FORT KNOX, Ky. (May 30, 2000) -- Amid intense machine-gun fire and clouds of grenade smoke, U.S. forces advanced into the village to wrest the local radio station from rebel control.
A fierce gun battle broke out as a platoon from the 101st Airborne cleared two townhouses of rebel soldiers. A tank then smashed through a pair of cars blocking the road to reach the radio station.
The crowd applauded. The latest demonstration of Fort Knox’s new Zussman Mounted Urban Combat Training site had gone as planned. The nearly $18 million facility opened this spring to train soldiers to fight in occupied cities. Its design draws on lessons learned from actual battles, including firefights in Kosovo and Somalia.
"Future combined arms soldiers who will train at this site… will have to apply the lessons they learn here in combat," said Maj. Gen. B.B. Bell, commanding general at Fort Knox. "They will emerge alive -- and victorious -- from future urban battlefields as a direct result of the training that they receive here."
Bell dedicated the training site May 25 to the memory of 1944 Congressional Medal of Honor winner Raymond Zussman. Zussman, a second lieutenant, left his tank to reconnoiter enemy positions, alone and on foot, in a French town. He helped capture or kill more than 100 German soldiers.
Designed to imitate eastern European architecture, Fort Knox’s urban combat center features more than 20 concrete-block buildings with varying levels of simulated damage. There’s also a junkyard, a soccer field, an open-air market, and soon, a Third-World slum. Smashed and decrepit cars litter the site. None of the buildings have glass windows; some also lack roofs or floors. When an exercise is underway, thick smoke obscures most of the buildings, and explosions assault the ears.
As training advances, observer-controllers working in a tower that looms over the village crank up the stress level. They might "blow up" a bridge, knock down a pole, or spring a dummy out from behind furniture to threaten a soldier searching a room.
"We want to prepare them for where we’re going to send them," said Fort Knox range master Andy Andrews, who oversees the site’s development. "We’re sending them to cities," not to the traditional battlefields on open plains, he said.
Fort Knox’s urban warfare training includes both cultural and practical lessons. Don’t enter a mosque or you might spark a riot. Be alert for civilians, especially children. Look down before entering a building, especially when wearing night vision goggles, or you might fall through a missing floor. (Those who mess up here land on mats.)
Soldiers also gain experience in combined arms tactics before putting it to use in the real world.
"I think the big thing is teamwork, how everybody -- scouts, tankers, medics and infantry -- everybody has come together and is working together," said Spec. Marcus Mitchell of the Fort Knox-based 16th Cavalry.
While there are other urban combat training centers around the U.S., Fort Knox’s offers the greatest degree of realism -- and it’s the Army’s only training site for mounted weapons platforms, said Fort Knox public affairs officer John Rickey. It’s proved very popular.
"So far, we’ve been completely booked," said Andrews. The center has trained "all three battalions of the Rangers, (and) a lot of our very high-end special operations forces."
A Marine division pays a visit in July, Rickey said, and other units will keep the site booked until 2001.
The realistic training ranked high with Mitchell, who drove an armored Bradley fighting vehicle during the May 25 demonstration. "I got hands-on experience, like driving through and over cars," said Mitchell, 27. "It was fun."
Links:
Description and photos of Fort Knox's Mounted Urban Combat Training Site
Visit U.S. Army Armor Center, Fort Knox's homepage
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