West Virginia National Guard Joint Base West Virginia, a concept spearheaded by the WVNG, is an initiative designed to give West Virginia a homeland security and national security training capacity that will benefit local and national war fighters as they prepare to deploy on missions that support our country’s interests. Local guardsmen are provided the opportunity to learn how to better employ their skill sets in support of their mission. “We work with the industry. We find a (training) gap where we can leverage the usefulness of the post mine use land,” says Major General James Hoyer, Adjutant General of the West Virginia National Guard. “We find a legitimate use for the land that I think is saving lives.” One such site, the Drop Zone, is a 12,000-acre site in Clay County that has been made available to WVNG at no cost to the government. It allows pilots and crews an opportunity to practice low flying in which they must stay as close to the ground as they can to avoid enemy radar and weapons, as they would when approaching a drop site in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan. The Drop Zone is also certified for use by other military units from across the nation. “If training to airdrop supplies makes it so that supplies can be dropped closer to the troops on the ground who need them, it could increase their chance of survival,” says Maj. Gen. Hoyer, explaining that these same skill sets are also useful for dropping supplies in the case of flooding or other statewide emergencies. In response to the United States’ loss of troops and vehicles to
Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Marines led the development of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) armored fighting vehicle. The MRAP carries much greater armor protection, including a V-shaped hull to deflect blasts from IEDs. Though much more resistant to damage than prior vehicles used in combat zones due to being top heavy and weighing approximately 23 tons, they are difficult to drive and are subject to rolling over. “There was a training gap,” Maj. Gen. Hoyer says of the vehicles. “Folks were rolling the MRAPs over and dying from the rollover.” The Advanced Mobility Training Area, adjacent to the WVNG’s Center for National Response Memorial Tunnel training complex, was developed by a team that included Afghanistan war veterans to address this national need. In addition to the MRAP rollover training simulator, there is a 13-acre driving course built on a prior mine site that is designed to look and feel like the terrain of Afghanistan. This allows deploying service personnel to get real life experience driving over difficult terrain under simulated wartime conditions. According to Maj. Gen. Hoyer, without the ongoing partnership between the West Virginia National Guard and the coal industry, development of these types of training facilities with the current budget constraints would not be possible. “Using prior mine land is a great cost effective opportunity. It puts people to work locally on a national mission and brings people to West Virginia to spend money in our economy.”
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