Defense Department to create new joint training center

The Defense Department wants to create a training range within the next two years for conducting large-scale joint-service warfighting exercises, according to David Chu, undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness.

"While we have made great progress in terms of training over the last two or three decades, we still have a long way to go," said Chu in recent remarks at a Defense conference. He added the ongoing war on terrorism has shown the importance of achieving interoperability among the services.

The military services made major changes in their training in the late 1970s, such as emphasizing large-scale and realistic battlefield exercises. Those improvements are credited with the success of the armed services in the Persian Gulf War, the Balkans, and recent operations in Afghanistan. But the services have not had enough joint training prior to deployment and often are forced to improvise in real-world battles, Chu said. The services are still not fully interoperable with one another, there is not a clear understanding of joint warfighting doctrine, and junior and mid-level officers have little training or experience in joint operations, he said.

"However successfully we have indeed improvised in current operations, we should not be simply improvising this on the ground when we're facing the enemy. We should prepare for this," Chu said.

According to Chu, the new training range would emphasize four key principles used in individual service training: a realistic training environment similar to that of actual combat, an opposition force that would serve as a realistic enemy, a reliable evaluation system, and feedback to commanders and troops after the exercises.

Chu did not say how much the new center would cost or where it would be located, but added it would be operating by October 2004.