Photo By Claudia Neve | Students and staff with the Unit Movement Officer Deployment Planning Course conduct...... read more read more
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Twenty students in the Unit Movement Officer Deployment Planning Course learned about all aspects of transporting military equipment, vehicles, goods, and more in October during 10 days of training, said Chief Warrant Officer 1 Eric Frank, a course instructor.
The course, taught by the 426th Regional Training Institute/Wisconsin Military Academy of the Wisconsin National Guard, a Fort McCoy tenant organization, provides 80 hours overall of training.
“Our overall mission is that we train selected noncommissioned officers, officers, and warrant officers,” said course instructor Staff Sgt. Alexander Kilbane with the 426th in a previous news article about the course. “It doesn’t matter if they are active duty, National Guard, or Reserve. We teach them how to move or transport any of their unit’s organic equipment, whether that’s by boat, by plane, by train, or by trucks to anywhere in the world.
Kilbane said once students are done with the class, they are certified to conduct training or movement-related operations.
The teaching of the course also goes regularly with any time a unit has a part in a rail movement at Fort McCoy, which in recent years there has been many. Kilbane’s team has supported teaching Army transportation companies, engineer companies, and more. Even during this course, the course instructors helped set up rail training for 35 Soldiers with the Wisconsin National Guard for a future rail movement.
To complete their course training, Kilbane said they work regularly with the Fort McCoy Logistics Readiness Center (LRC) team.
“We coordinate with the LRC through their unit movements team every single month — multiple times a month,” Kilbane also said in a previous article. “We also go into their building and go beyond rail and (complete) pallet mock-ups.”
Kilbane said LRC personnel also support the course as guest speakers to give a different perspective on transportation subjects as well. It helps that Fort McCoy is one of the few installations Armywide that operates and supports Army-owned locomotives and conducts rail operations in the level like it does. In 2022, for example, Fort McCoy supported three major rail movements for units that Kilbane’s team also supported.
During those three movements, the Fort McCoy rail operations support team with LRC helped load and move 315 pieces of equipment on 116 railcars that was approximately the equivalent of 4,311 short tons of cargo. Military units trained and supported were the 485th Engineer Company, 411th Engineer Company, and 107th Support Maintenance Company, said Installation Transportation Officer Douglas “Terry” Altman with the LRC Transportation Division in a 2022 review article.
Frank said the October class went very well. He added the course can be taught one to two times a month by the 426th and can have up to 24 students per course.
In a previous story, Kilbane said many people also might not think of the importance of the logistical abilities of the mobility side of the Army when it comes to winning wars, but it’s just as important.
“If you think of the Army, your brain might focus in on the Soldiers, the fight, and the guns,” Kilbane said. “But none of that can happen if you think of the old adage — ‘bullets can’t fly without supply.’ And that’s true for the entire logistics chain.
“Knowing the sustainment, and the logistics, and the importance of it is like the backbone,” Kilbane said. “If you don’t have that, there is no bullets to fly at enemies … there’s no getting your people and equipment to the places where they need to be.”
Learn more about the Wisconsin Military Academy and the 426th by visiting https://ng.wi.gov/about/wiarng/426rti.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, 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. Fort McCoy is also part of Army’s Installation Management Command where “We Are The Army’s Home.”
| Date Taken: | 10.30.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 10.30.2023 15:23 |
| Story ID: | 456801 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 752 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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