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Adviser mission to leave Fort Riley

TOPEKA, Kan. — The Army has announced plans to shift a mission at Fort Riley that trains advisers sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The mission is being reassigned to Fort Polk, La., home of the Joint Readiness Training Center, where units go to prepare for combat operations. The Army will add 825 people to Fort Polk to train the advisers, who assist the Iraqi and Afghanistan forces.

Each brigade works with teams of 11 to 16 advisers, who train at Fort Riley and meet up with the units once overseas. Brig. Gen. Jim Yarbrough, commander of the center and Fort Polk, said the move means the units and advisers units will be able to train together.

“I think this is perfect. That’s a very effective way to train,” Yarbrough, who previously on the 1st Infantry staff at Fort Riley and was the commander of the Iraqi Assistance Group, said Monday.

Fort Riley will continue supporting adviser teams that deploy from Kansas until they return from their missions. The last Fort Riley adviser class leaves in late September 2009, said Lt. Col. James MacGregor, chief of plans for the 1st Infantry Division.

“We will continue to have a piece of this mission long after training stops here,” MacGregor said.

Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey has called the adviser mission one of the top priorities of the Army.

Fort Riley has been training advisers since October 2006, when it was consolidated from several other locations, preparing more than 10,000 soldiers, airmen and sailors for the yearlong mission. The training has been conducted by 825 soldiers of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, which will become a heavy brigade combat team.

“The timing is right for the Army. This is a mature training program. We’re inheriting a program that we don’t have to define,” Yarbrough said.

At Fort Polk, the Army will activate the 162nd Infantry Brigade, whose sole mission will be the training of advisers. When the move is complete, about 10,000 soldiers will be stationed at the post.

Fort Riley will also see an increase in soldiers as the 1st Brigade grows to 3,500 soldiers, pushing the Kansas post’s population to more than 18,000 over the next two years.

John Nagl, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said the move to Fort Polk comes as the military is short of advisers that it needs in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Nagl, who trained advisers at Fort Riley before retiring earlier this year, questioned the move to Louisiana instead of the National Training Center in California, a climate that is closer that that of Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We’re training people to fight in the deserts and mountains. It seems you would want to train them in the deserts and mountains,” Nagl said.