Photo By Scott Sturkol | Soldiers with the 153rd Engineer Battalion and 211th Engineer Company participate in a...... read more read more
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The stage was set at dawn July 17 at Warrens Drop Zone on Fort McCoy’s North Post. The 153rd Engineer Battalion Commander, Lt. Col. Heath Abraham, even said, “it looks like a good morning for a war.”
That morning, Soldiers with the 153rd and units supporting the 153rd were about to hold a breach-of-a-complex-obstacle training event. The event took several days to prepare and plan and was the culminating training event for the battalion from the South Dakota Army National Guard that traveled all the way to Fort McCoy to hold their 2023 annual training.
In this training event were M113 Armored Personnel Carriers (APC), M60 Armored Vehicle Launch Bridge vehicles, M88 Recovery Vehicles, Mine Clearing Line Charge , Humvees, and more.
On one side of the drop zone, select unit Soldiers served as opposing forces. On the other side, the rest of the unit’s forces used their training and expertise to navigate the drop zone’s terrain, the obstacles, the smoke and haziness of the morning, and they had to fight through to meet training objectives in this large battalion-wide training event.
“The operation we had here this morning was a maneuver augmentation company, specifically the 211th Engineer Company, conducting a combined obstacle breach,” Abraham said. “We had one platoon place in a complex obstacle consisting of a triple strand, a mine field, and a 12-row, anti-tank barrier.
“Our breach team then came in with AVLBs and 113s and their breach teams of combat engineers,” Abraham said. “They breached the 12-row, breached the triple-strand, and then breached a natural obstacle. … Once the breaches were complete, the combat engineers were able to mark lanes to safely.”
The training event was held just as the sun was rising, which added to the training effect and put direct sunlight right into the eyes of the combat engineers as they approached the breach points.
Abraham’s unit was able to have smoke-generating simulators to use from Fort McCoy’s Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security to enhance the training experience.
“Fort McCoy has been incredibly easy to work with,” Abraham said. “(Especially) with the variety of simulation centers and ranges. By far one of the best that we’ve got within a day’s drive of South Dakota.”
Throughout the event, several M60 AVLBs with their 60-foot bridge spans were used. The AVLB is one of the Army’s more unique vehicles in use by combat engineers. According to Army specifications and as shown online, “it’s an armored vehicle based on the M60 Patton main battle tank’s hull and used for the launching and retrieval of a 60-foot scissors-type bridge.”
The M113 APCs and M88s also were crucial in the training. History shows the M113 has been around since the 1960s and has been a staple piece of armor equipment in engineer units for decades.
On Wikipedia for the M113 it states, “In the U.S. Army, the M113 series have long been replaced as front-line combat vehicles by the M2 and M3 Bradleys, but large numbers are still used in support roles such as armored ambulance, mortar carrier, engineer vehicle, and command vehicle. The U.S. Army’s heavy brigade combat teams are equipped with approximately 6,000 M113s and 4,000 Bradleys.”
Overall, the 153rd and associated units held training at Fort McCoy from July 8-19.
Fort McCoy was established in 1909 and its motto is to be the “Total Force Training Center.” Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin.
The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services nearly every year since 1984.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on the Defense Visual Information Distribution System at https://www.dvidshub.net/fmpao, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” and on Twitter by searching “usagmccoy.”
Also try downloading the Digital Garrison app to your smartphone and set “Fort McCoy” or another installation as your preferred base.
| Date Taken: | 07.20.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 07.20.2023 18:25 |
| Story ID: | 449684 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 819 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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