Soldiers Begin Training For New Fight - kcentv.com - KCEN HD - Waco, Temple, and Killeen

With the end of a war in sight, combat troops on Fort Hood are shifting focus.

For years, they've been fighting insurgents and providing support for foreign governments and civilians.

So now they're now brushing up on what it takes to take on an Army.

This afternoon mortar after mortar fired over Fort Hood skies as part of a training exercise.

It's music to SGT Shane Hanover's ears.

He has been a cavalry scout for 23 years, but it's been nearly a decade since he's gotten to do that job overseas.

"We're an extremely powerful and lethal force, we've just kept a lot of things on the shelf," said Shane.

He is trained to support force-on-force combat, but missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have been against scattered insurgents, also focusing on civil and governmental stability.

Now this week-long field artillery training, called decisive action training, is preparing 4 thousand 3rd Brigade Combat Team soldiers for whatever might come next.

"We were really living on forward operating bases, and we would execute our missions from those bases out into the environment and back, where as now, it will be a more fluid and on the move scenario," said LTC Robert Hensley.

In recent years, armored vehicles have been used primarily to protect troops when they're on the go.

Now it's time to train on fighting vehicles, in case our soldiers one day have to face a country with tanks of their own.

And next month they'll go to the National Training Center in California to get certified in these types of maneuvers.

"We're going to go in there, and we're going to do really well. I feel really bad for the enemy," said Shane.

As of right now, the brigade isn't scheduled to deploy, but if it does, it will have that blend of experience from the old and the new tactics.

Reporter/Photographer: Sophia Stamas sstamas@kcentv.com