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Training center takes soldiers into high-tech scenarios

Sep- 2-2004 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

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By BETH IPSEN, Staff Writer

It's an adolescent's dream and an enemy's nightmare.

They may look like video games, but some 700 computers at the newest state-of-the-art training facility at Fort Wainwright give soldiers a taste of war long before they step onto the battlefields.

"This is what you need in your living room," Dennis Jones, a engagement skills trainer, said as he walked into a large room used for target practice: Camouflage netting hangs from the ceiling, guns sit on a platform with the muzzles propped up on sandbags and pointed at a screen that covers a roughly 20-foot-long wall.

After Jones--an Army retiree with more than 21 years as a field artilleryman--brought up the program he wanted on a computer, a jungle scenario was projected onto a large wall.

The trick was to try and hit the uniformed people running in and out of brush in the live-action scenario.

The guns--an assortment of M-4 automatic rifles, M-60 machine guns and a rocket launcher--have the same weight and kick as the real guns and tiny cannon hidden by fake shrubbery in front of the shooting positions can launch small foam balls to simulate live fire.

"It forces the soldiers to keep their heads down and gets rid of that video-game mentality," Jones said.

The system tracks lasers the guns emit onto a screen and scores the aim and the kills.

There are two other weapon-system simulators--one for the portable antitank missile Javelin system and another for calling in support fire.

With the fire call-in, soldiers learn the call sign procedures before hitting the range.

"This is saving Uncle Sam a whole lot of money," Jones said. "They can learn to call for fire without the expense of real ammo."

The Terry L. Wilson Battle Command Training Center is the first of its kind, said center chief Hoyle Cook.


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