CE trains for deployment part II

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Kimberly Hickey
  • 934th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
Ft. McCoy, Wis. --  Editor's note: This the second article in a series detailing the 934th Airlift Wing/Civil Engineering Squadron's mobilization training at Fort McCoy, Wis., in preparation for their deployment to Southwest Asia.


Airmen from the 934th Airlift Wing/Civil Engineering attended mobilization training at Fort McCoy, Wis., in Jan. and Feb. 2011, in preparation for their deployment to Southwest Asia in support of joint civil engineering operations with the U.S. Army.
During the third week of February, the engineers participated in Situational Training Exercise scenarios involving cultural role players.

The focus of the STX is counterinsurgency, IED defeat, and operations in an urban environment, said Army 1st Lt. Lionel Gonzalez, the officer in charge of the 1/338th, Training Support Battalion, STX team at Fort McCoy. While deployed, they will be dealing with civilians out on the battlefield, he said. They will also need to know how to spot indicators of IEDs and react to them.

The engineers departed Contingency Operation Location Freedom in Humvee convoys early on Saturday, Feb. 12. They drove their convoys through mock villages and engaged cultural role players posing as Afghan villagers. The exercises assisted engineers in developing cultural competency skills through interaction with the local populace. Some CRPs who participated are Iraqi nationals fluent in the languages and dialects spoken in the areas the Airmen will deploy. The engineers greeted village elders and attempted to assess their engineering challenges and needs. They also attempted to
gather intelligence.

The focus of inquiry during meetings with Afghan villagers is SWEAT, an acronym that stands for sewer, water, equipment, academics, and trash, said Army Staff Sgt. Joseph A.Gemayel, a team leader with the 1/338 th, TSBn, 1st PLT STX Team.
Trash and sanitation are major concerns in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.
Training on Feb. 12 involved meetings with villagers not hostile to U.S. military forces, but the next day's training ramped up the exercises with scenarios involving more hostile forces. It was during training on Feb. 13 that the Airmen leaned more the three most common types of IED attacks in Southwest Asia, particularly Afghanistan.

Army Sgt. Dennis Kilgore, a STX instructor with the 1/338 th, TSBn, 1st PLT STX team shared his deployment experience as a member of a route clearance patrol, which he described as a mobile bomb squad.

"We found four to eight IEDs every day," he said. "You're not just driving through that."
IEDs are either remote controlled, vehicle born, or pressure detonated, Kilgore said.
He then explained the consequences of driving too quickly through his pressure plate IED scenario checkpoint to engineers. He told them their convoy had hit the IED and blown off the front end of their first Humvee.
Pressure plate IEDs are buried underground and set at a certain weight, he said.

The average car won't set them off, but larger, heavier military vehicles will.
In order to communicate the seriousness of lack of awareness of their immediate environment, Kilgore added, "It can take two years to recover from a concussion."
At designated times throughout STX training, the engineers participated in a series of After Action Reviews or debriefings, known as hot washes, to discuss their progress. The STX instructors advised the Airmen to think about the purpose of their mission and question whether the mission objectives were met. Each hot wash provided the opportunity for Airmen to ask questions and discuss what went well and what didn't.
"We would rather have them make their mistakes here than in Afghanistan," said 1st Lt. Gonzalez.

"The purpose of training and the hot wash is to help trainees rehearse their standard operating procedures," said Army Sgt. First Class James Rizzi, NCOIC for Alpha Team, STX. "It is not an attempt to tell them the right way to do something. It is up to each unit what they do with the training they receive."

After debriefing, the engineers repeated specific STX scenarios three to four times until they were confident with the skills required to negotiate the necessary outcome.