Photo By Sgt. William Parsons | Sgt. Roberto Mejia, 41st Company, 4th Engineering Battalion, engages American Soldiers...... read more read more
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FORT MCCOY, WISC. – Military training operations are a fickle thing. Sometimes the simulated opposing force abducts a foreign general, and sometimes their main effort gets wiped out by privates with a gun truck 60 seconds into the exercise.
Whoops.
It is easy to critique from afar, but these plot twists are often necessary for learning. For Soldiers participating in Combat Support Training Exercise (CSTX) 86-22-02, hosted by the 86th Training Division at Fort McCoy Wisconsin, the sting of failure is often where the magic happens.
“We get that these type of things are complicated,” said Staff Sgt. Robert Farrell, the training support liaison for the 86 TD’s Effects and Enablers team.
“We learn it the hard way here through mistakes, so we don’t learn it overseas through dying.”
Due to the realism of these training exercises, a team of troops and civilians are required to work around the clock. If the exercise was a movie set, Farrell and his team are the Army’s equivalent to a special effects crew for the 86 TD.
Just like a movie, CSTX 86-22-02 has scripted events thrown at the participating troops. The 86 TD refers to these troops as a “training audience” and the secret events are called “injects”. The training audience does not know what or when these injects will occur and how they respond will be graded by the observer/controller trainers from the 86 TD.
Learning from mistakes is more important than making them, Farrell emphasized. “Anything we learn is a success.”
There is an entire conflict involving two fictional countries written for the exercise, complete with their own histories, political figures, and third-party factions. Every movie needs a villain, and starring in this role are active duty Soldiers of 41st Company, 4th Engineering Battalion. These are the bad guys of the story, called the opposing force or OPFOR for short.
“It was a great opportunity for OPFOR and active duty individuals getting a chance to practice Soldier skills here,” said Capt. James Shaw, a Chaplain for the 49th Multi-Functional Medical Company. Shaw himself had a background as an active duty cavalry scout and traveled with the OPFOR on some of their missions.
“The Army I first served in didn’t have females in combat roles,” added Shaw. “It’s great to see female integration in the OPFOR recon and assault teams now.”
This particular training inject called for OPFOR to conduct a complex attack by storming an American base and kidnapping a visiting general from the friendly host nation.
“It was a good experience,” said Sgt. Roberto Mejia, an OPFOR squad leader. “I was part of the assault team … we were supposed to be in the middle between recon and the support-by-fire team so we could run in and grab the high value targets and run out.”
Mejia said his teams had been harassing the American troops for several days, but eventually the Soldiers began responding effectively. In the case of his kidnapping mission, the training audience got the one-up on OPFOR.
“They were already ready,” he said. “They set up quick reaction forces and had people patrolling. They finally caught on.”
The OPFOR did not stop without a fight, however.
“There was still supporting fire,” said Shaw. “They were pushing rounds out and at the same time flanking.”
After two decades of counter insurgency operations, U.S. Army training such as CSTX 86-22-02 at Fort McCoy has shifted to focus on maneuver warfare training once more.
| Date Taken: | 08.18.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 09.09.2022 11:08 |
| Story ID: | 427569 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 210 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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