WASHINGTON – Two Army combat brigades – including one from Fort Lewis – are skipping their usual session at the Army’s premier training range in California and instead are making final preparations at their home bases for their Iraq deployment, rushed by President Bush’s decision to send thousands more U.S. troops.
Army officials say the two brigades will be as ready as any others that deploy to Iraq, even though they will not have the benefit of training in counterinsurgency tactics at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., which has been outfitted to simulate conditions in Iraq.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said Monday she is concerned about the “less-than-ideal training situation” for the 4th Stryker Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, based at Fort Lewis and one of the two brigades that did its final training at home. That brigade is to go to Iraq in April, one month earlier than planned.
The other is the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, based at Fort Stewart, Ga., which is due to go in May.
The main things that cannot be replicated in a home station exercise are the vast spaces of the National Training Center, which is located in the Mojave Desert, and the weather and other environmental conditions that so closely resemble much of Iraq, a spokesman at the National Training Center, John Wagstaffe, said Monday.
“Your weapon won’t jam from sand at Fort Stewart,” he said.
On a visit to Fort Lewis last week, Murray asked the top commander, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, whether the soldiers’ preparation for Iraq was adequate without going to the National Training Center, according to a Fort Lewis spokesman, Lt. Col. Dan Williams.
Dubik assured her it was, Williams said. The general told her he was confident “that they were ready to go” to Iraq even if they had not had 1,300 soldiers imported from the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk to play the role of Iraqi insurgents and civilians and to observe and control the mission rehearsal exercise.
“They went through all the things they know they’re going to do in Iraq,” Williams said.
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