As one of the largest Army Reserve Training exercises ever conducted, the scope and breadth of Mojave Falcon 25 is immense, with over 9000 reserve Soldiers on ground, here, engaging in grueling, realistic training.

The enormity of the task is a challenge currently being met by 1st Brigade, 91st Training Division, whose primary role of providing observer/controller trainers (OC/T) is a critical function of Mojave Falcon, ensuring units are trained to the appropriate standard.

The brigade’s responsibility is to enable Reserve Training Units (RTU) to meet their training objectives, said Col. Andrew Ulmer, brigade commander, and make them more lethal on the battlefield.

“We help them improve their large-scale combat operations mindset, make them more survivable, and work on their tactical field tradecrafts,” Ulmer said. “We are essentially there to observe, control and train these units and get them prepared to win and fight our nations wars.”

The challenge of Mojave Falcon is daunting with the amount of RTU’s being evaluated, Ulmer said, with his Soldiers more than prepared to meet the task at hand.

“It’s a challenge because there’s a lot of different, very detailed readiness metrics with every unit,” Ulmer said. “There’s over 80 RTU’s we’re evaluating at Mojave Falcon and they’re all across the board – such as combat and sustainment units – each with different types of training.”

The brigade must be one step ahead of the RTU’s, Ulmer said, which is difficult as part-time Soldiers who only have a limited amount of training days, per year.

“We’re managing and making sure we’re trained on our own Army skills and tradecraft, while at the same time doing a lot of planning events,” he said. “We spend 50 percent of our time training other units, so it’s a balancing act.”

The Soldiers of the brigade put in the extra mile to ensure they’re performing well above the standard, said brigade Command Sgt. Maj. Denise Demps.

“With our Soldiers, they’re committing to more time beyond their regular battle assemblies to train for big events like Mojave Falcon,” Demps said. “They’re putting in extra weekends, extra weeks, to make sure we’re integrated with the RTU’s and telling them what they should have, equipment, communications, personnel … most importantly what do they want to achieve by the end of the mission?”

This results in better trained and better prepared Soldiers to defend the nation, Ulmer said, which he considers a successful outcome at the conclusion of Mojave Falcon.

With competing exercises such as the Quartermaster Liquid Logistics Exercise, Port Operations at Long Beach, and Nationwide Move, the brigade has allocated OC/T assets to each exercise.

Ulmer said he couldn’t be prouder of his Soldiers for taking on the challenges.

“They’re fully committed, up at the crack of dawn, putting in long days and nights, 24/7,” Ulmer said. “We’ve got OC/T’s constantly on site or rotating with other OC/T’s. One thing that’s different this year is we’re also dominating the battlespace at night, so we’ve become extremely proficient at night driving.”

Younger OC/T’s are benefitting from their more experienced counterparts, learning invaluable lessons for their development, Demps said.

“Many of the younger Soldiers haven’t deployed before so they love receiving the knowledge imparted on them and the learning portion of being an OC/T,” Demps said. “This will make our force better for the future.”