The Army’s particular operations forces have expanded their coaching footprint in southern New Mexico, opening a brand new coaching and testing facility at White Sands Missile Vary, Army officers introduced.
The brand new Particular Operations Forces – Coaching and Experimentation Heart, or SOF-TEC, was activated March 8. SOF-TEC is a directorate of 1st Special Forces Command.
The brand new heart goals to be “the premier irregular warfare, coaching and experimentation venue,” defined its inaugural director, Col. Theo Unbehagen, in a podcast.
White Sands Missile Vary, which is positioned about 100 miles north of Fort Bliss, Texas, was chosen for the brand new heart due to its proximity to present particular operations coaching websites and the world’s means to permit coaching in all domains — from subterranean to house.
The bottom’s commander, Brig. Gen. Eric Little, defined on the ceremony that troops at White Sands “can do issues right here…that can not be performed anyplace else.”
That’s as a result of the army directs and manages the airspace over the set up, defined Sgt. Maj. Gregg Kibbee, a senior operations NCO for the command, within the podcast. That permits for coaching alternatives that haven’t been achieved at scale earlier than.
“In Fort Bragg, I can camouflage to attempt to cover from being seen by guys on the bottom,” defined Chief Warrant Officer 5 Scott Gronowski, 1st Special Forces Command’s high warrant officer. “However right here [at SOF-TEC]…I’ve to determine how am I going to cover my warmth signature? How am I going to cover my electromagnetic signature?”
In response to Kibbee, the Fort Bliss space has additionally lengthy been dwelling to Army SOF pre-mission coaching workouts, which means that the brand new coaching heart has a head begin on relationships with native, state and federal businesses, in addition to tools and infrastructure already in place.
Once you think about present know-how testing infrastructure at White Sands, Unbehagen defined, that makes the world the right location for every little thing from experimentation, to testing and fielding new weapons, to full-scale life like army coaching eventualities. Kibbee referred to as the world “the right storm for a coaching heart.”
And the deal with particular operations-specific coaching, Unbehagen mentioned, will enable the Army’s elite troops to hit coaching targets which may not be doable when SOF are connected to standard fight coaching heart rotations as supporting forces. That can let “three to 4” occasions extra troops prepare at a time, mentioned Gronowski.
Kibbee additionally hopes SOF-TEC may also help the service’s particular operators break free from “the Afghan village [training] situation” and use the area’s 2 million acres of coaching land, which incorporates entry to inhabitants facilities like El Paso and Las Cruces, New Mexico, for low-visibility coaching occasions. That can enable for extra deal with irregular warfare methods which might be typically rushed in typical CTC rotations.
“A lot of the issues that we’re making an attempt to get after — particularly in competitors — are [short of] large-scale fight operations,” the NCO mentioned. “[SOF-TEC] prolongs that point and permits them to actually get after experimenting with new operational design, making an attempt to do new issues [and] tools…and execute them over weeks.”
Davis Winkie is a senior reporter protecting the Army, specializing in accountability reporting, personnel points and army justice. He joined Navy Instances in 2020. Davis studied historical past at Vanderbilt College and UNC-Chapel Hill, writing a grasp’s thesis about how the Chilly Conflict-era Protection Division influenced Hollywood’s WWII motion pictures.
