Ft. Polk brigade to produce 6,000 advisors per year to train Iraqi and Afghan forces.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra
• Position: Training & Simulation

In the coming months, the Army will be augmenting its brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan with hundreds of additional officers who will take on the duties of advising and training those nations' forces.

"We are adding 48 field-grade officers into each brigade," says Lt. Gen. Joseph F. Peterson, deputy commander of Army Forces Command. These officers will include majors, lieutenant colonels and colonels.

Peterson was in charge of training the Iraqi police two years ago and helped found the Iraqi Police Academy. He says it's important that U.S advisors be senior officers in order to be taken seriously. "Foreign forces understand rank, so it's important to have the right rank structure" in U.S. advisory units, Peterson says in an interview.

The responsibility for training U.S. advisors earlier this year was assigned to the 162nd Infantry Brigade, based at the Joint Readiness Training Center in Fort Polk, La. The B25-soldier brigade is expected to train up to 6,000 advisors a year.

"The vast majority of these people [in the 162ndI have experience as advisors in theater," says William David, vice president of Cubic Corp., a San Diego-based company that received recently a $40 million contract extension to train U.S. advisors at Fort Polk; Fort Benning and Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Fort Drum, N.Y.

Cubic offers 60-day programs involving both classroom instruction and simulations of actual operations. Trainees learn how to instruct their Afghan and Iraqi counterparts to plan and conduct military operations, and how to manage personnel...