Hohenfels soldiers training troops at Fort Bragg

Two soldiers from Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, provide security while on a route reconnaissance mission during an exercise at Fort Bragg, N.C., with members of the the Joint Multinational Readiness Center from Hohenfels, Germany. Photo: Kris A. Eglin / U.S. Army.

Hohenfels soldiers training troops at Fort Bragg
By Seth Robson, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Sunday, March 15, 2009

GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — Six hundred trainers and support staff from Hohenfels’ Joint Multinational Readiness Center are at Fort Bragg, N.C., this month helping prepare soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division for a potential overseas combat mission.

The exercise is designed to test the cost effectiveness of providing pre-deployment training for troops at their home bases instead of sending them to the Army’s combat training centers. ...

The Army will look at the Fort Bragg training and compare the cost of moving the trainers and their equipment there against the cost of moving a brigade of almost 4,000 soldiers and their equipment to a training center, [Maj. Nick Sternberg, the JMRC public affairs officer] said.

For the 82nd Airborne training, JMRC has sent its observer controller teams, Arabic language role players and two companies of 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment soldiers to act as enemy fighters.

"We are using the training area at Fort Bragg and we have added to it by constructing MOUT (military operations in urban terrain) sites and mock villages," Sternberg said. ...

One advantage of training a unit at its home base is that the soldiers spend less time away from home, Sternberg said.

"With the number of deployments that units have and the requirements they have before they deploy this reduces time away from home and family during training," he said.