Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Jonathan Pietrantoni | New York Army National Guard Pfc. Rafael Caballero, assigned to the 101st Signal...... read more read more
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CAMP SMITH TRAINING SITE, N.Y. – Forty-six 101st Expeditionary Signal Battalion Soldiers spent October 24 to November 7 ensuring their communications gear will keep Army command posts talking to each other when they deploy to the Middle East in 2023.
The Yonkers-based New York Army National Guard signal battalion is slated to mobilize 344 Soldiers to deploy to Kuwait in support of the Army’s Task Force Spartan Shield in August of 2023.
But requirements for training, and for the mission itself, require that the satellite communications equipment and other components of the Warrior Information Network-Tactical system the battalion operates are working properly, according to Lt. Col. Paul Mulligan, the battalion’s commander.
The 46 Soldiers who volunteered for the additional annual training mission spent two weeks identifying component and equipment shortages, updating software systems, making sure the equipment is configured properly, ordering needed parts and submitting work orders for items they could not fix themselves, Mulligan explained.
“This event was crucial in identifying equipment issues so we can request resources to fix them,” Mulligan said.
In all, the Soldiers inventoried and provided maintenance for 126 pieces of equipment, including the communications systems, vehicles and generators, he said.
The Warrior Information Network-Tactical system, called WIN-
T for short, is the Army communication system of transmitters, receivers, routers, switches, modems and cables that allows Army units to securely transmit voice, data, text, video, and graphic data using the military’s version of the internet.
The 101st can deploy 30 teams and equipment to link command posts from the battalion up to the theater level together, Mulligan said.
Along with making sure the equipment is working, the two-week annual training also gave Soldiers the chance to learn more about the equipment, said 1st Lt. Manuel Baltazar from the battalion operations staff.
Baltazar, a former enlisted Soldier who is looking forward to deploying as the battalion plans officer, said Soldiers are learning about equipment they didn’t normally work with.
“This training is crucial to increasing our Soldiers’ readiness as operators for their equipment,” Baltazar said.
“They’re doing cross training on equipment they have never operated before, so it’s helping really increase the unit’s knowledge overall,” he added.
Army Spc. Domingo Perez, who is a New York City police officer in civilian life, said he appreciated the chance to learn more about the battalion’s systems while troubleshooting them.
Perez, a multi-channel transmission systems operator and maintainer from Brooklyn, said he was learning a lot about the Phoenix satellite terminals used to communicate over vast areas by digging into the technical manual, or TM.
“The TM is your best friend,” Perez said. “Go into it and learn the Phoenix, learn how to trouble shoot it. It is very productive.”
The extended opportunity to work on vehicles was a great benefit from the limitations of a weekend drill, said Pfc. Janaiya Alexander, a wheeled vehicle mechanic in the battalion’s Alpha Company.
Alexander said she enjoyed having enough time to really learn about the battalion’s vehicles.
It’s great to have more than a weekend to work on the trucks and Humvees, Alexander said. She has been learning how to do all the services on the Light Medium Tactical Vehicle trucks, the battalion operates.
“I have been enjoying doing all the hands-on stuff,” Alexander said.
The next step for his Soldiers will be to install the parts that were identified and ordered, Mulligan said.
That gear will be used for the battalion’s pre-mobilization training and then packaged and shipped to Kuwait, Mulligan said.
“I am very proud of the hard work and effort that the Soldiers, NCOs and officers of the battalion put in,” Mulligan said.
“This was a truly massive undertaking to make sure issues were identified, fixed, or reported so our equipment and our teams are ready for deployment,” Mulligan added.
| Date Taken: | 11.07.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 11.14.2022 14:08 |
| Story ID: | 433237 |
| Location: | CAMP SMITH, NEW YORK, US |
| Web Views: | 185 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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