"God took a shit and out came the NTC".

Welcome to the National Training Center...now prepare for the most stressful, frustrating, and downright miserable month of your life...all in the name of training. Designed to be more difficult than any combat you will ever face as well as prepare your brigade for the upcoming deployment, whether it be Iraq of Afghanistan. Each day in "the box" is supposed to replicate your worst week while deployed, most of the time they succeed.

NTC, located at Fort Irwin about 45 minutes north of Barstow began humbly as an Army camp that protected travelers along the Spanish and Mormon Trails and was later used as an anti-aircraft range and then a training center in WW2. Due to its out of the way location and hostile environment, Fort Irwin would become home to the NTC in 1981 and be used to train armored brigades for combat. Back before I joined the Army, a brigade was considered "combat experienced" if it had been to NTC in recent memory. Training was difficult, the terrain was brutal, the 11 ACR (the unit playing the enemy) almost undefeatable. Brigades that fought in the Gulf War and later the invasion of Iraq would claim NTC was more challenging than actual war.

The nature of combat training at NTC has changed due to the changing of the type of conflict the Army is currently engaged in. Light, guerrilla style warfare training used to be limited to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, LA but because of both Iraq and Afghanistan NTC has taken up the challenge of training for insurgent warfare as well...and the installation has done a tremendous job of doing just that.

About a dozen cities/towns/villages have been built out in the desert and each rotation hundreds if not thousands of role players are hired to play anything from Iraqi Army leaders, insurgent commanders, or average citizens. I thought NTC had done a great job during my first rotation in Feb/Mar '06, but they've since improved.

Honestly I don't think 3-2 SBCT was prepared for the rotation. We had had few training exercises either in Yakima or in the training areas of FT Lewis. As far as I know, no TOC exercises were done. In my 4 months back with the brigade all we did was some platoon level exercises; a brigade exercise that involved 1 infantry and my cavalry squadron in Yakima, 1 infantry battalion and the field artillery battalion at FT Lewis, and 1 infantry battalion down in 29 Palms, CA; and a staff training exercise at FT Irwin to prep the staffs of each battalion/squadron for NTC. Previously to my return I believe the brigade only did one trip to Yakima. Despite the brigade's experience in 2 previous Iraq deployments, there were a lot lessons forgotten that should have been ironed out before heading to NTC.

Despite all this we did rather well...at least my squadron did. The training forced us to work with the Iraqi Army, utilize interpreters, protect the population with the Iraqi Army/Police in the lead, and work under current Iraqi law by only capturing individuals or raiding buildings with warrants. The warrant issue was the most difficult part. One of Troop commanders spent an entire day drinking chai and eating meals with the Brigade's number 1 target and leader of Al Qaida in the western portion of the battlefield before the Iraqi Army as well as his soldiers could get the necessary paperwork for a warrant to be issued for the high value target's arrest. It would have been more amusing had it not been so frustrating.

There were successes though, not only did we eventually capture that target but by the end of the rotation my biggest stress was attempting to find more targets for our soldiers to capture. One lesson learned for me...I had gone with a Squadron "Top 5" instead of a "Top 10" to be killed/captured thinking in 8 days of operations we would only be able to get 1 or 2 guys. I found myself re-making our "Top 5" 3 or 4 times due to our high success rate of getting warrants and positively identifying top targets.

I just wish we had more training with ISR assets. Due to high winds I only managed to get a hold of a Shadow UAS for two 4 hour blocks towards the end of the exercise. You haven't known frustration until you have A-10's as well as a Predator UAS with hellfires lined up for the next day only to see them both grounded for high winds or maintenance...twice. I started requesting pigions equiped with a camera and a rock in order to have my full motion video capability along with kinetic targeting ability.

At the end of the rotation, sitting in an After Action Review with all the intelligence officers in the brigade, the Brigade S2 turned to me and said, "not to make your ego any bigger Mike, but Blackhorse 2 (11th ACR's intelligence officer, basically the head enemy intel guy) said that the insurgency was defeated in your sector, there wasn't anything they could do."

I still want my pigion with a rock though.