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Confident Gap plans for wave of upgrades

Mar- 6-2005 » Filed Under: 56th SBCT

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BY AL WINN, The Patriot-News

FORT INDIANTOWN GAP - Officials at other Pennsylvania military bases might worry their posts will be closed in the next round of base closures.

But Fort Indiantown Gap officials said that $1.5 billion in federal money for new National Guard facilities and equipment that is coming to Pennsylvania will help protect the Gap.

Nearly $200 million of the money is earmarked for new and expanded armories and maintenance shops around the state, including new ones in Carlisle and Lebanon.

The Pennsylvania National Guard, which owns the Gap's 17,100-acre training site, is getting one of the Army's six new forces of quickly mobilized, lightly armored infantry, called Stryker brigades. [...]

The ranges won't look much different from the Gap's current ranges, but three training courses are designed to teach Stryker troops lessons learned in the urban environments of Somalia, Panama and Iraq. One complex will include an urban assault course where soldiers will learn to blast their way into buildings with explosives.

Another component is a "shoot house" where troops learn to fight indoors. Remote-controlled figures will pop up with soldiers having to make quick decisions on whether the figures are hostile -- in which case they will shoot them -- or noncombatants in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The most sophisticated and expensive part of the urban-training plans is a $16.7 million "city" to be built on the Gap's Second Mountain. The town will consist of about two dozen buildings and underground tunnels that troops will attack under the watch of video cameras. The unit can view film of their operation much in the same way a football team watches game films, Edwards said.

None of the Gap's ranges will be closed, requiring planners to shoehorn the ranges onto the 17,100-acre post, Cleaver said.

"It will require some creative scheduling," he said. Some ranges will have to be closed while adjacent ones are being used, he said.


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