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NC Guard Preps For Middle East Deployment

Commanding General Gen. Michael Garrett meets with N.C. National Guard soldiers at Fort Irwin where 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team is training.
U.S. Army Forces Command

Nearly 3,000 members of the North Carolina National Guard are in the middle of a massive training exercise near Death Valley, California.

The Guard's 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team has brought its tanks and hundreds more vehicles to Fort Irwin, a sprawling Army base that's used for realistic desert training.

"It's all the logistics, the food, the fuel, the maintenance activity," said Brigadier General Allen Boyette, a senior commander with the North Carolina Guard. "And then it also integrates all the war fighting functions, from military intelligence, to the tanks to the infantry into a large scale operation where the entire brigade is out in the dessert doing the missions that they've been assigned."

The exercise is a final preparation for a deployment this fall to several Middle Eastern countries.

The 30th has become a go-to unit for the Pentagon. It's been deployed three other times since 2003, including two tours in Iraq.

Jay Price has specialized in covering the military for nearly a decade.
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