They will spend a month there before they depart for Afghanistan in May.
Located at Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert, the National Training Center will give the Arctic Wolves a better sense of the climate they will face in Afghanistan and the challenges they will encounter working with Afghan people.
The Army has built mock Afghan villages in the desert and uses more than 200 role players to prepare soldiers for situations they might face. Some of the role players are Afghan nationals.
“This type of training used to be more about how to kill and blow things up,” said Maj. Dave Mattox, a spokesman for U.S. Army Alaska. “Now it's more about using non-lethal action to create stability.”
The literacy rate is less than 10 percent in the area where the brigade will be stationed, and translators have difficulty understanding the language of nearby villages, Col. Todd Wood said in December when the deployment was officially announced.
The location of the deployment has not been announced to protect the brigade’s safety.
Troops will receive special training for operating their eight-wheeled armored Stryker vehicles under the conditions they will face in Afghanistan. The brigade previously served two combat tours in Iraq, which has considerably more infrastructure.
Fort Irwin is one of three major bases where troops prepare before deploying. The other two are in Louisiana and Germany.
While the troops train, their vehicles will be prepared for Afghanistan. Especially important is defending from the improvised explosive devices that have killed Americans in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Some 300 vehicles will be outfitted technology designed to jam the frequencies typically used to detonate these bombs.
Troops will have a month off after their training and before leaving for the war zone.
Contact staff writer Sam Friedman at 459-7545.
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