Afghan troops to train at Bragg

[SR-25]

Associated Press


FORT BRAGG, N.C. — Up 10,000 members of the 82nd Airborne Division will spread across Fort Bragg to help a unit train at home before deploying to Afghanistan rather than going to the Mojave Desert to prep for duty.
It will be the largest and most intense exercise held on post in years, said Maj. Gen. Bill Caldwell, the division commander.

“We are going to move the entire 82nd Airborne Division to the field to do the certification exercise for the 1st Brigade,” Caldwell said.

At least 3,500 soldiers will deploy to Afghanistan for a year this spring as the 1st Brigade Combat Team, which will be formed around the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment and will include field artillery, engineers and military intelligence soldiers.

In the past, Army units preparing for long rotations in the Middle East spent weeks at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin in Southern California’s Mojave Desert.

But the training unit that normally served as the mock enemy, the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, will deploy to Iraq this month.

So, between Feb. 22 and March 3, the entire 82nd Airborne will go to work training the Afghanistan-bound soldiers.

The at-home training also will give deploying soldiers more time with their families, Caldwell said. Instead of being gone for two months before deploying for a year, soldiers will mostly be able to spend weekends at home, he said.

To provide a more realistic training environment, the division will hire about 180 Afghan-Americans who speak the country’s languages, Caldwell said.

The exercise will spread from eastern Fort Bragg to Camp Mackall, a satellite training camp west of post. The division will build remote outposts around Fort Bragg that will replicate encampments in Afghanistan.

“So if you want to go see a sister forward operating base, you are going to drive for a couple of hours on a road to get there,” Caldwell said.

Along the roads will be role players, as well as traffic and scenes designed to replicate Afghanistan, he said.

The entire 82nd Airborne headquarters staff will set up in various locations around Fort Bragg for the exercise, Caldwell said. The exercise also will provide training for the division staff and support, logistics and aviation soldiers.






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