Udairi Range - Kuwait

The following day, we packed yet another sea bag for our two and a half day stay at the Udairi Range complex. We traveled for about forty minutes north into the desert. Udairi Range is vast, so large in fact, that is covers two thirds of Kuwait (this is the part that has neither cities nor oil). As a result, there is no fence, per se, just a series of sprawling training complexes. We were at one particular complex that simulates life at a typical Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Iraq. In fact, we were only eight miles from the border with Iraq.

FOB life is austere; there is no running water but there is generator-provided power. Buildings are the current descendants of semi-circular World War II Quonset huts and are (thankfully) air conditioned. Our classroom also functioned as our sleeping area. After our first afternoon, we stacked chairs in the corner and spread out sleeping bags, while keeping our sea bags outside. We also set a rotating watch for our gear. No one really slept well and we looked back nostalgically at our bunk bed equipped tents at Camp Virginia.

The next day we woke at 0400, ate an MRE for breakfast (penne pasta in spicy sauce, for me), put our on IBA and marched in the pre-dawn darkness to a weapons range. Udairi is run by a contracting company whose staff consists of retired senior army enlisted personnel. My section’s instructor for the day was a retired army first sergeant (E-8) who saw action in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We shot a close quarters combat (CQC) course. While at Fort Jackson, we learned basic marksmanship with our pistols and rifles. CQC stresses fighting at much closer ranges, typically moving while firing. We each received sixty rounds of ammunition for the day (not that much but better than nothing).

Like many army activities, our drills were done via exercise commands, not unlike our PT exercises at Fort Jackson, shouted first by our instructor echoed back as a group. For example, the instructor would shout, “The Walk Stop Turn and Shoot!” Us: “The Walk Stop Turn and Shoot!” Him: “Fighter Stance!” Us: “Fighter Stance!” Him: “Ready!” Us: “Ready!” Then we would walk away from the targets, pause, look over our shoulder at the target, pivot 180 degrees, fire two shots at our targets, and pivot back the other direction. Accordingly we spent a lot of time on safely executing these firing drills as we were close together.

The afternoon was spent indoors with another, charismatic, instructor, Mr. Massey, another retired Army First Sergeant with a lot of combat experience, who prepared us for the culminating convoy exercise to be held the next day. He taught us about how convoys have adapted to the enemy’s tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), how our own TTPs changed in response, and how the enemy counter-responded. HUMVEEs today in Iraq are third generation, up-armored variants (M1114) which are very blast resistant to roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Our convoy course would run though simulated Iraqi towns and feature five check points where different problems, all drawn from real life operations, would be encountered.

In keeping with our training program’s focus of encouraging junior leadership, a female junior officer was designated as our section’s convoy commander. She quickly rose to the challenge and we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening mission planning. My assignment was easy; a passenger in vehicle three whose focus would be as a gun truck and traffic control. My responsibilities were too easy, as they say in army training: scan five meters out in the event of a vehicle stop and dismount and patrol out to twenty-five meters in the event of a prolonged stop.