Bugle Summer 2026 - Flipbook - Page 10
1 RIFLES
WHERE SATNAVS
GO TO DIE
There are few, more dramatic transitions
in life than stepping off an overnight flight
from Heathrow into Las Vegas. The air feels
less like a climate, and more like someone
has opened the door to an industrial pizza
oven. The city is a monument to humanity’s
unwavering confidence that anything is
possible if you have enough electricity.
But while most headed for the neon lights,
casinos and buffets, we turned our sights on
the Mojave Desert and Fort Irwin.
Some places on earth make you question
humanity’s collective decision-making. The
National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin
is one of them. Because at some point, an
individual looked at the Mojave Desert and
declared, “Yes, this is where we’ll teach people
to fight.”
To be fair, they weren’t wrong. The NTC
exists to provide some of the most realistic
military training anywhere in the world, with
vast manoeuvre areas, a dedicated opposing
force (The Blackhorse Regiment) and enough
dust to exfoliate every exposed inch of skin
whether you asked for it or not. It is widely
regarded as the U.S. Army’s premier training
ground for large-scale combat operations,
and after six days there, it’s difficult to imagine
anywhere more convincing. The desert itself
seems to create a new meaning of dry. It
doesn’t shout. It simply dehydrates you with
remarkable efficiency.
Our visit, in April, was a fascinating glimpse
10 RIFLES The Bugle
into a military machine that somehow
combines cutting-edge technology with the
timeless military tradition of standing around
waiting for something to happen. Our hosts;
The 11th Armoured Cavalry Regiment (The
Blackhorse Regiment) is akin to the size of our
own 7th Brigade with 3,500 serving members
dedicated soley to the task of training US Land
Forces.
Fort Irwin is enormous. The training area,
or ‘Box’ spans around 1,000 square miles. For
perspective, The Box can fit eight Salisbury
Plain Training Area’s inside it. Distances are
measured less in miles and more in existential
reflection. You don’t simply drive somewhere;
you embark upon a pilgrimage through dust
and remote, seemingly abandoned desert.
The scale of the exercises is genuinely
impressive. The NTC pumps out a Brigade/
Division sized exercise approximately 10 times
a year, with the baseline standard seeing
armoured vehicles thundering across the
desert and helicopters weaving overhead.
The Blackhorse Regiment are extremely
well-rehearsed, with co-ordination meetings
all happening over radios (saving on a 2-hour
drive back to camp to have a face-to-face). Yet
still they were not simply burning and churning
the same output every exercise. The Blackhorse
were able to tailor every exercise and training
serial to the target audience, creating an entire
Brigade’s worth of people actively seeking to
make the training as best as possible.
Yes, this
is where
we’ll teach
people to
昀椀ght
The soldiers we met displayed remarkable
professionalism and an equally remarkable
ability to survive on coffee, energy drinks and
humour of questionable quality. A standout
Junior Officer from the ‘Immortal’ unit – a
Company sized UAS detachment, had started
innovating and creating a UAS detection
device, which could disrupt and even take
control of UAS flying in the air, all for a mere
$200. Common to the British Army, military
banter, seems specifically engineered to keep
