By David Spunt Reporter
News 3 On Your Side
They're heading our way. Over 200 Army tanks will roll into the Valley area, bringing upwards of 30 thousand people over the next few years.News 3 On Your Side
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Stumble It!The United States Armor School, currently located at Fort Knox, Kentucky will re-locate to Fort Benning, creating the Maneuver Center of Excellence. Most of the major moving won't occur until 2010, but some could begin as early as next year.
The Maneuver Center of Excellence will make history. So says Major Generals Walter Wojdakowski of Fort Benning and Robert Williams of Fort Knox. It'll combine tactics taught from both the Infantry and Armor Schools.
“It's a very complex process. The scope and scale of what we have to do is enormous. I've got 40 different courses and functions that need to be transferred. I also have 220 main battle tanks and about 150 Bradley Fighting Vehicles along with supporting vehicles that have to come down,” said Williams.
The Armor School began at Fort Knox in 1940, teaching soldiers the ins and outs of tank warfare. In the fall of 2005, a panel of nine commissioners made the recommendation to close the Armor School at Fort Knox relocating it to Fort Benning, Georgia.
“Quite frankly, it's going to be an enormous investment in the Armor Community, so I see that as a great opportunity to have a world class facility and without BRAC we wouldn't have been able to do that,” he said.
“We're doing eggs to order so to speak. We're building an armor school to order. It's all new and we can build it anyway we want. We have the opportunity to make it perfect and we've worked very hard to make sure it's just what we need,” Wojdakowski said.
Both the Armor School and the Infantry School will fall under the umbrella of the Maneuver Center of Excellence. The new center will teach both Infantry and Armor soldiers to co-exist with each other on the battlefield. It's something the Army has done for years, but the center will teach them to do it from the beginning of their training.
“We're going to train as we fight. And we never fight without our Infantry brethren next to us, and the Infantry doesn't fight without us next to them. And so begin that process earlier in the soldiers and leaders by bringing the two schools together,” Williams said.
“We all know that we're going to fight together. I think the fact that we're now going to train together from the day we come in the Army so soldiers will be with their Army brethren from the very start,” Wojdakowski added.
Both Williams and Wojdakowski stress, even though both schools will be under the Maneuver Center of Excellence, soldier's individual identities will never be lost.
“We think there is great value in maintaining our separate identities, because in fact, we are proud to be tankers. We are proud to be in the Cavalry and we are proud to be infantryman and we don't want to lose that and we won’t,” Williams said.
“I’m an infantryman. I'm proud to be an Infantryman. I don't want to be a tanker and I don't have to be. We'll have an Infantry School and Center right here at Fort Benning, and the same goes for the tankers. They don't want to be Infantryman. They have a tremendous culture in the Armor Force and we want to hold on to that,” Wojdakowski said.
