U.S. Army Abrams and Bradleys conduct test fires in Fort Hood

Soldiers of the 1st Combined Arms Battalion, 194th Armor, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, conduct test fires in Fort Hood, Texas, Aug. 12, as part of an eXportable Combat Training Capabilities exercise.

The eXportable Combat Training Capability, or XCTC, is a series of training exercises between an active-duty U.S. Army brigade and an Army National Guard brigade, intended to increase the skills and readiness of National Guard units.

XCTC is a cost-efficient, time-efficient option for delivering combat readiness training to soldiers at or near their home stations. This scalable live-training program has proven effective for pre-mobilization forces, in accordance with the Army Force Generation model.

- ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW -

XCTC training exercises provide an experience similar to a Combat Training Center to Guard Soldiers at home station or at a regional training center, minimizing cost and time away from home and jobs.

Training aids include battlefield effects, civilians on the battlefield, foreign national role players, and Soldiers and vehicles will be outfitted with global positioning system-based instrumentation system tracking technology. The GPS system tracks vehicles and participants to the Soldier level, allowing unit leaders to replay the day’s training scenarios and discuss lessons learned in instrumented after action reviews with 2D, 3D, tactical audio and handheld video within minutes of mission completion.

Photo by Patrick Loch
Photo by Patrick Loch
Photo by Patrick Loch

Readers who wish to follow our weekly coverage can subscribe to the Weekly Defense Roundup.

If you wish to report a grammatical or factual error in this article, please let us know by using the online form.

Executive Editor
  • In this story
  • USA

Support The Defence Blog

Independent reporting takes resources. Join us on Patreon.

Become a patron

More Like This

Northrop Grumman’s Jackal missile passes key flight test

Northrop Grumman completed a successful flight test of its Jackal precision strike missile on June 1, demonstrating the core systems that will define how...

California firm rethinks missile defense without rocket motors

The U.S. military fired more than 1,000 Patriot interceptors during the Iran conflict but received only 172 new ones in return, according to a...

U.S. Navy buys Israeli anti-drone rifle scope

An Israeli fire control technology company has now secured contracts with all four major branches of the U.S. military, completing a sweep across the...

U.S. Special Forces wants to make its combat divers harder to detect

Somewhere underwater, a Navy SEAL is holding his breath, swimming toward an enemy ship in total darkness, counting on one thing to keep him...

U.S. Army’s top official tested laser-armed vehicle in New Mexico

The U.S. Army's top civilian official sat down at the operator's seat of a laser-armed pickup truck at White Sands Missile Range in New...