McKenna in high
demand as deployment nears
Site unmatched in training capabilities
| Story and photo by Bridgett Siter/The Bayonet FORT BENNING, Ga. (TRADOC News Service, June 7, 2004) – Fort Benning’s premier MOUT site is hopping these days as more and more units are looking to hone their skills in urban warfare. The McKenna MOUT (military operations in urban terrain) site hosted six Fort Benning units last week, a contingent of Canadian soldiers, customs agents from the Department of Homeland Defense and a visit from the secretary of the Army. “That’s not unusual these days,” said Maj. Roy Manauis, McKenna’s officer in charge. “It’s in high demand right now because our instrumentation and capabilities are unmatched anywhere else.” McKenna MOUT site features an urban village, built by Army engineers more than 20 years ago. It belongs to Fort Benning’s Soldier Battlelab and is primarily used for live, virtual and constructive experimentation on Soldier systems, weapons and equipment. The site boasts fiber optics, simulations and the ability to track movement in and around the village in three dimensions. It’s this feature that makes the site ideal for training Soldiers. “The bottom line is commanders can use what they see for after-action reviews,” Manauis said. “They can see Soldiers move through buildings, in and out of rooms ... they can see what happened, who fired, who got shot.” Units typically establish a number of scenarios, or “lanes,” and rotate squads through, evaluating their performance on tasks such as checkpoint security, questioning prisoners and villagers, ferreting out insurgents and encountering civilians on the battlefield, to name a few. These days, there’s a lot of emphasis on IEDs — improvised explosive devices, like car bombs or booby-trapped coffee cans — the types of explosives being used by Iraqi insurgents. Three Kelley Hill units swarmed the site at once May 19, including the 317th Engineer Battalion, which was reconfigured June 1, its Soldiers going to 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor regiment and 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment. That means the Soldiers, who are slated to return to Iraq later this year, will likely find themselves in more urban operations. And there’s no better place to sharpen their urban warfare skills than the McKenna village, said Sgt. Chris Matthews, who roleplayed a village shopkeeper during the training. “This is the best MOUT site I’ve seen,” said Matthews, who has trained at urban warfare sites in Kuwait, Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. Though McKenna is designed to look more like a European village than a Middle Eastern, “it’ll get the job done,” said Matthews, who has twice deployed to Kuwait and once to Iraq. “An Iraqi village would have narrower streets and taller buildings, so this isn’t an exact match,” Matthews said as he leaned against the door of his “shop,” waiting for the next squad of Soldiers to come through. “But tactics and techniques are the same for clearing buildings. This has enough of a feel of it to give these guys an idea of what they’ll get over there. “I believe this is some of the most important training we can do,” he said. Indeed, the Army’s emphasis on urban operations starts in basic training, usually about the ninth week, when trainees learn the basic techniques they might use to establish strongholds or eradicate insurgents in villages of Third World countries — techniques such as the proper way to enter and clear a room or the safest way to move from building to building. Last week, National Guard troops practiced urban camouflage of a different sort at McKenna. They learned to set up base in an upper room, masking their presence with darkened screens and fake walls. Related story: Soldiers train on urban terrain |
A 317th Engineer Battalion Soldier practices the proper technique for searching for explosives in a desk at the McKenna MOUT village. The 317th is preparing to reconfigure and deploy with other units. View and/or save high-resolution photo |
