Photo By Maj. Scott Kuhn | YAVORIV, Ukraine--A U.S. Soldier from 6th Squadron, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Infantry...... read more read more
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YAVORIV,Ukraine-Many U.S. Soldiers have been to or will someday attend a combat training center such as the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California or the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Soon, with the help of the U.S. Army and partner nations, Ukrainian Soldiers will attend their own combat training center at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center here.
Over the past year, the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine, along with training units from 3rd Infantry Division and multinational partners, have directly trained Ukrainian battalions. The Soldiers of JMTG-U, along with the Ukrainians, have established range operations and improved infrastructure at the IPSC. The best ranges and improved structures mean little to a CTC, though, without the instructors who conduct the training, Observer Controller-Trainers who certify the units, top tier opposition forces, and a CTC staff who run daily operations and develop realistic scenarios.
Building these teams falls under the watchful eye of Maj. Warren Litherland, of the 49th Military Police Brigade from the California National Guard and Lt. Col. Pavlo Rozhko, the Combat Training Center commandant. Together they ensure that their teams stay focused on training and building upon the four lines of efforts: Instructor/OC-Ts, Simulations, OPFOR and the CTC staff.
Litherland and his team of five arrived to the IPSC in February of this year. They fell in on a process already in place but quickly realized that there needed to be improvements to building the necessary cadre for the CTC.
“When we first arrived in February, there wasn’t really any specific training going on at the time for the instructors,” Litherland said. “The model we fell in on at that time was the instructors would go through the training along with the rotational training unit—they kind of learned by osmosis.”
In April, 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, the training battalion at that time, determined that the way instructors were being trained wasn’t working. In order to solve this problem, the leadership from 3-15 Inf. Bn. came up with the instructor university program.
The program takes the instructors through a crawl-walk-run process of training. Each new instructor first learns, to standard, the military task that is to be trained. Once they have the foundational knowledge, the trainees then receive instruction on how to properly train others on that task. Finally, in order to become certified, they have to effectively teach the task to others.
“We are putting them through the same formal, rigorous academic training that we (U.S. Soldiers) would have to go through before becoming instructors or OC-Ts (Observer, Controller-Trainer),” Litherland said.
Once a formal program of instruction was in place the next focus was to get the number of personnel needed to properly conduct a fully-operational CTC. This was no small feat for the CTC team.
According to Rozhko there has been a huge shift in priority and commitment by Ukrainian leadership to the development of the CTC. “Our relations are great,” he said. “We appreciate the help our U.S. friends have given with the manning process. We are receiving the people and the training we need.”
The proof is in the recent uptick in personnel over the past few months. The CTC has gone from 23 opposition forces to 101, while the simulations team is fully staffed. There are currently 103 instructors and OC-Ts nearly meeting the stated goal of 105 total. But the biggest step has been building a staff to run the CTC.
“There was no battalion staff until about a month and a half ago. Now there are 14 personnel including an S3 and S4 section,” Litherland said. “They all have experience in the ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone) and within their individual staff sections, but they have never worked together. So we have them in an MDMP (Military Decision Making Process) MTT to kind of learn how to plan together as a team.”
The CTC continues to take big steps toward meeting its end state, said Rozhko. “Our OPFOR has grown from only one platoon with small arms to a company-sized element with almost 50% of the required armored vehicles.”
The most recent rotation also saw the CTC mark another milestone. For the first time, instructors taught all six modules of individual skills to an entire company. The plan is to have them certified in collective training and teach two companies all the way through platoon live-fires during the next rotation.
The next steps in the process are to progress the four lines of effort so that by the end of the year they will all start working together as a group. The CTC team’s goal during Phase III, which begins in 2017, is for instructors and OC-Ts to start doing more focused training and specialization. So, for instance, there will be instructors who specifically focus only on heavy weapons or only on the combat lifesaver course.
Rozhko said that although next year they will continue to train battalion-sized units, they project that by 2018 the CTC will begin training brigades.
Ultimately, the goal is for the CTC to be fully functional by October 2018. This includes personnel and staff to operate the CTC, a range operations section to de-conflict and manage ranges at the IPSC, and a sustainable infrastructure that can fully support rotational and garrison units training here.
| Date Taken: | 09.14.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 09.14.2016 02:55 |
| Story ID: | 209510 |
| Location: | YAVORIV, UA |
| Web Views: | 276 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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