Fort Chaffee clearing way for training center

Junk being hauled off to make room

NWA Democrat-Gazette/Michael Woods --04/25/2015--w@NWAMICHAELW... Gary Base with Explosive Ordnance Technologies Inc. shows a map of the areas his teams are working to clear old ammunition and explosive materials at Fort Chaffee.  The old firing range will be updated to become an infantry platform battle course with updated technology to help train troops for a variety of possible war time scenarios .
NWA Democrat-Gazette/Michael Woods --04/25/2015--w@NWAMICHAELW... Gary Base with Explosive Ordnance Technologies Inc. shows a map of the areas his teams are working to clear old ammunition and explosive materials at Fort Chaffee. The old firing range will be updated to become an infantry platform battle course with updated technology to help train troops for a variety of possible war time scenarios .

A heap of rusted junk, its individual items unrecognizable from decades of target practice, sat piled at the far east end of what will become a new, state-of-the-art battle course at Fort Chaffee Maneuver Training Center.

Not too long ago, Fort Chaffee, like many other Army installations, recycled outdated equipment and other scrap into targets for training exercises. To replicate an urban setting, instructors created makeshift buildings out of cut-up metal storage containers stacked on top of one another, said Lt. Col. Dwight Ikenberry, chief of operations at the site.

They used whatever was around to help simulate -- and prepare for -- real-world combat situations.

Now, that junk is being hauled away from Fort Chaffee to make room for new, technologically advanced resources that will prepare military units in Arkansas and surrounding states for modern warfare.

The new course is the last of four multimillion-dollar projects that the U.S. Department of Defense has invested in Fort Chaffee in the past four years. In total, the government has appropriated $50 million to give the western Arkansas installation some of the Army's best training equipment in the country.

"These four ranges will basically put us in the top tier for what's needed to prepare anyone in the Army to do their mission in any deployment scenario," said Lt. Col. Vixen James, training site manager at the post, which is near Fort Smith.

Fort Chaffee was recently classified as an "RCTC," or as having regional collective training capabilities, meaning it serves as a regional hub for large-scale training exercises. According to an Army training structure document from 2011, it's one of 11 Army National Guard posts to have that designation.

James said Fort Chaffee received the designation because of its geographical location -- such posts are spread throughout the United States -- as well as its expanse of land (about 65,000 acres) and how officials have managed its resources in the past.

To James, it's like a business. Chaffee trains its "customers" well, giving the Army a good "return on investment" by preparing war fighters to better execute their missions.

"Of course, in our resource-constrained environment, they couldn't build $50 million worth of ranges at every installation," James said. "They had to make a decision on where they put those types of investments."

With that RCTC designation came the four projects, all of which are controlled with computers and store data on how well the people using them performed.

James said the new training facilities all reflect lessons learned during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"What happened in Iraq and Afghanistan changed things from a battlefield out there in the middle of nowhere to more urban settings, where you're searching residences, encountering civilians on the battlefields," Ikenberry said.

Old and dangerous

Last month, Gary Base motioned toward the pile of rusted junk out on Range 83 and explained that his crew was scouring 154 acres, extracting debris like a vacuum cleaner sucks up filth from a carpet.

Explosives Ordnance Technologies Inc. was contracted to take away the scrap and old munitions that had settled into the land over time. As workers complete their task, Fort Smith-based SSI Design-Build Constructors can start work on what's officially known as an Infantry Platoon Battle Course.

Base, who supervises the clearance, flipped open a map showing pieces of the range, highlighted in green, where scrap had already been removed. Parts marked in orange indicated where workers still needed to go.

They had worked out there for about three months and would probably need another three, he said.

On a separate map of Fort Chaffee, the range is colored red and has the words, "IMPACT AREA" at the top. It's been used by soldiers since the 1940s as a firing range and was littered with thousands of pounds of stuff -- some of it dangerous.

"Over the years this has been used so much to train on," Base said. "They fired anything from the recoil-less rifle to guns, tanks, rockets, bazookas."

In just the previous week and a half, workers had collected about 26,000 pounds of scrap from that range, he said. During the few months they had been there, they had hauled away about 220,000 pounds.

The explosives found -- about 600 -- had to be safely detonated as if they were still live.

"Just because they're all rusty doesn't mean they're any less dangerous," Base said while showing some old ammunition he had lined up for display.

In this instance, removing remnants of the post's past means making room for its future.

According to the National Defense Authorization Act passed in 2013, the Infantry Platoon Battle Course was the only training area of its kind appropriated in fiscal 2014 to an Army National Guard entity. It comes at a cost of $21 million.

"It's going to be quite a facility," Base said of the course, which will consist of more than 3,000-by-650 yards and include 200 targets, both stationary and mobile.

When a platoon moves through the course, either on foot or in vehicles, targets will pop up, Ikenberry explained. Each target will record data on whether it was hit, and platoons, typically consisting of 16-40 soldiers, can review their performance in a building at the course's base.

"In the past, a target was some junk that you put out there," Ikenberry said, again indicating the pile of scrap. "But with the new targetry, if it gets hit, it will go back down, and it records it into the computer. It's a lot more than just excess property that gets blown up and shot at."

The course is estimated to be completed around September 2016, according to an announcement of the awarded contract.

New bells and whistles

Fort Chaffee's top officers are hoping the new course will attract military units and other groups that have not previously used the post's facilities.

That's been the case with the two completed projects that Fort Chaffee has gained since it changed to having regional collective training capabilities.

A live-fire shoot house for $2.5 million and a Combined Arms Collective Training Facility for $22 million were both appropriated in fiscal 2011.

In the shoot house, people are recorded as they go from room to room, shooting at targets.

The Combined Arms Collective Training Facility has a similar setup, but on a larger scale. It's a replica of a village comprising 18 buildings designed to resemble structures such as a school, hotel, apartment complex, religious center and government buildings.

All of the buildings are outfitted with cameras -- 189 all together -- and Sgt. First Class Cory Miller, who manages the complex, said that from a control room on the east side of the village, he can pump in smoke, sounds and smells.

About 20 different military units and federal, regional and local law enforcement agencies have used the complex since it opened last spring.

The FBI has conducted special-weapons-and-tactics and hostage-rescue training, Miller said, and Navy SEALs fly in for quick, overnight training on the grounds. Local-level police departments have also used the village.

James said some groups, including the Navy SEAL, are already "hungry and excited" to use another new area at the post -- a convoy live-fire range, which will be ready for use in June or July.

Contractors started last week installing targets along the approximately 3,000-yard convoy route. They're expected to be done in 45-60 days, James said.

The $3.5 million range, appropriated in fiscal 2012, will train users in what to do if their convoy is attacked. They'll be forced to react to a sniper, get through an ambush and figure out what to do when their path is blocked, Ikenberry said.

"You see a lot of stuff in the news from Afghanistan and Iraq about convoys getting attacked," he said. "We're preparing our ranges and facilities for the most recent conflicts."

No other projects like these are scheduled for the near future at Fort Chaffee, something Ikenberry said could be the case for awhile because of a shrinking budget.

From fiscal 2012-13, the military construction budget was cut by about $2.4 billion to $10.6 billion. It was cut again in 2014 by approximately $600,000. Military construction also shrank during fiscal 2015 appropriations.

Legislation to appropriate funding for military construction in fiscal 2016 is currently moving through Congress. The bill, released last month by the House Appropriations Committee, provides $7.7 billion for military construction -- a $900 million increase from fiscal 2015 but $755 million below President Barack Obama's request.

The U.S. House approved the legislation Thursday in a vote of 255-163. According to a release from the appropriations committee, the bill details that the military construction budget allows for family housing, the construction of hospitals and other health care facilities, and support for locations overseas.

"Really after FY 2014, they kind of closed the door on a lot of projects like this," Ikenberry said of the post's four new training areas. "They're pretty unique."

Metro on 05/04/2015

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