A new counter-IED training center has opened in Newport News, Va., using up-to-the-minute information to prepare deploying U.S. troops and allies, according to an official.
The Joint Training Counter-IED Operations Integration Center (JTCOIC), which opened April 7, is the training arm of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO).
JIEDDO is the Defense Department lead to combat IEDs for the services. JIEDDO essentially operates in three areas: training the force, attacking the network and defeating the device.
“Our mission is to provide training on the JIEDDO attack-the-network capability,” Jim Slavin, JTCOIC director and 30-year Army veteran, told Defense Daily in a recent interview. “We do that in the construct of the current wartime operational environment, which means having access to all the information that is currently going on downrange and using that in a training construct.”
JIEDDO and the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) drew together on JTCOIC to ensure the services and joint organizations are able to use the latest counter-IED capabilities and access the latest information.
The center is tied into what is immediately happening in theater because of the work JIEDDO has done to disseminate information across the Distributed Common Ground Station, he said. The information gathered comes to the center, which moves the information from the operational environment to a training venue.
“We have complete access to what’s happening downrange right now,” Slavin said. “We provide simulations that replicate the most current IED events that are occurring downrange.”
Getting the information to troops before they deploy helps them understand how the enemy is acting, he said. The information and simulations are provided to posts, camps and stations, the National Training Center in California, and the Joint Readiness Training Center in Louisiana. For example, if an IED event occurs today, “in four days we will have that replicated with a gaming software–it’s called Virtual Battlespace II–units at all the training locations, or at home station can play this simulation just as it occurred downrange,” he said.
Troops can see how the enemy was operating, how friendly forces operated, and discuss whether procedures need to change for a better course of action.
Soldiers “get their head in the game” early, Slavin said. They actually see what it looks like on the street, in Afghanistan or Iraq where the event took place. The simulation replicates all the vehicles, buildings and ground around the unfolding event.
Familiarity prepares troops for what could happen in theater and puts the events in a construct everyone can understand.
“We provide the environment of what occurred, and how it occurred, and where it occurred–we let then the units and the individuals work out their procedures of how they would operate against that,” Slavin said.
Troops then “know that JIEDDO will respond and provide information when the unit downrange wants it, in the manner they want it and on the timeline they want it,” he said. “Just as JIEDDO’s operations arm does that, we do that as the JIEDDO training arm to help them formulate their procedures on attacking the network.”
Since the United States doesn’t go to war alone, JTCOIC works with allies, as well. They have access to all the simulations, Slavin said. The sims reside on the Army Knowledge Online system so they are protected, but unclassified. JTCOIC sends out notifications when new items are available.
Slavin has received some feedback. For example, trainers at Ft. Bragg, N.C., told him “what we [JTCOIC] are providing is preparing soldiers to save lives.”
Siting JTCOIC in Newport News puts it close to TRADOC at Ft. Monroe, the Navy, JFCOM and NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) in Norfolk.
However, whether the JTCOIC works on something like the NATO Training Mission-Iraq (NTM-I), a recent agreement, depends on the JIEDDO organization. NATO ACT and JFCOM are both led by Marine Gen. James Mattis.
There have been discussions between JIEDDO and JFCOM on support to other combatant commands, and things will change as JTCOIC grows and evolves.
“All the things that the JIEDDO attack-the-network operation folks do, we do in the training venue,” Slavin said. Initially the center is working with the Army, JFCOM and soon, the Marine Corps.
“As we grow we are covering all the services,” he said. “Where JIEDDO goes, we will go,” Slavin said of the training arm