FORT HOOD, TX — Horrific devastation, that is what the world is seeing every day that Russia continues to invade Ukraine.
As the U.S and NATO allies continue to supply Ukraine with heavy weaponry to defend against the invasion, back home, Fort Hood soldiers are continuing to train battle.
Leaders with the 3rd Cavalry Regiment made it out here to the range to fire off some heavy weaponry as part of a 2-week training program.
”Making sure that we can use these weapons safely and know that we can communicate to each other and put all rounds on target in a safe manner,” said SGT Caden Walker with 4th Squadron of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment.
The training is part of the Heavy Weapons Leaders Course which gave them a chance to fire everything from the 50-caliber machine gun to the MK-19 automatic grenade launcher.
They even got the rare chance to fire off the Javelin Missile.
The same weapons are being supplied to Ukraine.
”It’s a man-portable shoulder-fired weapon system, capable of engaging armored threats. It can be up to 30 inches or rolled homogeneous steel. It can also engage low flying, hovering aircraft such as helicopters.” said SFC Johnathan Royals, Team Chief and Heavy Weapons Leadership Course Instructor.
Getting to chance to see a Javelin in action is rare, let alone fire one.
”The very rarely get to touch these systems and for them to get to fire these and kind of get back to basics is what they need as leaders to help their soldiers out when it comes to manipulating these weapons.” said SFC Royals.
Given that Russia is considered a peer-level threat with similar capabilities in battle, these leaders were eager to take this course.
”I think it is good for our soldiers to have this training so we can make sure that we use our weapons properly and sustain a good environment while we’re out there if we were to get deployed.” said SGT Walker.
They’ll take what they’ve learned in this course back to their teams and their next stop is the National Training Center in California.
