# (A new) Home on the range: NTC Fort Irwin

/ Published Feb. 8, 2024
BATTLE CREEK, Mich., 
“Realism is the name of the game,” and Defense Logistics Agency reusable material stocks help make that game better.

So says Range Officer David Booher of the National Training Center at Fort Irwin in California, who works with the 65-person Training Support Division maintenance team that helps give soldiers a clearer picture of what combat operations downrange might look like.

“Our planners script scenarios based on real-world missions, specifically designed for where trainees might expect to be deployed,” Booher said. “[NTC has] an opposing force and we let them battle for a week. We let it play out.”                 Dump trucks, road graders, trailers and utility vehicles pulled from DLA Disposition Services are all used by the National Training Center maintenance team to help maintain and access some 1,800 elements spread across a vast maneuver area.                            230901-D-GV919-1282                            Dump trucks, road graders, trailers and utility vehicles pulled from DLA Disposition Services are all used by the National Training Center maintenance team to help maintain and access some 1,800 elements spread across a vast maneuver area.            SHARE IMAGE:Download ImageImage DetailsPhoto By: Jake JoyVIRIN: 230901-D-GV919-1282

Ten times a year, a brigade-sized convoy rumbles up Fort Irwin Road from Barstow, bringing mechanized infantry units and heavy weapons. For about a month, trainees live in deployment-type conditions, spending a week preparing, another week engaging in force-on-force simulation against the permanent home team, and then finishing off with a week of live-fire exercise. 

“The value of coming to NTC first is we’re giving them the ability to train, reset, and do it again until they perfect it,” Booher said. “I think we owe that to the soldiers that come through here. We allow them to make mistakes in training so they can survive in combat.”

Used and excess materials from DLA help elevate the training experience in three distinct ways. The first involves road maintenance. For a mostly dry environment, Fort Irwin can still see epic deluges, where flash flooding wipes away roads in minutes. Booher said that continuous access to the roughly thousand square mile “box” is essential, and maintainers rely daily on reutilized dump trucks, road graders, trailers and utility vehicles received at no cost through DLA to keep their maneuvering area traversable.    

                Disposal Services Representative Leah Bailey looks over a DLA-bound property collection point at Fort Irwin. Bailey is part of the nearby DLA Disposition Services property disposal site team that assists the National Training Center and major commands throughout the region with equipment disposition, reuse, and hazardous materials disposal.                            230901-D-GV919-1270                            Disposal Services Representative Leah Bailey looks over a DLA-bound property collection point at Fort Irwin. Bailey is part of the nearby DLA Disposition Services property disposal site team that assists the National Training Center and major commands throughout the region with equipment disposition, reuse, and hazardous materials disposal.            SHARE IMAGE:Download ImageImage DetailsPhoto By: Jake JoyVIRIN: 230901-D-GV919-1270 “We look for stuff all the time,” he said. “Always looking. Always interested. It’s smart to look to DLA for the free stuff first before you go and start spending money.”

Like other ranges and training areas, Fort Irwin’s used property screeners can evaluate and request excess and used DOD materials from any of the DLA Disposition Services property disposal sites scattered across the planet. Booher said quarterly communications from the agency’s Reutilization, Transfer and Donation office in Battle Creek, Michigan, help him keep an eye on items the training team can potentially use.

The base possesses the unique ability to produce and maintain hundreds of miles of road solely using reutilized quarry machinery acquired from surplus stock after a unit deactivation in the 1980s. Maintenance officials said buying and transporting the amount of gravel they can produce on site would be “massively cost prohibitive” without the equipment.

“The quarry saves us untold dollars every year,” Booher said.

A second way DLA reuse material helps amp up the realism is with set dressings. Busses, taxis, and other passenger vehicles are placed throughout 12 distinct towns featuring 1,500 buildings that are sometimes fabricated from excess shipping containers and construction materials. Region-specific domesticated animals mill about. Actors interact with soldiers in working cafes, mock bicycle and electronics repair shops and marketplaces – all of which can use castoff materials to mimic real-world conditions.                 Hundreds of tactical and non-tactical stationary hard targets repurposed from DLA Disposition Services used stock dot the thousand square miles of Mojave Desert landscape that make up the National Training Center at Fort Irwin in California.                            230901-D-GV919-1286                            Hundreds of tactical and non-tactical stationary hard targets repurposed from DLA Disposition Services used stock dot the thousand square miles of Mojave Desert landscape that make up the National Training Center at Fort Irwin in California.            SHARE IMAGE:Download ImageImage DetailsPhoto By: Jake JoyVIRIN: 230901-D-GV919-1286

“We transform the cities to represent different areas and themes based on the mission set,” Booher said. “We have trained role players that come in and can speak the language. Soldiers roll through the towns and interact, and senior leaders have to engage with the local populace by working through a translator.” 

Disposal Services Representative Leah Bailey serves Fort Irwin customers from DLA’s property disposal site at nearby Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow. One of her bigger recent projects involved the receipt and potential repurposing of hundreds of Stryker armored fighting vehicles turned in by the Marine Corps Fleet Support Battalion at MCLB Barstow’s Yermo Annex. She visits Fort Irwin regularly to check in with units and works with her site’s reuse specialists to help customers acquire potential targets and usable equipment.

“Everybody comes together to help out and make sure our customers know where to start, what to do, what paperwork they need,” Bailey said. “We’re here to take care of our warfighters.” 

                Excess military vehicles reutilized through the Defense Logistics Agency help provide set dressing in and around a dozen fabricated desert towns at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin. Scripted scenarios in urban environments populated with region-specific actors, animals, and signage allow soldiers to face challenges and make mistakes in a realistic environment before deploying to face real-world threats.                            230901-D-GV919-1336                            Excess military vehicles reutilized through the Defense Logistics Agency help provide set dressing in and around a dozen fabricated desert towns at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin. Scripted scenarios in urban environments populated with region-specific actors, animals, and signage allow soldiers to face challenges and make mistakes in a realistic environment before deploying to face real-world threats.            SHARE IMAGE:Download ImageImage DetailsPhoto By: Jake JoyVIRIN: 230901-D-GV919-1336 Naturally, the NTC also stages excess property as kinetic and non-kinetic targets “sprinkled all through” the training area. More than 1,800 live fire area elements can be targeted with lasers and provide NTC with data to share with its trainees. A few hundred more hulk objects get hammered by actual rounds. Every person and all the equipment in the maneuver area are tracked using a sophisticated multiple integrated laser engagement system, or MILES, monitored from a range operations facility. 

“We know where people are when they’re moving around the box,” Booher said. “If I shoot you while you’re driving through in your Toyota pickup, you’ll show up as dead on the screen, in real time. We can show the brigade commander how well they did or how miserably they did on certain tasks.”