Taking Training to Home Station

THE ARMY NATIONAL GUARD’S XCTC TRAINING CONCEPT IS EYED AS A COST-SAVING, READINESS ENABLER.

The services’ quest for affordable and deployable training systems has taken on a sense of urgency. Combat-hardened active and Reserve component veterans who have completed several overseas tours in support of the long war are looking for operating and personnel tempo relief by remaining close to home station when possible. Service operations and maintenance training budgets are being viewed by some on Capitol Hill as a piggy bank for sorely needed funds to replace or extend the life of the operational fleet, which has been put through its paces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Exportable Combat Training Capability (XCTC) training concept is being evaluated by the Army National Guard as one cost-effective solution to achieve readiness goals and keep its soldiers closer to home.

THE REQUIREMENT

In July, the Indiana National Guard’s 76th Brigade Combat Team (BCT) completed a proof-of-concept exercise that was not designed to place the units in a deployable status.

The event evaluated whether the XCTC training concept could provide realistic, instrumented, combined-arms training within a contemporary operating environment (COE) scenario at two in-state venues—Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center and the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center. The exercise also was an opportunity to demonstrate whether this capability can help units meet current readiness requirements.

Under the Army Force Generation Model, a National Guard Brigade Combat Team (BCT) must reach company-level proficiency prior to reporting to its mobilization station. This standard allows BCTs’ post-mobilization training period to be dramatically reduced from 120-to-150 days to about 60 days.

The challenge, then, of providing a mission-ready BCT in a reduced post-mobilization construct is to achieve a higher level of proficiency prior to mobilization. “Now the expectation, which was to be at platoon for the old Enhanced Brigade structure, is for all of our brigades to come in at company level readiness,” said Colonel Philip Stemple, Chief of Training, Army National Guard.

XCTC is designed to be the culminating event prior to mobilization and help brigades achieve company-level proficiency. For their part, battalion staffs must exhibit “demonstrated” staff proficiency so that when they arrive at post-mobilization training they have only one more level at which to be validated as missionready.

Early feedback and lessons learned indicated that the event fully met the Reserve component’s expectations. The XCTC-based event provides another compelling case for the services to invest in high-fidelity, affordable and exportable systems to complement training at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) and other joint and service centers of excellence.

XCTC is not a Department of Army program of record and is Army National Guard funded.

INCREASED FIDELITY

Coalescent Technologies led the XCTC industry team that included Cubic’s Operations Support Division and SRI. The Cubic group, part of the Mission Support Business Unit of Cubic Defense Applications, provided the civilians on the battlefield (COB), role players, battlefield effects, and intelligence injects into scenario events. SRI supplied the instrumentation for the exercise, which included Cubic’s MILES 2000 units, Deployable Force-on-Force Instrumented Range System (DFIRST), and a 3-D After Action Review (AAR) capability.

The industry-provided enhancements helped make this XCTC different from standard homestation training, said Lee Legowik, Program Manager for Training Support Operations, Cubic’s Operations Support Division.

At the top of Legowik’s list were pyrotechnics; COBs who were given a two-week cultural awareness and battlefield conditions class, still- and motion camera documentation, MILES 2000 instrumentation, creation of the Atterbury News Network with an al Jazeera-type broadcasting company, information operations assessment to see if information properly flowed through the unit, and intelligence injects during mission execution.

Legowik provided two examples of the increased rigor which was added to this home station event.

The role players in the XCTC were village leaders, police, merchants, hostile elements and criminals—members of the nations’ societies with whom U.S. forces frequently interact.

“Cubic also provided battlefield effects in the form of motion picture industry-type explosive devices simulating improvised explosive devices (IEDs), vehicle-borne IEDs and victim-operated IEDs—common types of explosive devices currently used in the COE,” added Legowik.

Similar capabilities are routinely inserted into Joint and service scenarios at JRTC and National Training Center (NTC).

EFFICIENCIES

One of the vexing challenges for DoD trainers is to justify investments in their exercises and events. This XCTC event may provide substantive readiness metrics to help make the capability a permanent part of Total Force Army training cycles.

There is always a great savings when you can train at or close to your home station, pointed out Stemple. One estimate provided on background is that it costs a heavy brigade an average of about $6 million to move halfway across the country and train at NTC.

A week after the XCTC’s completion, metrics were not available to quantify the cost avoidance for this audience to train at the two Indiana venues. There was some anecdotal evidence of savings. “Even an active component unit spends a lot of their annual operating tempo funds when they have to go to either NTC or the JRTC. They would save a lot of dollars by training at their home station and not moving. So, likewise the Army National Guard would save a lot of money by training in its local area,” reasoned Stemple.

The training audience did not lose any opportunities to complete Guard or other training tasks as a result of staying at home station and not deploying to NTC or JRTC.

A DIFFERENT CONSTRUCT

There was another subtle difference in the training event. An average Army National Guard unit’s annual training period is 15 days. A 21-day training program supported the XCTC event.

REPLICATING THE COE

“The main focus of the XCTC was to support the COE,” observed Stemple. While the COE for this XCTC was Iraq and Afghanistan, future XCTCs can be tailored to any theater of operations.

The main battle problem supported an assault in an urban area scenario. Other theater-specific tasks were completed, including the conduct of a cordon search, and establishing a roadblock and a checkpoint.

“In the past, when NTC was designed, we were supporting the Fulda-Gap, Cold War-era type scenarios,” recalled Stemple. “This is a different scenario when you have the COE. We have battalions with their subordinate units on non-contiguous terrain,” he said. The COE was replicated, in part, by using Camp Atterbury and rotating companies to the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center.

“Now the battalion commander had to not only command, control and logistically support his two companies at Atterbury, but a third company—which was a 40-minute ride away—on a different piece of ground,” said Stemple. In the COE are units not only vastly dispersed, but they are assigned different missions. “One company may be completing a combat operation, while another is completing stability, transition, reconstruction and support operations. The XCTC-based scenarios are more challenging because the missions are more disparate, as opposed to what we trained to fight in the Cold War,” he added.

TECHNOLOGY-ENABLED TRAINING

Virtual and constructive technologies supported the training audience.

After-action reviews remain a pillar of joint and service training events. There were three inputs into the XCTC AAR process.

An enhanced dismount instrumentation (EDI) capability allowed full instrumentation down to the individual soldier level. “When you think of EDI, it’s basically a Global Positioning System for the individual soldier. This fixes his location and verifies what he is doing at all times. It feeds into the exercise control network and then we can place it on the screen in 2-dimension, or 3-dimension,” explained Stemple. The 3-D capability is achieved using DFIRST.

“When the observer controller/trainer (OC/T) conducts his AAR at the end of the mission, he now has three inputs—2-D and 3-D depictions and a video. And, on top of that, you can overlay all of the command traffic,” he added.

“So, now, when Private Jones tells you what he did at the checkpoint, there is no debate what he did. When you call up the 3-D presentation, the figure has its actual name,” said Stemple.

Other tasks that can be reconstructed include tracking the direction in which blank ammunition was fired. “So, we know, for example, whether Corporal Smith committed fratricide and can track it,” he added.

Similar to the “reverse angle” imagery of televised football and other sport events, the XCTC AAR provides different perspectives of a mission. When you show the AAR the first time, it may be from the view of the player unit. You can also see it from the opposing force perspective—you would, for example see your actions as you were advancing up a hill. You have three perspectives: a bird’s-eye (overhead) view, the soldier’s and the opposing force.

“Now all of a sudden, when the OC/T conducts the AAR, he has a tool to truly show him or her what happened, or what didn’t happen, on the battlefield,” said Stemple.

A virtual UAV also supported DFIRST, and reconnaissance and other planning missions.

LEADER TRAINING

An Army battalion staff completes a leader training program prior to training on the ground at NTC or JRTC.

The Army National Guard also incorporates this pillar of the Army’s Combined Training Center program into its mobilization training.

About 60 to 90 days prior to the XCTC event a Fort Leavenworth- based Battle Command Training Center team conducted a five-day session for the 76th brigade staff at their home station. The training team consisted of military and contractor instructors. Seminars in military decision-making; training, tactics, techniques and procedures; and other topics were taught and reinforced in a capstone constructive simulation-based exercise supported by the service’s venerable JANUS.

A second phase occurred during the initial eight-day period at Camp Atterbury, which included another simulation-based exercise.

“So by the time the brigade staff completed the eight-day field training exercise, they had been through two full iterations of a brigade-issued order. The whole key is to tie in the live, virtual and constructive environments, and then to have the training culminate in the eight-day, live force-on-force event,” said Stemple.

XCTC LESSONS LEARNED

At the top of Stemple’s lessons learned list was to have an initial coordination conference for the OC/Ts, the XCTC instrumentation support staff and the training audience 24 months before an event. This early, initial session “will allow you to obtain platooncertification one-year before the event.”

Second, “we need to use existing technology, and keep things portable and cost-effective.You have to do that—for the Army and for the National Guard. XCTC provides that capability,” he said. Pointing out that the second “C” in XCTC stands for capability, he reiterated that the training capability should be taken to the unit, as opposed to the unit to a fixed-site training center.

Last, “Every National Guard battalion across the force must experience this training,” he said.

Feedback, from the junior officer and enlisted leaders, many of whom were combat-hardened veterans of the long war, was positive. “This training was in many instances better than what they received prior to initial Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Iraqi Freedom deployments,” was the consensus opinion provided to Stemple. ♦

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