Human Resources Warrior soldiers train in convoy operations using the Virtual Battle Space (VBS3) Trainer at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

Transcript

Virtual Battle Space training is designed to stress out the soldiers and make them follow convoy procedures. From receipt of mission all the way through execution. It kind of forces them to think through everything that goes along with the operating a convoy. HR soldiers are often called to go on convoys, especially on the postal side, because they go to outlying FOB’s and either delivering mail or completing postal services. So I found out on my deployment recently, that, you know, I got called upon to put several HR soldiers in my convoy. I come to find out, neither of these soldiers had had that type of training, so I’ve become very passionate about gettin’ my soldiers trained on convoy operations, so even when we’re lacking the resources to conduct live convoy operations, we can at least get the processes down and get the muscle memory down. We throw all kinds of scenarios at them. We put a IED in the road and see how they react to it. Do they call it up to the higher? Do they call it out and stop the convoy? What kind of decisions do they make? So, if they hesitate we’ll hit ’em with small arms fire or mortar fire and see, make them think on their feet and make quick decisions. So, it gets their brains turnin’ and makes them make real life decisions in a split second. Some soldiers love it, some soldiers get really stressed out and annoyed with it because they see the mistakes that are being made, which is great. I always tell ’em at end of every class, if you’re stressed out then we did our job here.

[Instructor] That type of stuff happens with the story boards all the time.