Troops from the states who in wartime would get their combat gear from a warehouse at Camp Carroll in South Korea will practice drawing it there Thursday before using it in a big training exercise.
About 300 soldiers of Task Force Hawkins began arriving on the peninsula this week to take part in the annual Key Resolve/Foal Eagle exercise. They’re from Fort Stewart, Ga., and Fort Sill, Okla., and include armor and field artillery units.
They’ll "fall in" on military equipment warehoused by the Army Field Support Battalion-Northeast Asia, which is headquartered at Carroll. The battalion is part of the 403rd Support Brigade at Camp Henry in Daegu.
"An exercise like this allows soldiers to practice their real-world mission requirements" of drawing combat equipment in South Korea if hostilities erupted on the peninsula, said Army Maj. Jerome L. Pionk, a spokesman for the 8th U.S. Army in Seoul.
The equipment draw will start Thursday and continue Friday, said Lt. Col. Raymond Jensen, commanding officer of the battalion.
From Warehouse 15, the troops will mount M1A1 Abrams tanks, M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers, and other equipment.
They’ll inventory the gear and do maintenance checks, then test drive the vehicles.
The equipment will then be moved to the post’s railhead, where workers of the Army Materiel Support Center-Korea will load it onto railcars. It’ll be hauled north Thursday and Friday to the Rodriguez Live Fire Complex.
The U.S. military stores pre-positioned stocks at Camp Carroll and at other places in South Korea and in Japan, so that they’re ready in the event of war or other crises, Jensen said.
