Marines and SEALs train at Army depot - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Marines and SEALs train at Army depot

OCEANSIDE, Calif. – Marines and Navy SEALs are using an Army facility to train for Afghanistan, and soldiers are missing out, two U.S. senators report.

The Army’s weapons depot in Hawthorne, Nev., is an outpost that features high altitudes and high desert — two features that make it a strong stand-in for Afghanistan.

Nevada’s two senators, Democrat Harry Reid and Republican John Ensign, want the Army to take a page from the Corps and expand its training opportunities at the remote post, which lies east of Reno and is the largest ammunition storage facility in the continental United States. .

“We are concerned that the armed forces do not currently have a designated high desert training area and facilities to support preparation for current operations and potential contingency operations,” Sens. Reid and Ensign wrote in a Jan. 27 letter to Army Secretary John McHugh. Hawthorne “is an ideal location for preparing our service members for the terrain, altitude, climate and logistical challenges they currently face in Afghanistan. We are urging you to formally add training support to the (depot) mission.”

The senators asked the Army to add training support to the Hawthorne depot’s mission statement, which has largely highlighted its mission as a key ammunition storage facility. The depot, which spans more than 147,000 acres, falls under the Joint Munitions Command, based in Rock Island, Ill.

Business at the Hawthorne depot has more than tripled from 2008 to 2009, largely due to the regular cycling of Marines who maneuver through as part of extended “Mountain Warrior” training that originates at the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, Calif.

Nearly 10,500 service members trained at Hawthorne in 2009, including Marines conducting live-fire training and realistic combat resupply operations with simulated roadside bomb scenarios as well as Army Special Forces units that conduct combat drills, dismounted patrols and other training in the high-desert terrain.

“Hawthorne’s unique ability to simulate the harsh realities of combat make this under-utilized asset a national treasure as our forces fight in preparation for deployments to Afghanistan and other contingency areas,” the senators wrote.

The Hawthorne depot sits at an elevation of 4,330 feet and nearby mountains top 10,000 feet — altitudes twice as high as what combat troops experience when they train at other desert training areas, including the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., the senators noted. The depot land includes Mount Grant, Nevada’s highest peak, which tops 11,224 feet.

“The harsh contours and rocky terrain create challenges that force tactical adaptations that can only be properly rehearsed in that environment,” they wrote. “The roads and trails at Hawthorne closely approximate those our troops will find in Afghanistan and the Hindu Kush.”

At Hawthorne, Marines access training facilities that include high-altitude live-fire ranges, mock villages and urban centers for raids and other scenarios developed by MWTC training planners, and they conduct foot and mounted patrols operating from a forward operating base and small combat outposts

Marine units that sent elements to train at Hawthorne last year include Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, which is slated for Afghanistan duty, and 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, which spent a month away from their home base at Twentynine Palms to train in the high Sierras.