I keep stressing honest, accurate training because the leaders who forged the 1990 Army already warned us. 𝗜𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗧𝗖 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗯𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗸 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗮𝗱𝗲𝘀, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗢𝗣𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝘁.
𝗪𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗱 𝗻𝗲𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿.
The National Training Center did not train brigades. It trained two full-up battalion task forces against a two-battalion opposing force, configured as a Soviet-style motorized rifle regiment that considerably outnumbered Blue. About 1,500 permanent OPFOR soldiers, plus roughly 500 augmentees each rotation, fought as the 32d Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment. That regiment won about 90 percent of the battles. The standard was not a fair fight. It was a hard one.
General William R. Richardson, TRADOC commander, was blunt about what happened if that ratio broke. In June and July 1984 he told Lieutenant General Fred K. Mahaffey he opposed “gearing NTC up to the brigade level,” and that “we must be absolutely adamant in protecting the battalion task force orientation at NTC.” The center, the OPFOR, the Operations Group, and the instrumentation were built for two battalions. Add a third without the resources to increase the OPFOR and the quality of training would “inevitably suffer.” Observer/controllers said the same thing in plainer words: brigade-level training “might degrade the battalion level training.” Estimates put the bill at as many as 1,200 more people on ground Fort Irwin did not have.
When the Army later approved the idea, it approved it with a condition. On 23 January 1987 General John A. Wickham signed the expansion only if the OPFOR was brought to full brigade strength, with enough combat systems to oppose three heavy task forces and keep the force ratios. The 1986 concept was explicit: against a real three-battalion brigade, the OPFOR had to replicate a motorized rifle division, not a regiment. The Army also kept chasing an additional 260,000 acres. The start date slipped from FY 1990 to FY 1993 to FY 1994.
Then the money and the end strength shrank, and the condition was dropped in practice. In March 1991 the General Officer Executive Committee called three-battalion expansion “thought provoking for the future” and declined to act. At the end of 1993 the two-battalion concept was still the concept. No division-level OPFOR. No added desert.
Brigadier General Paul E. Funk, NTC commander from 1988 to 1989 and later commander of the 3d Armored Division in Desert Storm, had already drawn the line: if land and money forced a choice, do not relax the standard. Asked about scaling the OPFOR back, he got the answer the institution was built on: “Hey General, we didn’t come out here to spar with a wimp.” Brigadier General Wesley K. Clark put the risk in training terms. The OPFOR “must be good enough so that BLUEFOR can’t make major mistakes and win.” Otherwise the lessons do not transfer to war.
They transferred because the OPFOR was not diluted. A troop commander at 73 Easting told General Carl E. Vuono this was not his first battle. It was his fifteenth. He had fought three wars at the National Training Center. Desert Storm veterans said the Iraqi desert felt like the NTC, except the Iraqis were not as good as the OPFOR.
That is the warning. Expand Blue without a matching OPFOR and matching ground, and you do not get a harder school. You get a softer enemy, a win that means nothing, and a force that meets its first real regiment in combat. The leaders who built the Army that won in 1991 refused that trade. We should too.