Client: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville, KY
The Department of Defense enlisted the expertise of
Polyengineering, Inc., to design and engineer a training facility that would prepare U.S. troops for the chaos, confusion, stress, and pressure of war in an urban environment. The mock city had to be large enough to host a training exercise for a company/battalion task force with helicopters, armor, infantry and Bradley Fighting Vehicles and versatile enough to pose as a town located virtually anywhere in the world.
The solution is Zussman Mounted Urban Training
Complex. Situated on 26 acres of rocky wilderness at Fort Knox, KY, this $13 Million project provides the setting for soldiers to get the dramatic, hands-on experience needed to effectively fight and win a war on an urban battlefield. The MUCTS has 16 buildings resembling the residential, industrial, and government structures. The training site’s command/control/observation facility is camouflaged as a mock elevated water tower. The 4-Story Range Control Tower has 3 operating levels and provides a 360 degree visual of the entire range, all of which is in video range through strategic placement of fiber optic video cameras.
In order to subject the troops to extreme levels of physical
and psychological stress typically experienced in an actual urban conflict, a system of Hollywood special effects was used that had never been used for military purposes. Soldiers training at MUCTS will experience first-hand the sights and smells of war, including speaker driven sound effects simulating riot, fire, uprising, screams and voices in various languages (the language is programmed by the trainer). During the exercise they will encounter a burning gas station; a timed falling utility pole that blocks the roadway and even smell the sewer while crawling through the more than 900 lineal feet of 48-inch sewer pipe. Hidden features are included in the design to maximize the soldier’s stress levels, such as an exploding, collapsing bridge (which is structurally stable for a tank crossing when not in collapsing mode); hand grenades that shoot out of a hidden passage and drop at the soldier’s feet; 22 different locations within the compound that can suddenly ignite into flames; and a massive automobile explosion.
Zussman Mounted Urban Training Complex stands today as a hallmark of excellence in urban combat training, hailed by many training experts as the best and most realistic urban training facility in the world.