US army builds fake city to shoot at during training The American army has built an entire fake city including a school, a mosque and a football stadium The 300 acre 'town' includes a five story embassy, a bank, a school, an underground subway and train station 11:54AM GMT 13 Feb 2014 The US army has built a fake city designed to be used during combat training exercises. The 300 acre 'town' includes a five story embassy, a bank, a school, an underground subway and train station, a mosque, a football stadium, and a helicopter landing zone. Located in Virginia, the realistic subway station comes complete with subway carriages and the train station has real train carriages. The subway carriages even carry the same logo as the carriages in Washington DC There are also bridges and several other structures which can be transformed into different scenarios. The U.S. army's Army Asymmetric Warfare Group opened the training centre last month. The unit was created in 2004 to help combat terrorism and reduce the vulnerabilities of the army to emerging threats. Colonel John P. Petkosek, the commander of the group said of the new training city : "This is the place where we can be creative, where we can come up with solutions for problems that we don't even know we have yet," "This is where we'll look at solutions for the future--material solutions and non-material solutions…anything from how you're going to operate in a subterranean environment to how you dismount a Humvee to avoid an IED strike. "The things that we do here at this facility will have a direct and lasting impact on our entire army." It has taken six years for the site to be developed, including two years of construction. US army builds fake city to shoot at during training - Telegraph
News, it ain't. The Pentagon has several model towns scattered around for training purposes. What is new to me is the reported location in VA. Then again, why does the UK paper think it is reportable and the US MSM does not?
The Army built a MOUT town north of here years ago. Not news, except maybe the local will carp about the "noise". If you expect soldier to fight in urban terrain, then you'd better train that way. The Russians' didn't have the training the first time they went into Grosvy and they paid dearly for it.
Nothing new. Indiana created a MOUT 9 years ago from a former mental illness hospital. These were real buildings most built in the 50s and 60s to federal standards. Real steel frame doors, concrete walls, steam tunnels, hospital rooms, class rooms etc. Not plywood cheap construction crap. It trained a lot of soldiers headed to the sand boxes up until about 2 years ago. Lots of fire departments, urban SAR teams, police, swat, etc. come with great regularity. They had an actual high school functioning there to help 18-20 year old drop outs get an actual high school diploma (not a GED!) so they could then be eligible to join the national guard if they so desired. Sadly the Army pulled the funds for it a year or two ago. Great facility. They have collapsed buildings and parking garage for extraction training. They built a few hundred feet of railroad with several trains cars simulating a derailment. A mosque, middle eastern market street that can be reconfigured with a couple fork lifts to a completely new configuration the second or third or fourth time a patrol navigates the training lane surprising them over and over. Muscatatuck Urban Training Center - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Muscatatuck Urban Training Complex (MUTC) > Home You can check it out on google earth. Looks like a movie set in many areas. Cool place and fun to train there. AT
