Army Chief of Staff praises training during visit to Fort Irwin

FORT IRWIN — At times during his visit to Fort Irwin on Thursday, Gen. George Casey, the Army Chief of Staff, said he felt as though he was back in Iraq.

Casey, who returned from a trip to Iraq a few weeks ago, observed the training that soldiers go through before deploying at the Army's premier training center in the Mojave Desert. Casey last toured the National Training Center in May of 2007 and said since that time, the realism of the training had made a quantum leap, he said.

“I was very impressed with what I saw out there today in terms of replicating the environment,” Casey said. “I must admit I walked down the street the first time the hair stood up on the back of my neck cause it was so real.”

Casey said he visited Fort Irwin after returning from Iraq in 2007 to see if the Army was effectively training soldiers for the fight. Then and now, he was impressed with the training and stressed the role Fort Irwin in preparing U.S. soldiers for war.

“It's so important to the confidence of our soldiers to know that they have been in the environment and in combat, they know that they've seen it and they can operate effectively in it,” Casey said during an interview outside of Medina Jabal, one of Fort Irwin's simulated Iraqi towns.

The scenarios played out at Fort Irwin mimic the conditions on the ground in Iraq. Arabic-speaking Iraqis populate the town and soldiers from the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment fill the roles of insurgents and terrorists to test incoming rotations of soldiers. Casey said, however, that even if the theater of fighting were to change soldiers trained at Fort Irwin would still be prepared.

“Right now we're focused on irregular warfare,” Casey said of the current regiment of training. “A lot of the skills that they have are directly transferable to major conventional operations.”

During his visit to Fort Irwin, Casey met with Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard, the commanding general of Fort Irwin and the National Training Center, to devise ways to incorporate more conventional warfare exercises into Fort Irwin's training. Casey also said that a soldier trained at Fort Irwin would be prepared to fight in Afghanistan.

“We won't flinch on making sure that our soldiers have the best possible training and equipment to succeed in whatever war we send them into and that's what's happening here everyday,” he said of Fort Irwin.

With a record number of U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan, around 33,000, and a casualty rate that could make 2008 the deadliest year there since the 2001 invasion, the Army is facing pressure to shift its focus from Iraq. The spike in violence is forcing U.S. leaders, including the presidential candidates, to call for still more troops there. Recent fighting between Russia and Georgia have also prompted concern that the United States may need to send resources there, entering troops into a different type of warfare.

Soldiers are not the only men and women fighting the war on terrorism, and Casey addressed the needs of Army families as well. A number of families at Fort Irwin have experienced three or four deployments, and Casey said the multiple deployments have stretched the Army and its families thin. He said the recent Army-Family Covenant, signed in October, and a goal to increase time at home between deployments will help families whether the war. The covenant provides more money to improve housing, education and employment opportunities for families. Casey also said that time between deployments could increase to nearly 24 months by 2011.

“What were asking of our families is far different than anything I have seen in my career up until now,” he said. “While the next two years will continue to be hard, we will gradually build ourselves out of this.”

And to the more than 400 soldiers currently deployed from Fort Irwin and the hundreds of service men and women from Barstow, Casey offered his thanks.

“They are making a difference at a very critical time in our country's history and they are being successful at it, and I believe firmly that the efforts we are making in Iraq and Afghanistan are allowing us to deal with the terrorist threat there and not here,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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