Idaho National Guard wraps up large-scale training

The Idaho Army National Guard’s 116th Cavalry Brigade Combat Team is about to head home after spending a month at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin in California. About 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers spend two weeks out in the field getting real force-on-force experience. They train against another Army unit, getting offensive, defensive and live-fire training. The training is designed to simulate conditions in the Middle East, but it can also apply to forest regions.

“The training is very difficult,” said Col. Scott Sheridan. “There’s very little sleep. It’s hot. You’re uncomfortable. And you’re always under contact, some form of contact. The opposing forces have you in contact 22 out of 24 hours a day.”

This is the brigade’s first time at the training center since 2015. Cpl. Robert Sweet, of Rexburg, said this time around is different, and the soldiers have grown as a brigade.

“I’m a cannon crew member,” Sweet said. “Our unit, we have a lot of new crews. So just the basic fundamentals. We like the crawl, walk, run phase. We kind of bypassed the crawl and just kind of went running and I think we did good on that.”

The brigade has been preparing for the training center for the past two years. Now, in year three, they felt they were prepared.

“Being here before we kind of had a good game plan, we just took it step-by-step” said Sgt. Holly Coriell. “Even if communication slipped a little, we adapted and overcame and accomplished our mission. We did very, very well as a battalion.”

“The better you do, the harder it gets,” Sheridan said. “So the opposing forces, it’s success if you have the opposing forces work harder, which is what the 116th soldiers were able to do.”

The 116th CBCT is made up of battalions from Army National Guard units in Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Oregon Army National Guards. After a month of working together, they are all one unit. This round of training is deemed a success.

“They started out nine separate units kind of on their own,” said Brig. Gen. Farin Schwartz. “And after about four days, you know, literally just a four-day period, they’re then functioning as an entire 5,000-soldier brigade that has the capabilities of deploying anywhere in the world.”

The Idaho Air National Guard 124th Fighter Wing provided air support using the A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft. As of now, the brigade is expected to be deployed to Germany for a month beginning next spring.