Guard officers call training session a success

By Pat Caldwell - Argus Observer
Sunday, August 26, 2007 2:07 AM PDT

A M1A1 Abrams main battle tank moves down an access route on a tank gunnery range at Gowen Field in this early August photo. Eastern Oregon’s 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry, Oregon Army National Guard journeyed to the Orchard Training area in late July for its annual training session. Top officers in the battalion said the unit performed especially well after being away from tanks for more than three years. The unit deployed to Iraq in 2004.

Ontario - Top leaders of Eastern Oregon’s 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry, Oregon Army National Guard spent the past year anticipating an array of potential challenges regarding the two-week annual training cycle south of Gowen Field on the Orchard Training Area tank gunnery ranges.

So when the unit journeyed from armories across Oregon in late July for the annual training cycle, 3rd Battalion leaders felt the unit was capable of overcoming just about any challenge it faced.

Those same top-level leaders, though, did not count on one key factor: Mother Nature.

A powerful, unexpected wind storm that blew off the Owyhee Mountains during a critical point in training shut down the Eastern Oregon Guard outfit and left many top-level 3rd Battalion leaders both elated and frustrated regarding the 2007 annual training session.

On one hand, top-level battalion officers said the unit performed far above expectations, especially since most citizen-soldiers were attempting to qualify on M1A1 Abrams tanks for the first time since 2003.

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On the other hand, those same officers voiced frustration with the fact they simply ran out of time after the wind storm cut off power and shut down the tank gunnery ranges for more than 18 hours — just as many tanks crews were preparing for their final qualification trials.

“It (the storm) took part of a day (tank gunnery) run and all of a night run away from us,” 1st Lt. Seth Musgrove, the second in command of Ontario’s Oregon Army National Guard unit, said.

Musgrove said the well-known time constraints on Guardsmen at annual training haunted the 3rd Battalion after the storm hit.

“Range time is precious. But there was nothing you could do. You have to sit on your tank and wait,” he said.

The Ontario Guard unit — Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry — did especially well, qualifying five out of its seven tanks.

“The only reason we did not qualify the other two is we ran out of range time,” Musgrove said. “The biggest factor for us was the wind storm.”

Still, Musgrove said, Charlie Company performed above expectations during the annual training cycle which concluded at the end of the first week in August.

“It went well. We executed like we needed to. We executed our plan nearly perfectly,” he said.

The commander of the 3rd Battalion, Lt. Col. Brian Cole, La Grande, also conceded the storm hit the unit hard.

“The storm was one of those things I had no control over,” Cole said.

Cole said the high desert early August squall was similar to the massive sand brownouts he encountered when the 3rd Battalion deployed to Iraq.

“It was Kuwait-bad. You couldn’t see anything. It knocked out the power grid,” Cole said.

The storm was so significant, Cole said, because of its timing. The battalion had already encountered, and then overcome, a number of minor issues regarding such things as communications and was moving toward a critical phase — the final Table 8, tank qualification test — when the storm slammed the Orchard Training Area.

“It happened within a battle rhythm,” Cole said. “The storm swallowed up our cushion of time. It almost had the effect of taking twice the time.”

The battalion, Cole said, responded well to the challenge the storm presented. While it made an impact on training, the Eastern Oregon Guardsmen utilized their latent strengths — honed during the deployment to Iraq and refined during a massive reorganization during the past two years — to be successful Cole said.

“You prioritize,” Cole said regarding the battalion’s method of overcoming the time constraints created by the storm.

Overall, Cole said the 2007 annual training session went better than he expected, especially because the unit qualified more than half of its tank crews.

“It exceeded my expectations,” Cole said.

Maj. Kevin Sheehy, the 3rd Battalion’s executive officer, said individual tank units — such as Ontario’s — proved to be more than capable after being away from the big tanks for a long time.

“The tank companies did well,” Sheehy said. “And we had no accidents, no serious injuries. No one would give up.”

Now, Sheehy said, those same tank companies and other units in the battalion will review the annual training cycle and try to improve on their performance.

“We have to take a look at what (tank) engagements gave us the most trouble,” he said.