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Training center takes soldiers into high-tech scenarios

Sep- 5-2004 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

By BETH IPSEN
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

FAIRBANKS - 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, an 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.[...]

The Terry L. Wilson Battle Command Training Center is the first of its kind, said center chief Hoyle Cook. The training center is just part of the $1.2 billion construction that is included in the transition to the Army's third Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

The brigade has roughly 4,000 soldiers - 700 of whom are stationed at Fort Richardson with the rest claiming Fort Wainwright as home.

"It's a way of training that we haven't done before. It's a way of training that many of our kids, like my son and daughter, are pretty much used to, but folks in my generation are just learning the real potential of some of this capability of what we have," said Brig. Gen. James Hirai, who spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday, just 24 hours after taking command of the U.S. Army Alaska.[...]


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