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836th Transportation Battalion trains and saves dollars with SIMEX

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YOKOHAMA, Japan (USTCNS) --- Despite a conspicuous lack of activity, 400 pieces of military equipment left North Dock recently for an unnamed island in the Pacific.

During the five day Battalion Simulation Exercise, 836th U.S. Army Transportation Battalion loaded nonexistant ships with imaginary cargo to replicate a real-world deployment.

"In the SIMEX , we deploy to an island in the Pacific to support the military operation," said Lt. Col. John Newton, battalion commander. "We went through the deployment phase, did all the personnel readiness procedures - we cut travel orders, made sure everybody had shots and was trained on NBC (Nuclear Biological and Chemical)."

"Then we simulate a deployment and set up the discharge operation where we off-load equipment from the ship. From there we stage the cargo, and coordinate with the customer for the activity and orchestrate all re-movement of the equipment out of the port."

The exercise consisted of three phases. Phase one, preparation, initiated March 9 through May 9. During the preparation period weekly coordination meetings, division training, individual and collective task development, and development took place. Phase two was the execution period conducted in five days. In this phase, actual transportation procedure from deployment to redeployment was simulated.

The last phase was the evaluation where After Action Review would be screened.

"The planning's been going on for months. The (Command Post Exercise) is scheduled in this one week period. Basically, it simulates the real world deployment or exercise from months of planning, preparing the teams, making sure their medical and dental readiness, and all the logistic planning and paper works are done," said Tom Brewer, Operation Chief. "Then we actually deploy to another port or another country and discharge the ship coming in with trucks and tanks or air craft and clearing the cargo out the port."

A total of 400 pieces of military equipment weighing as much as 4,866,550 pounds were mock transported from Japan to an island in Pacific.

Instead of using actual equipment, the contents were simulated by using large index cards.

"We have a bar code system that we use to identify all the equipment. Normally that's stuck on the door or the bumper of the vehicle, or on the side of the container. Since we don't have trucks available here to do that kind of training we are just simulating with the index cards," said Brewer.

"There is not much difference from scanning the label on the side of the truck, and it is more convenient and it really simulates very well," Brewer said. "Obviously, there is cost savings doing simulation exercise. Beyond of the cost there aren't many units in Japan that have a large amount of equipment we can train with. So we can set this up on our own schedule at very little cost and we can do most of the training we need when the real thing come along."

"SIMEX is designed to train Master Labor Contract employees, Department of the Army civilians and soldiers, so they can be deployed and fully capable. SIMEX is mostly designed to get everybody on the same sheet of music, and get them trained up," said Staff Sgt. Joseph Peck, SIMEX controller.

The training is essential for each personnel to be ready for the real time mission which can occur anytime.

"When you are moving a lot of equipment to a port there are few things to consider. Safety is obviously one of the main thing. If somebody is injured or killed, it doesn't matter how well we did everything - we failed," said Brewer. "There is a fair amount of cost involved so if we don't do our job efficiently and effectively the cost increases. Timeline also increases if we don't do our job properly. So both from a safety aspect and an efficiency aspect, and supporting our customers who are the war fighters, it's important to have our job done well." (599TH TRANSPORTATION GROUP PUBLIC AFFAIRS).

Office of Public Affairs - transcom-pa@mail.mil
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