Mobile MOUT Brings Urban Warfare to Troops

National Guard, Nov 2003

With Cold War battlefield tactics a thing of the past and troops required to weed out the enemy holed up in the middle of bustling cities, Anteon responded with Mobile Military Operations on Urban Terrain (Mobile MOUT).

These portable facilities simulate terror war realities and are able to deploy to most military theaters and offer soldiers reallife training simulations close to the battlefield.

"Mobile MOUT offers several advantages over conventional brick and mortar MOUT training facilities," said Jerry Bradford, director of business development at Anteon.

The ability to relocate the entire training facility and reconfigure single rooms within the facility or the entire site is extremely cost effective and is one the equipment's primary advantages. It also offers the same technology level as a permanent training site.

Anteon introduced Mobile MOUT at the June 2002 United States Army Infantry Conference at Fort Benning, Ga. In December 2002, the Defense Department ordered sites built in Kuwait and in Bagram, Afghanistan, to support Operation Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.

Staff Sgt. Jim Bagnell of the 416th Engineer Command told the American Forces Press Service that the U.S. military worked alongside Afghan workers to build a compound that resembles an Afghan village at the Bagram site, which was completed in September.

Anteon also deployed these state-of-the-art mobile sites to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., and the Joint Readiness Training Center, Fort Polk, La. According to Bradford, the Army Guard will see versions of the Mobile MOUT training systems in the coming months.

While the system can include dozens of mobile buildings in a setting such as Afghanistan, Mobile MOUT also can consist of just a few transportable buildings to provide training in a limited environment.

Although the bare buildings might appear as several railroad boxcars stacked upon one another, internal and external cosmetics allow flexibility to simulate most environments-from the bark of a dog or sound of a cat to internal odors that range from apple pie to the smell of decaying corpses. And the technology that drives the systems can simulate virtually any urban warfare scenario.

Troops train with short-range training ammunition, rifles equipped with laser technology and body gear that can detect a shot and determine casualties. Mobile MOUT also supports the use of "paintball" training and "force on force" training.

In a demonstration at the 125th NGAUS General Conference in Biloxi, Miss., Anteon provided a two-story structure, equipped with the sights, sounds and threats that troops might encounter in an urban hostage rescue and allowed attendees to participate in a rescue.

"The most important feature of Mobile MOUT is that it offers the training audience the opportunity to train in a very realistic environment and then receive immediate accurate feedback using the [Mobile MOUT] advanced video, capture and feedback sub-system," Bradford said.

The particular scenario in Biloxi began with troops kicking in the door and moving through a typical living room. An "enemy" target behind the door popped up, however, and was eliminated by a team member.

Into the small kitchen, visibility dropped as the air filled with smoke while troops moved toward a stairway. Once the first floor was clear, troops followed the hostage's screams and carefully made their way upstairs.

A tripped wire and explosion eliminated one rescuer while another target popped from behind a wall. On the other side was the hostage, sitting on the bed and shouting, "[the enemy] is everywhere."

Troops carefully moved to the room where the hostage sat until a live enemy moved through an upstairs door and opened fire. He was eventually eliminated and the hostage was escorted downstairs.

After such adrenalin-inducing missions-scored on the time it takes for the rescue, ammunition used and, of course, number of casualties-participants move to the "after-action review theater" to watch progress (and mistakes) caught on screen by the many inconspicuous cameras that film virtually every move dunng the rescue attempt.

(Mistakes for the NGAUS team in Biloxi included the "death" of the hostage, the enemy and three of four rescuers.)

This is the future of simulation technology. Training doesn't resemble the long, drawn out battles fought during the 20th century. They're new conflicts that involve close-quarters training offered by Mobile MOUT. It's designed to reveal mistakes before troops encounter life-threatening obstacles on the streets of Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere.