Army News, news from Iraq, - Army Times

Fort Knox taking armor training on road

FORT KNOX, Ky. — The Abrams tank won’t be the only mobile thing about the Army’s Armor School training class.

The Army is taking the class on the road, citing the lack of troops volunteering to travel to Fort Knox, Ky., for the nine-week course to become master gunners after completing multiple 15-month tours in Iraq.

“Now we come to them,” said Maj. Chris Cavin, 16th Cavalry Regiment commander, one of the instructors for the course.

Sgt. 1st Class Jason Evans, also an instructor for the Armor School, said he spent six months away from his assignment in Germany to become a master gunner.

“That was a big family killer,” he said.

Chances to attend courses such as this often come as a service member considers whether to leave the military or become a career soldier, said Staff Sgt. Jeremy Whiting, a course instructor for the 16th Cavalry Regiment.

“There’s a big difference in the commitment levels,” he said. “There are a lot of things in the Army where you choose family or you choose Army. ... This will take the decision out of it.”

The classrooms for the training are being folded into three semitrailers with the first road trip scheduled for July. At the latest, the first class will be in October at Fort Bliss, Texas, to train members of the 1st Armor Division.

Evans and Whiting are now training students in the trailers, seeking to identify any problems before the mobile course rolls out.

The $2.8 million project features state-of-the-art equipment, some of which is not found in the conventional master gunner course.

One trailer features the inner workings of an M256 120mm gun, the main weapon on the Abrams. It can be started in ultraslow motion, showing students how its parts move.

“As the name applies, they become a master of each one of these weapons,” Cavin said.

A second trailer houses an 18-student classroom, where soldiers examine cutouts of two smaller machine guns found on the tanks. The trailer also holds projector screens.

A third trailer hauls equipment needed for the course, which can be self sufficient and run on generators.

“We could run in the desert,” Cavin said.

The trailers also carry a $300,000 three-dimensional imagery program and a 72-inch projector screen that can broadcast both inside and outside the trailers.

And, even though the training will be on the road, the standards are still high, Whiting said. The training requires a 100 percent score in a hands-on exam and a 90 percent score on a 10-question written exam to pass.

“A ‘B’ doesn’t cut it around here,” Whiting said.