Anyone been to NTC?

[Mugg21B]

My reserve unit is doing 4 weeks of training at NTC this summer, and I was wonder what we could expect? I'm already expecting extremely hot, unforgiving weather, and we're going to get slaughtered in our training scenarios (we're route clearance...fake IEDs and ambushes aplenty I'm sure), but is there anything that I might not know yet?

[Mugg21B]

just in case anyone hasn't been to NTC, it was alright. Not quite the experience that I expected from the "elite" training institution I've heard it called, but better than most training we get at other ATs.

Problems:

* Not enough OCs to run our battalion, so we had to often wait on them to get off a mission (they did their job excellently, just not enough of them) before we could start ours.
* The week of the "war" (you have a week of training, and then a week of "actual war") turned out to be nothing. No OpFor, and only 1 IED (we were doing route clearance) in 4-5 missions for our platoon. If it wasn't for the simulated buffalos and MRAPs we had, we would've been better off training at home station (at least regarding the OpFor issue).
* Someone evidently ran over a civilian vehicle (or humvee) with a HMMT. Since we were a bunch of no-good reservists, we were supposedly banned from going to main post (to the PX really). Lame.

Good:

* Simulated MRAPs. Still not the real thing, but better than standing in the back of a 5 ton pretending to be a Buffalo arm.
* Gut trucks. The meals sucked, so it was nice to get fobbit stuff like cokes and candy
* Working with the battalion we're supposedly going overseas with. They screwed a bunch of stuff up, so at least we know what kind of screws up to expect a few months from now.

Oh, and did I mention the heat sucks out there? If it wasn't for being within driving distance of LA and Las Vegas, I think I would go insane if I was stationed out there.