thedrifter
06-21-05, 08:57 PM
Mega MOUT
Urban combat center growing at desert base
By Gidget Fuentes
Times staff writer
TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. — Realizing it takes more than a village to train Marines for urban combat, Corps leaders are thinking bigger. A lot bigger.
Now, the dust is flying at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center as a city begins to take shape at the sprawling desert training base.
In recent months, three small urban ranges — comprised of 140 buildings — have sprouted and a fourth town, this one larger at 350 buildings, is under construction.
By the end of the summer, the Corps will have spent nearly $40 million on new facilities for Military Operations in Urban Terrain Training at the base, said Col. James B. Seaton III, operations officer for the Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Command. About $17 million went into the first three phases, with another $20 million slated for construction of a large town that will provide a permanent home for the Security and Stabilization Operations course now taught at March Air Reserve Base in nearby Riverside, Calif.
And it might not end there.
Corps officials want to construct a “Mega MOUT” in coming years that could become the cornerstone of Marine Corps urban combined-arms training. The city would accommodate forces larger than battalion-sized in a combination of simulated- and live-fire training areas.
If the 1,500-building city were built, it would become the Corps’ largest urban-combat center.
Plans for the expanded MOUT complex here dovetail with Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee’s goal of providing more realistic training for conventional and asymmetrical warfare.
“We’re trying to help blend what’s worked very well in the past ... to make it more realistic,” said Seaton, who commanded 1st battalion, 11th Marines, during the spring 2003 invasion of Iraq. “Ultimately, we’re looking to try and build the capability where you’re fighting [and] you’re operating in a town.”
The Corps’ traditional MOUT village, typically consisting of two or three dozen buildings, has long been an effective space to train smaller Marine units for a variety of day and night missions. “It’s great for teaching how to kick in the door and enter,” Seaton said.
Many say these types of urban training ranges have become old hat to veterans and are less realistic than what leathernecks will encounter in combat zones such as Iraq or Afghanistan.
Open for business
Marines are already training in the first three ranges built at Twentynine Palms, which can accommodate platoon-sized and larger forces.
Live-fire village. The first to be developed was Range 210, a village in the Bullion Training Area. The village — the first of its kind in terms of size — can accommodate small-arms live fire and is envisioned for rifle companies and infantry battalions.
“You can’t do this anywhere else in the Marine Corps,” Seaton said of the village, which opened in April and was christened by members of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, who landed at the range as part of a long-range raid.
Dotting the village are 26 one- and two-story buildings, including 23 constructed of SACON, a shock-absorbent material that looks and feels like concrete but absorbs 5.56mm and 7.62mm rounds.
“This is the first installment,” said Seaton, noting that the village could grow.
Because Marines can shoot both inside and outside the buildings, the facility requires solid planning and strict adherence to safety requirements, he said.
“It’s not just a shooting house,” he said. “A unit will have to figure out how to attack it. This isn’t like a traditional range. You have to figure this out. You have to be careful about shooting out, so this poses some pretty unique challenges.”
Run and gun. What looks like a Third World truck stop is a new live-fire convoy course, the second phase of the new MOUT complex. Opened last fall in the Prospect Training Area, the small range includes about 14 buildings made of SACON and has been used this year during Combined Arms Exercises. Its location allows a unit to move or fight through an ambush as it maneuvers through different training areas.
Electronic “civilian” targets are scattered about on the dusty road, which “forces you to slow down,” Seaton said, and electronic “enemy” targets pop up in windows.
While convoy training is already a standard scenario for troops deploying to Iraq, the new convoy range lets them fire live ammunition, making it more challenging.
Layered terrain. Construction crews recently finished a 100-building, non-live-fire town at Range 200. The buildings, made from an assortment of shipping containers and cinderblock walls, line streets and alleys. Tunnels crisscross the range in some places.
The course in the East Training Area “is meant to challenge your small-unit leaders, challenge your Marines, challenge your corpsman in how to operate in built-up areas, across the board,” Seaton said.
Cinderblock walls, for example, present challenges and provide a greater sense of realism. “Anybody who’s been to Iraq knows that you have to deal with walls,” he said.
Wrecked cars already are among the rubble that is strewn about the range and light poles and electrical wires are being installed.
“At night, it’ll interfere with your ability to use [night-vision goggles], potentially,” Seaton said. “It’ll create different shadows.”
Streets vary in width, which poses an additional challenge for combined-arms operations. Some are wide enough for a tank, while others are tight alleyways or dead ends.
“Driving there kind of makes your hair stand up on your neck.”
Next up: ‘Sasoville’
This month marks initial construction on “Sasoville,” a large town that will include about 350 buildings near Range 200 in the East Training Area.
The training will remain largely the same at the new non-live-fire range and will include exercises in patrolling, vehicle checkpoints, searches and convoys.
But the urban ranges at Twentynine Palms will add new elements to the scenarios.
For example, a battalion housed at the base’s Camp Wilson might face angry locals while one of the unit’s convoys deals with a roadside bomb and one of its companies fights insurgents at the live-fire village miles away.
“The idea is to challenge them from the command-and-control perspective by having multiple activities happen in a very dispersed area,” Seaton said. “This is where we’re really starting to blend that urban-warfare training with some of the more traditional live-fire combined-arms pieces that we’ve done.”
By September, the SASO instructors will move to Twentynine Palms, where the group will expand to a 60-member cadre.
Super-MOUT
Training officials are saving the biggest piece for last.
Urban-warfare training would make a huge leap with a super-sized MOUT facility that, if approved and funded, would be the Corps’ largest and most complex urban training facility.
Though some are calling it “Mega MOUT” or “primary town,” the facility for now is referred to as “Combined Arms MOUT.”
“We’re proposing the concept, and we hope that it becomes more than a concept soon,” Seaton said.
“We’re not building this for Iraq. We’re not building it for Afghanistan,” he noted. “We’re building it for some generic — some future — area where we may fight, so we don’t want to tailor this to where we are right now.”
An environmental review is in the works and should be completed early next year.
The MOUT complex would be a mix of shipping containers and concrete buildings up to six stories, with multiple rooms Marines would have to search and clear. It would include 1,500 buildings arranged around an urban core and feature an “old town” area with narrow streets and traffic circles, an industrial area, a stadium, highway interchanges, bridges, a river and subterranean tunnels.
“The money will be a factor there in how elaborate we make it,” Seaton said.
The plan — which officials stress is still conceptual and still unfunded — also could incorporate an outlying airfield and port, as well as Sasoville and a version of “Yodaville,” the live-fire urban aviation training range near Yuma, Ariz.
“It will let us integrate air into the ground operations,” Seaton said.
“It will buy enough depth and enough breadth that you can get multiple units in there and challenge you with cross-boundary coordination.”
The range would expand on air-ground coordination at a higher level than what’s provided at other ranges and during other exercises, Seaton said.
“We would like to see if there’s a way where we can safely do that sort of realistic training here, to present the same challenges from the air as well as from the ground,” he said. “Conceptually, we think we can do that.”
The notion of creating a mega-MOUT complex has circulated since late 2001, although it wasn’t until 2002 when the idea garnered more interest.
If built, it would greatly expand on urban training at the combat center and would augment the existing CAX program.
“We anticipate that a future CAX will have an urban dimension to it,” he added, “particularly what our Marines are facing the last two or three years.”
Ellie
Urban combat center growing at desert base
By Gidget Fuentes
Times staff writer
TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. — Realizing it takes more than a village to train Marines for urban combat, Corps leaders are thinking bigger. A lot bigger.
Now, the dust is flying at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center as a city begins to take shape at the sprawling desert training base.
In recent months, three small urban ranges — comprised of 140 buildings — have sprouted and a fourth town, this one larger at 350 buildings, is under construction.
By the end of the summer, the Corps will have spent nearly $40 million on new facilities for Military Operations in Urban Terrain Training at the base, said Col. James B. Seaton III, operations officer for the Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Command. About $17 million went into the first three phases, with another $20 million slated for construction of a large town that will provide a permanent home for the Security and Stabilization Operations course now taught at March Air Reserve Base in nearby Riverside, Calif.
And it might not end there.
Corps officials want to construct a “Mega MOUT” in coming years that could become the cornerstone of Marine Corps urban combined-arms training. The city would accommodate forces larger than battalion-sized in a combination of simulated- and live-fire training areas.
If the 1,500-building city were built, it would become the Corps’ largest urban-combat center.
Plans for the expanded MOUT complex here dovetail with Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee’s goal of providing more realistic training for conventional and asymmetrical warfare.
“We’re trying to help blend what’s worked very well in the past ... to make it more realistic,” said Seaton, who commanded 1st battalion, 11th Marines, during the spring 2003 invasion of Iraq. “Ultimately, we’re looking to try and build the capability where you’re fighting [and] you’re operating in a town.”
The Corps’ traditional MOUT village, typically consisting of two or three dozen buildings, has long been an effective space to train smaller Marine units for a variety of day and night missions. “It’s great for teaching how to kick in the door and enter,” Seaton said.
Many say these types of urban training ranges have become old hat to veterans and are less realistic than what leathernecks will encounter in combat zones such as Iraq or Afghanistan.
Open for business
Marines are already training in the first three ranges built at Twentynine Palms, which can accommodate platoon-sized and larger forces.
Live-fire village. The first to be developed was Range 210, a village in the Bullion Training Area. The village — the first of its kind in terms of size — can accommodate small-arms live fire and is envisioned for rifle companies and infantry battalions.
“You can’t do this anywhere else in the Marine Corps,” Seaton said of the village, which opened in April and was christened by members of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, who landed at the range as part of a long-range raid.
Dotting the village are 26 one- and two-story buildings, including 23 constructed of SACON, a shock-absorbent material that looks and feels like concrete but absorbs 5.56mm and 7.62mm rounds.
“This is the first installment,” said Seaton, noting that the village could grow.
Because Marines can shoot both inside and outside the buildings, the facility requires solid planning and strict adherence to safety requirements, he said.
“It’s not just a shooting house,” he said. “A unit will have to figure out how to attack it. This isn’t like a traditional range. You have to figure this out. You have to be careful about shooting out, so this poses some pretty unique challenges.”
Run and gun. What looks like a Third World truck stop is a new live-fire convoy course, the second phase of the new MOUT complex. Opened last fall in the Prospect Training Area, the small range includes about 14 buildings made of SACON and has been used this year during Combined Arms Exercises. Its location allows a unit to move or fight through an ambush as it maneuvers through different training areas.
Electronic “civilian” targets are scattered about on the dusty road, which “forces you to slow down,” Seaton said, and electronic “enemy” targets pop up in windows.
While convoy training is already a standard scenario for troops deploying to Iraq, the new convoy range lets them fire live ammunition, making it more challenging.
Layered terrain. Construction crews recently finished a 100-building, non-live-fire town at Range 200. The buildings, made from an assortment of shipping containers and cinderblock walls, line streets and alleys. Tunnels crisscross the range in some places.
The course in the East Training Area “is meant to challenge your small-unit leaders, challenge your Marines, challenge your corpsman in how to operate in built-up areas, across the board,” Seaton said.
Cinderblock walls, for example, present challenges and provide a greater sense of realism. “Anybody who’s been to Iraq knows that you have to deal with walls,” he said.
Wrecked cars already are among the rubble that is strewn about the range and light poles and electrical wires are being installed.
“At night, it’ll interfere with your ability to use [night-vision goggles], potentially,” Seaton said. “It’ll create different shadows.”
Streets vary in width, which poses an additional challenge for combined-arms operations. Some are wide enough for a tank, while others are tight alleyways or dead ends.
“Driving there kind of makes your hair stand up on your neck.”
Next up: ‘Sasoville’
This month marks initial construction on “Sasoville,” a large town that will include about 350 buildings near Range 200 in the East Training Area.
The training will remain largely the same at the new non-live-fire range and will include exercises in patrolling, vehicle checkpoints, searches and convoys.
But the urban ranges at Twentynine Palms will add new elements to the scenarios.
For example, a battalion housed at the base’s Camp Wilson might face angry locals while one of the unit’s convoys deals with a roadside bomb and one of its companies fights insurgents at the live-fire village miles away.
“The idea is to challenge them from the command-and-control perspective by having multiple activities happen in a very dispersed area,” Seaton said. “This is where we’re really starting to blend that urban-warfare training with some of the more traditional live-fire combined-arms pieces that we’ve done.”
By September, the SASO instructors will move to Twentynine Palms, where the group will expand to a 60-member cadre.
Super-MOUT
Training officials are saving the biggest piece for last.
Urban-warfare training would make a huge leap with a super-sized MOUT facility that, if approved and funded, would be the Corps’ largest and most complex urban training facility.
Though some are calling it “Mega MOUT” or “primary town,” the facility for now is referred to as “Combined Arms MOUT.”
“We’re proposing the concept, and we hope that it becomes more than a concept soon,” Seaton said.
“We’re not building this for Iraq. We’re not building it for Afghanistan,” he noted. “We’re building it for some generic — some future — area where we may fight, so we don’t want to tailor this to where we are right now.”
An environmental review is in the works and should be completed early next year.
The MOUT complex would be a mix of shipping containers and concrete buildings up to six stories, with multiple rooms Marines would have to search and clear. It would include 1,500 buildings arranged around an urban core and feature an “old town” area with narrow streets and traffic circles, an industrial area, a stadium, highway interchanges, bridges, a river and subterranean tunnels.
“The money will be a factor there in how elaborate we make it,” Seaton said.
The plan — which officials stress is still conceptual and still unfunded — also could incorporate an outlying airfield and port, as well as Sasoville and a version of “Yodaville,” the live-fire urban aviation training range near Yuma, Ariz.
“It will let us integrate air into the ground operations,” Seaton said.
“It will buy enough depth and enough breadth that you can get multiple units in there and challenge you with cross-boundary coordination.”
The range would expand on air-ground coordination at a higher level than what’s provided at other ranges and during other exercises, Seaton said.
“We would like to see if there’s a way where we can safely do that sort of realistic training here, to present the same challenges from the air as well as from the ground,” he said. “Conceptually, we think we can do that.”
The notion of creating a mega-MOUT complex has circulated since late 2001, although it wasn’t until 2002 when the idea garnered more interest.
If built, it would greatly expand on urban training at the combat center and would augment the existing CAX program.
“We anticipate that a future CAX will have an urban dimension to it,” he added, “particularly what our Marines are facing the last two or three years.”
Ellie