GAGETOWN, New Brunswick - Recently, about 200 Connecticut Army National Guard members from the 1st Battalion, 169th Aviation Regiment, worked alongside several multinational partners from the Canadian army's artillery, aviation, engineering and infantry schools, as well as members of the Jamaican Defense Forces, 2nd Royal Canadian Regiment.
The Connecticut units that participated in the training - May 6 to 16 - included Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1-169th Aviation Regiment; B Company, 2-104th Aviation Regiment; C Company, 3-142nd Aviation Regiment; D Company, 1-169th Aviation Regiment; and E Company, 1-169th Aviation Regiment.
These units' responsibilities encompass the many facets of aviations operations, such as flight planning and tracking, weather monitoring, UH-60 Black hawk helicopter flight and maintenance, CH-47 Chinook helicopter flight and maintenance, and headquarters support, including vehicle maintenance and repair, supply operations and other tasks.
Army Lt. Col. Mark Strout, commander and UH-60 pilot, 1-169th, said that the decision to conduct their annual training in Canada was beneficial to his Soldiers on many levels. One of the advantages that training at Gagetown offered is the size of the area and how that translates to training opportunities.
"This place is just such an incredible training area," Strout said. "It's such a wide open area that works especially well for our aviation operations. With this much space we can really accomplish a wide variety of different types of training."
Many of the missions that the Soldiers of the 169th conducted were relatively normal operations for them, Strout said. They performed their annually required aerial gunnery qualification, during which Soldiers fired the M-60 machine gun at targets on the ground from inside a flying Blackhawk.
Some of the other missions included local area orientation flights, which allow pilots and flight crews to familiarize themselves with the air space and surrounding area. They also performed urban operations, reconnaissance flights and personnel recovery. In addition to these operations, Strout said his Soldiers also got to take part in some missions that were out of the normal.
"We actually got the opportunity to work with the research and development guys up here to help them work on this new artillery piece that they're developing," Strout said. "It's supposed to be able to orientate itself after being dropped out of an aircraft, so they've asked us to sling load it up with one of our Blackhawks and drop it from the air to see if it does what it's supposed to."
In addition, the training at Gagetown allowed the Soldiers to familiarize themselves with the Canadian CH-146 Griffon helicopter. The Soldiers also had the chance to work with Canadian and Jamaican soldiers. They performed sling load movement of mobile bridges for the Canadian army engineering school, night infiltration operations with the Canadian army infantry school and Jamaican Defense Forces, personnel movement with the Canadian army noncommissioned officer school and air assault operations with the Jamaican Defense Forces. These were unique opportunities to work with multinational forces that aren't always available to Soldiers training in the U.S.
"To be able to work with all of these different entities is an awesome opportunity," Strout said. "We get to learn from them and see how they do things and they get to see how we operate. It's great."
Helicopter crews and pilots weren't the only Soldiers that reaped the benefits of this international training exercise. Helicopter and vehicle repair Soldiers, as well as petroleum supply specialists from D and E Companies worked tirelessly to keep the helicopters and ground vehicles properly fueled and maintained. Without these Soldiers, the rest of the aviation troops wouldn't be able to do their jobs, said Army Staff Sgt. Robert Mullady, quality control noncommissioned officer in charge.
"Everybody is important in this battalion," Mullady said. "Everybody is important in other battalions too, but each individual is especially important in an aviation battalion because every little part is integral. The birds can't fly without all of the support individuals that keep them maintained and fueled, track the flights and weather, etcetera. Everybody plays their part."
He also pointed to the importance of the number of missions that were being conducted here. He said that unlike many training exercises, everything that aviation does is real life, not notional, and this adds to the value of the training for the Soldiers that are involved.
"This training is great for all of us, but it is especially beneficial for newer Soldiers," Mullady said. "It gives them the chance to get an understanding of an increased operations tempo. Even though this is training, we're actually doing our jobs, so this is good real life training to prepare the Soldiers as best we can for the type of stuff we'd do on deployment or on active duty."
While at Gagetown, the aviation maintenance Soldiers performed multiple 40-hour and 100-hour inspections and repairs and were equipped and prepared to perform such tasks as sheet metal repair, blade replacement and repair, engine and transmission swaps and many other component swaps, Mullady said.
The petroleum supply specialists also performed several refueling operations on the aircraft, both with and without the aircraft running.
This is the second time in the past decade that the 1-169th has attended annual training at Gagetown. While no future trip here is planned yet in the immediate future, Strout said he hopes to be able to get his troops to Canada again soon to use the training area here.