Camp Edwards is located on the 22,000-acre Joint Base Cape Cod on Upper Cape Cod. JBCC is an expansive, secure campus easily accessible from major centers in the Northeast, including Boston, Providence, Portland, Manchester, Albany, Hartford, and New York City.
Camp Edwards is the largest training area in the Northeast. Its 15,000-acre training area hosts units from Massachusetts and throughout the region.
In addition to Camp Edwards, JBCC is also home to Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod, Otis Air National Guard Base, and other federal and state agencies. These organizations comprise individual capabilities that accomplish Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) objectives.
Environmental Info/Policies
Environmental protection is no longer the province of a few technical experts. It requires Soldiers to prevent environmental problems by caring for those resources entrusted to them by the American people. This responsibility includes financial, material, and environmental stewardship.UH-1 Helicopters flying over Camp Edwards
Environmental stewardship is the wise use and responsible management of environmental resources, and is a natural outgrowth of the military's mission as a protector of U.S. national security. The Massachusetts National Guard has the following goals for environmental stewardship:
- Demonstrate leadership in environmental protection and improvement.
- Assure that consideration of the natural and cultural environment is an integral part of decision-making.
- Minimize adverse natural environment and human health impacts while maximizing readiness and strategic preparedness.
- Initiate aggressive awareness actions to ensure compliance with all applicable federal, state, and local environmental laws.
- Support a pollution prevention program by reusing and recycling materials, and reducing hazardous waste generation.
- Manage all Camp Edwards lands and natural and cultural resources, and restore areas contaminated by past activities.
The Massachusetts National Guard and Camp Edwards are committed to environmental stewardship. Everyone, from the Adjutant General to the newest recruit, every civilian employee, as well as every non-military organization that uses Camp Edwards' lands, must apply sound environmental stewardship to their area of responsibility. Why? Because we all want to have a safe environment to train in, but more importantly, we want to pass along a safe and protected environment for future generations.
Training Site Facilities
Massachusetts Army National Guard Training Site Camp Edwards is a major training site for Soldiers from New England and also provides training for civilian first responders and members of law enforcement.
Training Support Center
The Training Support Center offers a wide range of facilities including simulated training, rappel towers, and a driver training area. Highlights include:
Weapons Training
Indoor simulated weapons training with both the Engagement Skills Trainer (EST) 2000 and the Fire Arms Training System (FATS).
Rappel Towers
Two multi-use, fully enclosed, 60-foot platform towers with a fast roping lane, vertical insertion, and climbing walls.
Obstacle Course
Nine obstacles, recently updated; course meets stringent requirements of Ft. Benning’s standards for an Air Assault Course.
Leadership Reaction Course (LRC)
The LRC is a practical exercise facility using 17 stations to build leadership skills, encourage teamwork, develop technical and tactical proficiency, and confidence.
Call for Fire Trainer (CFFT)
The CFFT is a collective training system that provides a simulated battlefield for training Joint Fires Observers at the institutional and unit level.
Virtual Convoy Operations Trainer (VCOT)
The VCOT simulates Baghdad and other geo-specific areas. It includes mission rehearsals, leader training, and after action reviews. 360-degree visibility and weapon engagement area. Exercises include enemy IEDs, RPGs, machine gunners, riflemen, "technical" trucks, mortars, and suicide vehicles.
Training Area/Ranges
The Camp Edwards Training Area is 15,000 acres of undeveloped land in the northern portion of the base and is home to maneuvering and patrol training areas; small arms ranges; helicopter landing zones; nuclear, biological, and chemical training bunkers; and an extensive road network used for convoy and driver training.
Camp Edwards has a recently updated Tango range, a small arms range, which is approved for the use of lead ammunition. Additional ranges will be operational using lead ammunition soon.
Battle Simulation Center
The Battle Simulation Center is a state-of-the-art facility with a JANUS hardware and software suite, flexible room configuration, built-in PA, DVD, and power point systems. The center supports a wide range of tailored training events to include: Warfighter Exercises; Virtual Battlefield Trainer (VBT); multi-agency table top exercises; and it has also been used as an Emergency Operation Center during a disaster response operation.
Tactical Training Base (TTB) Kelley
The TTB is an individual military city that resides within the training site itself. The TTB is largely made up of staged military camps (tents), modular units, and open field space. The entire city is designed to simulate military life in Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Balkans.
Soldiers live in tents with modular units provided for shower and sink facilities. The base is surrounded by barriers filled with dirt and barbed wire, entry control points and guard towers. There is a modular “mayor’s office” from which the commanding officer manages the TTB.
The TTB is part of a larger concept called theater immersion training. Theater immersion training places units into an environment comparable to the one that they will encounter in combat.
It is designed to rapidly build combat-ready units led by competent, confident leaders and manned by battle-proofed soldiers who embody the Warrior Ethos. This training environment uses a multilevel approach that provides a combat training center-like experience that replicates conditions in the theater of operation.
Shoothouse
Plans are to construct a 7,540-square-foot Live Fire Shoot House with support facilities, of permanent-type construction, to serve the missions of the Massachusetts Army National Guard. This facility will permit all personnel to perform essential combat tasks that will improve their readiness posture prior to mobilization.
This facility will support small arms familiarization in a confined environment for all personnel assigned to the Massachusetts Army National Guard, as well as support collective training and pre-mobilization requirements for deploying units.
This project is urgently required to provide a facility where soldiers can train on the close quarters combat skills that they face during overseas combat deployments. Soldiers are being put in unfamiliar situations and this training will better prepare them and support force protection.
This facility will also be used by other Department of Defense and federal agencies to better prepare them for room clearing operations.
Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) Training Site Calero
The MOUT training site is a facility designed to meet the training requirements of a company-sized unit in an urban environment. Camp Edwards’ MOUT site is 48 buildings constructed from connex containers, 1-2 stories high, with a mixture of rubble and complete structures. The village will provide for a residential area, school, marketplace, and worship area. It also has a building used for training classes and after action review sessions.
Soldiers learn how to clear rooms and buildings in built-up areas, conduct house-to-house searches by foot in hostile urban areas and distinguish between the characteristics of an innocent civilian and an embedded insurgent aiming to do harm.
Soldiers training at the MOUT engage is realistic scenarios that require them to travel in convoys and encounter role players posing as civilians on the battlefield or opposing forces.
Regional Training Institute
The Regional Training Institute (RTI) is home to the oldest state-run Officer Candidate School in the United States, and the first accredited state-run Noncommissioned Officer Academy. The facility has six classrooms of 12 to 50 seats, two of which are computer labs, distance learning and video conferencing capabilities.
Additional Training Resources
- GIS
- IED Simulators
- RFMSS
- Emergency Driver Training
- Sub-divisional road grid for urban role playing
- Air Assault and Pathfinder courses
- Airmobile operations (H60/HU25/DOD)
- Ordnance storage facility
- Additional conference facilities: 475-seat post theater
Civilian First Responder Training
Camp Edwards supports civilian first responder training hosting large scale and table top inter-agency training exercises.
Many of the training facilities at Camp Edwards are used for civilian first responder training applications such as the Live and Simulated Small Arms Training Ranges (indoor and outdoor), Obstacle Course, Leadership Reaction Course, the Battle Simulation Center and the Driver Training Area to name a few.
Camp Edwards is a high-value training facility at a low cost and is easily accessible by major highways.
Tactical Training Team
The Camp Edwards Tactical Training Team (TTT) is a team of highly proficient noncommissioned officers (NCOs) whose primary mission is train Soldiers of the Massachusetts Army National Guard to have the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities in order to close with and destroy the enemy in the Nation’s various theaters of operations in the Global War on Terror.
Second, they are ready and available to assist other units and organizations from the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and law enforcement personnel / first responders in all areas of tactical training.
These Warriors are subject-matter experts in all areas of tactical operations to include: combatives; weapons; communications; calling for and adjusting indirect fire; combat lifesaver techniques; air assault operations; military operations on urban terrain; IED defeat techniques; operations in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear environments; and all leader tasks.
This team is designed to augment and work closely with the Massachusetts Army National Guard’s Pre-Deployment Training Assessment and Evaluation (PTAE) Team which is responsible for ensuring that units deploying into combat have validated in all training standards as directed by First Army.
All members of the Camp Edwards TTT are NCOs recently returned from deployments in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, have held leadership positions, are qualified instructors, meet all Army standards, and live the Army Values.
Support Facilities
Camp Edwards operates barracks-style and townhouse accommodations capable of housing approximately 2,500 people at any one time and as well as three dining facilities. A gym is also available on base that can accommodate all types of indoor physical fitness and sporting activities.
The MMR supports a wide range of training for homeland defense and security missions needs for the Army National Guard, the Air National Guard, and the U.S. Coast Guard. The MMR also hosts large-scale joint training exercises with both military and civilian first responder participation.
Homeland Defense/Security Training and the MMR
In 2004, a congressionally-funded feasibility study concluded the MMR was an ideal location for a regional homeland defense/security training center, due to its strategic location, joint relations between the National Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard, existing facilities that are able to support homeland defense/security training, and the base’s proximity to over 50 military and civilian organizations and academic institutions able to augment the training center.