Fort Carson soldiers prepare for National Training Center rotation

Fort Carson soldiers are getting ready for the National Training Center rotation in Fort Irwin, California. It’s their final step before being ready to deploy to any operation in the world.

“We’ve had extensive training over the last few months. We started with individual qualifications with weapons to platoon qualifications with gunneries,” said John Gilliam, battalion commander at Fort Carson.

Four thousand soldiers from the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division are heading to the National Training Center. First, they must send more than 1,200 pieces of their equipment.

“You see a mixture of every piece of equipment, virtually, in the army inventory. Our heavy hitters that we have within our formation are our tanks, our Abrams, our Bradley fighting vehicles,” Gilliam said.

Kenneth Kloeppel, the Officer of operations at Fort Carson, makes sure the heavy machinery is sent safely.

“It’s really my job to insure that nothing falls off, maintaining communication and making sure that we have everything,” Kloeppel said.

Once all of the equipment is loaded onto rail cars, it’ll take nearly four days until it arrives in Fort Irwin.

“You have a lot of moving pieces. It’s a very strenuous process that started about nine months ago,” Kloeppel said.

This next and final training will prove this group of soldiers are ready for reality.

“We really get the opportunity to get out there and do real exercise as a full function team. This is more of a Rio than individual event, so we’re all going for the gold right now,” Kloeppel said.

The soldiers arrive in California on Aug. 22 and will train for three weeks.