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Every year, thousands of Army Reserve Soldiers train at Fort McCoy through institutional training, weekend or extended combat training, or through exercises and special training events.
Whether the effort is Army Reserve Soldiers training at Regional Training Site (RTS)-Medical, RTS-Maintenance, or the Fort McCoy Noncommissioned Officer (NCO) Academy for institutional training, or if it’s thousands of Reserve Soldiers participating in a three-week Combat Support Training Exercise on post, there’s always some sort of training supporting Army Reserve service members at Fort McCoy.
During fiscal year 2024, 73,991 troops trained at the installation, according to statistics from the Fort McCoy Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security. A good number of those who trained on post were with the Army Reserve, statistics show.
Larry Sharp, chief of the Fort McCoy DPTMS Training Coordination Branch, said the training numbers include mostly Army Reserve Soldiers; then National Guard service members; and active-duty troops from not just the Army but also other services, such as the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force.
Training statistics also reflect many types of training opportunities that take place at the installation by active- and reserve-component forces and other governmental agencies, according to DPTMS.
During fiscal year 2024, training included battle-assembly (weekend) training; annual training; mobilization; institutional training; and numerous exercises, including a Warrior Exercise, Combat Support Training Exercise, Global Medic, Spartan Warrior military police exercise, Mobilization Support Force — Exercise 24, and numerous other training events.
Sharp said the training numbers were split as 30,573 troop completing annual training, and 43,418 troops completing battle assembly training.
Some of the Reserve-focused institutional training on post happened when students and staff with the 89B Ammunition Supply Course, coordinated by RTS-Maintenance, conducted sling-load training with a CH-47 Chinook crew at Sparta-Fort McCoy Airport on Sept. 26 at Fort McCoy.
The Ammunition Supply Course is a four-week course that provides training for Soldiers who are reclassifying to the 89B military occupational specialty, said then-course manager Staff Sgt. Christopher Nieves. The sling-load training is one of the last major training events during the course.
According to the Army, a sling load is used to transport munitions to remote locations or to expedite shipments in hostile locations. By Army definition, ammunition supply specialists are “Soldiers responsible for the management of ordnance to include ammunition and explosives.”
Soldiers who are 89B-qualified are tasked with receiving, storing, and issuing conventional ammunition, guided missiles, large rockets, explosives, and other ammunition and explosive-related items. During the two phases of the course, the students learn all of the entry-level basics about the course, Huth said.
The sling-load training is one of the last major training events during the Ammunition Supply Course, Nieves said.
“We teach all of our students here how to perform sling-load operations,” Nieves said. “We’ll go over the basics, including about some of the types of aircraft that the Army utilizes to perform this operation, the different types of operations where it’s needed, and the different equipment that we use to do sling loads.
During the start of fiscal year 2025 training at Fort McCoy in October, the 649th Regional Support Group with the Army Reserve held special training on post with a “Defender University” for NCOs in the group.
The group, headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a group that consists of two movement control battalions with a host of 20 units underneath of them, consisting of transportation companies, movement control teams, quartermasters, and maintenance, said Command Sgt. Maj. David Sayers, command sergeant major with the 649th.
With the Defender University training, Sayers said they came to Fort McCoy to get a variety of training accomplished.
“We came up to Fort McCoy to train on skill level 2 and skill level 3 progression in order to develop our Soldiers, specialists, and sergeants for promotion under Army Regulation 600-8-19, Paragraph 3-6, that states all Soldiers must have skill level 2 and skill level 3 proficiency in their digital job book in order to qualify for promotion.”
And after training was done, Sayers said they appreciated coming to do the training at Fort McCoy and that it went well.
“It's been going great,” Sayers said during the third day of training. “Fort McCoy has offered us fantastic facilities up here to train on. … Our Soldiers are just absolutely enjoying themselves. They get to go out and do authentic, real training, hands-on, some classroom environment, not much PowerPoint, you know, so they get to focus on these tasks. Most importantly, they get to do it as a noncommissioned officer, as a team leader. This is not an individual task. It’s a team task.”
Perhaps most important is all the training the Army Reserve brings to Fort McCoy also supports the installation’s economic impact every year.
Fort McCoy’s total economic impact for fiscal year 2023 was an estimated $1.38 billion, Fort McCoy Garrison officials announced. The data was compiled by Fort McCoy’s Plans, Analysis and Integration Office.
Fort McCoy’s history also shows that from 1990 to the present day, new construction projects have served to modernize the post’s infrastructure, facilities, and training areas to support training on post, particularly Army Reserve training.
“The hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the post have benefited Fort McCoy as well the local economy, with the majority of the new construction contracts having been awarded to regional firms,” the history states in The 2024-25 Fort McCoy Guide. “Today, Fort McCoy’s primary mission is to support the readiness of the force by serving as a training center, mobilization force generation installation, and strategic support area. The installation has served in a continuing capacity as an Army power-projection site by processing and preparing military personnel for duty in overseas contingency operations.”
Fort McCoy DPTMS officials said the future of training at Fort McCoy will continue to include a heavy dose of Army Reserve training as well as other training.
As Stephen Sullivan, the Chief Financial Officer and Director for Resources, Installations, and Materiel for the Office of the Chief of the Army Reserve, said in a 2022 news article about Fort McCoy: “I think Fort McCoy is going to continue to be a key piece of the U.S. Army Reserve’s infrastructure that’s necessary to train and mobilize our forces.”
Fort McCoy’s 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 Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/fortmccoywi, on X (formerly Twitter) by searching “usagmccoy,” on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/fortmccoywi, and on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@fortmccoy.
Also try downloading the My Army Post 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: | 12.02.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 12.02.2024 12:22 |
| Story ID: | 486419 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 73 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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