Camp Lejeune to get $10 million battle training course
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune was recently granted nearly $10 million from the Department of Defense for a new complex battle training course.
The new range “provides II Marine Expeditionary Force a realistic and relevant training range in support of live-fire and maneuver training for a Marine infantry squad fighting while in the offensive and defensive positions,” Marine Corps spokesman Nat Fahy said in an email to The Daily News.
“(The range) moves training requirements away from NC Highway 24 and the civilian community into a more central part of the installation around a common impact area,” Fahy said.
The 82-acre, $9,989,000 infantry squad battle course will include both stationary and moving infantry targets, stationary and moving armor targets, hostile fire simulators, machine bunkers, mortar simulation devices, an ammunition bunker, machine gun bunker; firing positions and firing beams, Fahy said.
The project will also include a range control tower, field service head, operations/storage building, general instruction building, target storage building, covered bleacher enclosure, covered mess enclosure, ammunition breakdown building, bivouac area and target emplacements. Ancillary equipment includes targets, lane markers, lightning protection, public address system and hostile fire simulators, according to a press release from the Department of Defense.
The battle course will provide service members with an explosive ordinance sweep and potential unexploded ordnance removal zone since it will be located within the G-10 impact area buffer zone, according to the original October solicitation.
The course will give “small unit leaders (the opportunity to) practice in a live-fire environment by directing the squad to engage the simulated enemy from multiple, advantageous positions and maneuver against enemy forces to attain tactical advantage,” Fahy said via the email.
Four proposals were submitted to the DoD for this project, according to the release. Naval Facilities Engineering Command out of Norfolk, Va., selected Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. of Greenbelt, Md., to build the range, according to a DoD contracts listing.
The project is set to be completed by May 2014 according to the release.