Introduction

In March 1943, Lieutenant General George S. Patton took command of II Corps after its defeat at Kasserine Pass. With just 10 days to rally the demoralized formation, he exhorted, “You men get in there and fight, or by God, I’ll send you back to Camp Young.”^[i]

Camp Young was the Desert Training Center established by Patton to prepare for the North African Campaign. It stretched over 28,000 square miles across the Mojave Desert, and was designed to prepare Soldiers to fight large-scale combat operations (LSCOs) in harsh desert terrain. During its two years of existence, the Desert Training Center prepared 20 divisions and eight corps for combat.^[ii]

Patton recognized that armies need to train on the land they will fight on. He told his troops, “Our first chance to get at the enemy will be in North Africa. We cannot train troops to fight in the desert of North Africa by training in the swamps of Georgia. I sent a report to Washington requesting a desert training center in California. The California desert can kill quicker than the enemy. We will lose a lot of men from the heat, but training will save hundreds of lives when we get into combat.”^[iii]

Like Patton, the War Department concluded that Allied unpreparedness to fight in the difficult terrain of Norway, Albania and Crete had led to defeat.^[iv] It recognized that troops had to be organized, trained and equipped to operate in the specific terrain they would later deploy to. Therefore, in 1942, the Army opened the Amphibious Training Center at Camp Gordon, Florida; the Mountain Training Center at Camp Carson, Colorado; and the Desert Training Center at Camp Young, California.^[v]

More than 80 years ago, the Army understood it had to train as it would fight. And now, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, in his opening message to the force in February 2025, called on us to “train as we fight” and “to fight and win in the most contested environments.”^[vi] As Patton did, we must ensure we are training in the terrain that will develop the proper techniques, organizations and equipment to win in the contexts we expect to fight. Unfortunately, the Army has inherited training areas that are unfit for purpose. Our units hone their skills in the wrong terrain and do not train at the magnitude of large-scale combat. When higher echelons do train, they rely on simulations, which would be ideal if our divisions and corps had to defeat China or Russia at a computer game, but not on the battlefield.

Terrain Matters

To prepare to defeat the Axis in North Africa, the War Department directed Patton to test equipment and to develop doctrine, techniques and organizational structures optimized for the desert. During training, Patton emphasized limited water supplies, sustaining operations far from railheads, emplacing and breaching minefields, coordination with Army Air Forces and, with the lack of concealment, conducting convoys under the cover of night to limit air interdiction.^[vii] Not only was he tasked to develop techniques, but he also was empowered to optimize organizations and equipment for the desert, where the temperature fluctuations, abrasive dust and long movements over rough terrain wore down equipment. After just three months of training, I Armored Corps left around 500 vehicles disabled and II Armored Corps left 1,200.^[viii]

Subordinated to the Desert Training Center, the Desert Warfare Board tested equipment and innovated new items. Demonstrating the effectiveness of this close interaction between realistic experimentation and acquisition, in just two years, the board developed 150 projects that ranged from ammunition and tank improvements to desert warfare boots, dust respirators, navigational aids and high-speed road pioneering.^[ix]

Patton invited experts on the desert and North Africa to provide feedback and recommendations on the training.^[x] From his observations, Patton wrote “Notes on Tactics and Technique of Desert Warfare (Provisional).” It provided detailed techniques for units to succeed in the desert, from march formations and maintenance operations to doctrinal templates for the phases of an attack with recommended distances and troop concentrations. For example, at 3,000 yards from an enemy, he recommended a hand-off from air attack to ground reconnaissance forces. As a unit transitioned to an attack, “four-ninths of the tanks move into firing position, engage the enemy from a staggered line formation. Under cover of this fire, probably opened at 2,000 yards, the artillery moves up and enters the firefight.”^[xi] He recognized that war was not an exact science, but these templates provided a framework for units to use to rapidly prepare for desert fighting.

By mid-1943, the Allies had won the North African Campaign. While the Desert Training Center operated for a few more months due to its value as a large-scale training area, the Army recognized its terrain was suboptimal to prepare units to fight in Europe or the Pacific and closed it in early 1944. Today, the Army’s premier training facility is the National Training Center. Like its early predecessor, it is located in the Mojave Desert, but the Army will likely fight the nation’s primary adversaries in the forests and bogs of the Baltic, the mountains and farms of Korea or the beaches and rice paddies of western Taiwan.          

With our largest exercises and experiments like Project Convergence occurring in the desert, we are susceptible to optimizing our techniques, equipment and formations for an environment in which we will not fight. We are particularly at risk because, although the Army adapted units to the terrain in which they would fight during World War II, today, the Army standardizes organizations and treats them as interchangeable parts. The Pacific-focused Joint Pacific Multinational Training Center, established in 2022, is a step in the right direction, but it tends to train either on jungle archipelagos or in the Arctic, neither of which resemble the terrain of Taiwan or Korea.^[xii]

Without training in appropriate environments, we risk developing counterproductive techniques. For example, with the difficulty of concealing command posts in the desert of the National Training Center, many leaders theorize that for command posts to survive they must regularly displace. However, in terrain with increased foliage or buildings, command posts can be more easily concealed. The Ukrainian battalion commanders I have interviewed said they only jumped command posts once throughout 2023, and that was to withdraw from an encirclement. In fact, a command post was at its most vulnerable during these movements, because it was more easily detectable by an unmanned aerial system.

Once you start training in an appropriate environment, you can start solving problems. What is the mobility of our current vehicles in the rice paddies of Taiwan or the bogs of the Baltic? Will vehicles be canalized to roads? How should infantry conduct antiarmor ambushes? How should units conduct effective engagement area development? What will be the range of engagements? How many mines should units carry? What methods should artillery employ for survivability? Will they have to regularly displace or can they dig in? Based on the water table, can they dig in? If defending near a beach, how can artillery target ships? Do we need to develop artillery-delivered antiship minefields? Based on the terrain, where can support areas be placed for both survivability and responsive sustainment? These are just some of the questions that can only be answered by training in the appropriate environment. As training progresses, many more points of friction and opportunities for success will emerge, leading to better questions, experiments and answers.

Size Matters

To develop the right techniques, organizations and equipment, we need to not only train in appropriate environments but also train at the right scale. If divisions are going to serve as the Army’s primary tactical echelon, the Army needs to regularly conduct division and multidivision maneuvers, placing a premium on large-scale exercises like it did in the lead-up to World War II at the Desert Training Center and earlier in the Louisiana and Carolina Maneuvers.

In preparing for World War II, the US Army learned from the Allies’ failure to train LSCOs. Prior to entering the war, the British Army had not conducted division-level exercises. In 1939, Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery worried, “In the years preceding the outbreak of the war no large-scale exercises with troops had been held in England for some time. Indeed, the Regular Army was unfit to take part in a realistic exercise.”^[xiii] The French Army had conducted multidivisional exercises in the 1920s, but they fell off in the 1930s. Between the outbreak of the war and France’s collapse, they focused on small-unit training instead of large-scale training.^[xiv]

In contrast, the Germans prioritized large-scale training. Throughout the interwar years, even while under the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty, Germany held annual multidivisional exercises, replicating how it expected to fight and allowing it to develop doctrine, organizations and equipment to enable it to conduct maneuver warfare. They trained soldiers how to rapidly make decisions in a fast-paced, large-scale, war of movement. By World War II, an average German captain or major had participated in more multidivisional maneuvers than the average British or French general. Germany proved the value of its approach in 1940.^[xv]

In 1941, Patton demonstrated the importance of such large-scale exercises during the Louisiana Maneuvers, as his Blue Army conducted a 400-mile movement to outflank the Red Army and seize Shreveport.^[xvi] When he established the Desert Training Center, Patton prioritized large-scale training to prepare his Soldiers for the rapid maneuver warfare he hoped to practice. Units culminated with a several-day exercise involving a 300-mile movement.^[xvii] The training schedule he implemented consisted of:

• Week 1: Individual and squad training
• Week 2: Company or battery training
• Week 3: Battalion training
• Week 4: Regimental training
• Weeks 5–7: Divisional field exercises
• Weeks 8–13: Corps maneuvers^[xviii]

By training at such a scale, Patton ensured all functions were rehearsed. For example, to support the training, medical units staffed one 150-bed hospital, eight 250-bed hospitals and three 1,000-bed hospitals. After Patton departed, the Army further increased the scale of training to replicate all functions of a theater of operations. By 1943, when IX Corps trained in the desert, 190,000 Soldiers participated.

Today’s exercises never approach this scale. Most units only reach brigade-level training when they deploy to Combat Training Centers. Once a year, at the National Training Center, the Army has begun conducting division-level training, but it does not include the vital participation of subordinate maneuver brigades. Without training at scale, the Army risks, like the British and French in 1940, not being prepared for LSCOs.

Currently, the Army relies on Warfighter simulations to train its divisions and corps. These simulations are decent as an initial training tool, but should only be seen as the “crawl” phase of training. The simulations are based on unproven variables and do not replicate the friction of combat. Communication works perfectly, supplies arrive seamlessly, digital fire systems do not fail, simulated subordinate staffs do not have to plan or rehearse and computerized soldiers do not sleep. I once witnessed a division chief of staff order an armored brigade to perform donuts for 24 hours straight to avoid artillery fire. It worked.

These simulations are not the equivalent of training as you fight, and the Army risks learning lessons from them that are not based on the realities of war. The Army has cited evidence from these simulations to support massive reorganizations of divisions for Army 2030.^[xix] Yet, as a RAND study on the lessons of the failure of the Future Combat System pointed out, using simulations as evidence for force design is problematic “primarily due to the multitude of tactical, operational, and network performance assumptions required for any force-on-force simulation.”^[xx] The assumptions in Warfighter simulations, especially the lack of friction, lead the Army toward centralized processes that are ideal for winning computer games but not wars.

The Army needs to progress from the crawl of simulations to walking and running in division and corps exercises. However, training at scale requires land, and few training areas meet the size requirements. According to Field Manual 3-0 Operations, a division should fight on a front 18–28 kilometers wide with 24 kilometers in front and 24 kilometers behind. A corps fights on a front 55–85 kilometers wide with 45 kilometers in front and 45 kilometers behind.^[xxi] These figures do not account for additional land that units would require to practice moving and adjusting battlefield frameworks. How can we get land that is both the right scale and environment to train as we fight?

Sharing the Land

In preparing for World War II, the Army leveraged federally managed land. For the Louisiana Maneuvers, it employed the Kisatchie National Forest.^[xxii] For the Desert Training Center, it relied on federally owned land. After the war, the DoD developed Joint Policy Statements with the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. With the National Guard, it also entered into agreements to use state forests, state parks, game reserves and other lands. By 1986, the Army had access to 14.5 million acres of non-Army, private, state and federal lands to conduct training.^[xxiii]

However, it became increasingly difficult to coordinate the use of such land. Starting with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, public stakeholders became involved in the decisionmaking process of proposed activities on federal lands to account for social, economic and environmental impacts. Additionally, in 1974, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the National Forest Management Act started a process that resulted in federal land being zoned for specific uses such as recreation, wildlife, grazing, logging and mining.

As stakeholders developed an interest in these lands, they became more defensive about the military’s use of it.^[xxiv] In one example, in the early 1990s, as Camp Shelby created an Environmental Impact Statement on the use of National Forest Lands, it had to reply to more than 2,000 public comments.^[xxv] Fort Johnson uses 98,000 acres of the Kisatchie National Forest, and doing so required the creation of a Sustainability and Environmental Monitoring Plan and the ongoing submission of annual reports on the impacts of training on the forest. It also participates in a Joint Mitigation and Monitoring Oversight Committee to maintain the land.^[xxvi]

Since there is no single agency responsible for federal and state land management, the Army has to navigate bureaucratic processes to obtain permission from multiple agencies managing the land and their constituencies.^[xxvii] A more recent tool for federal, state and private organizations to cooperate on land management is the Sentinel Landscape Partnership.^[xxviii] It was created in 2013 by the Department of Agriculture, DoD and Department of the Interior, and signed into law in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. The partnership creates Sentinel Landscapes, which knit together land owned by various actors to support military readiness while conserving land and bolstering agriculture and forestry. These landscapes could facilitate division and corps training. For example, the Eastern North Carolina Sentinel Landscape stretches over 11 million acres.^[xxix] The Army should work with the DoD, Congress and other agencies to streamline military access to federal land for training and establish standardized policies that alleviate the need to negotiate for each parcel of land.

Simultaneously, the Army needs to identify additional areas to allow us to train as we fight. Fort Ord, a victim of Base Realignment and Closure in 1994, offers one opportunity. It provides a coastline, farmland, hills and even abandoned facilities to use for urban warfare. It could serve as an ideal site on the continental United States to prepare units for defending Taiwan. Currently, the Bureau of Land Management owns 14,651 acres of it with the rest operated by the State of California under the Federal Lands to Parks Program.^[xxx] The Army could stitch together a large-scale training area stretching between Fort Ord and Fort Hunter Liggett that would provide diverse terrain to train divisions and corps. The Army would only temporarily use such land and would not need to construct new facilities. As with the Desert Training Center, where units built their own hospitals, supply depots, railheads, roads and airfields, the Army should require divisions and corps to train expeditionary sustainment.

Conclusion

In conducting the Louisiana Maneuvers to prepare the Army for World War II, General George C. Marshall said, “I want the mistakes [made] down in Louisiana, not over in Europe, and the only way to do this thing is to try it out, and if it doesn’t work, find out what we need to make it work.”^[xxxi] We need the same mindset today.

We cannot be overconfident and think that we can train in one environment and easily dominate our opponents in a completely different context.^[xxxii] The world witnessed how Russia’s overconfidence and lack of preparation for the invasion of Ukraine resulted in a debacle. Our adversaries have learned. They will be training as they expect to fight. China has even built a large-scale replica of the Taipei government district for training.^[xxxiii] We cannot let them be more prepared than us. As Patton understood, we need to train as we fight.

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Author Biography

Major Robert G. Rose, USA, is a LTG (Ret) James M. Dubik Writing Fellow. He commands Alpine Troop, 3rd Squadron, 4th Security Forces Assistance Brigade. He holds an undergraduate degree from the United States Military Academy and graduate degrees from Harvard University and, as a Gates Scholar, from Cambridge University.

Notes