Fort McCoy Trains Record Numbers Of Military Personnel

Fort McCoy trained more than 145,000 members of the military last year — the highest numbers the base in southwest Wisconsin has seen in more than 15 years.

For more than a century, soldiers have trained for war and disaster relief at Fort McCoy. While all branches of the military use it, the majority of training is geared towards part-time service members in the National Guard and Army Reserves. About 20,000 more personnel came for exercises last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, compared to the year before.

Fort McCoy spokeswoman Linda Fournier said they’re busier now than they were during the height of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, Fournier said those units are returning to Wisconsin for annual and extended training, which includes weapons qualifications.

“You can’t fire your weapon once and say, ‘OK, I’m good for the year.’ That is a perishable skill,” said Fournier. “So you might have to do weapons qualification in the spring and the fall, just to keep up with firing that weapon.”

Fournier also said more major exercises are taking place at Fort McCoy, when all types of units train together before entering a wartime or disaster relief mission.

“This is a good understanding for the military police to understand what the engineers might need, and the engineers understanding what the transportation folks might need,” she said. “So it’s all working together to say, ‘How can we accomplish this so that everybody can be successful?’”

Fournier said Fort McCoy has space to house about 10,000 soldiers at any given time.