up their movements and use blank ammunition. The run phase required 100 percent understanding of the range as they moved at full speed engaging targets with live ammunition.
“This is one of the more high speed ranges we’ve been to in awhile,” said Staff Sgt. Chad Gariety, Russia, Ohio, cavalry scout and team leader in Troop B, 2-107 Cavalry. Gariety acted as squad leader during the exercise. “When you have live rounds going down range it’s always a lot more realistic.”
As each squad ran the exercise, a Raven unmanned aerial system flew overhead recording video of their movements from the sky. Reviewing this footage allowed each squad to thoroughly review their actions to learn their strengths and weaknesses in an in-depth after action review.
“The AARs are great, they let us communicate openly with each other about what we did well and what we need to improve on out there on the range,” said Gariety. “It keeps us all on the same page. We saw what we needed to improve on. At night, back at the barracks area, we would walk through our movements over and over again, step-by-step, until we got it right.”
This commitment to improvement was noticed and echoed by the squadron commander.
“Every time they ran the lane they would come back better than before,” said Eriksen. “It’s really a testament to our NCOs and the young officers.”
| Date Taken: | 08.19.2013 |
| Date Posted: | 08.19.2013 13:40 |
| Story ID: | 112215 |
| Location: | EDINBURGH, INDIANA, US |
| Hometown: | CINCINNATI, OHIO, US |
| Hometown: | EDINBURGH, INDIANA, US |
| Hometown: | FRANKLIN, INDIANA, US |
| Hometown: | HAMILTON, OHIO, US |
| Web Views: | 731 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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