BUTLERVILLE — The military is continuing to transform a former facility for the developmentally disabled in southern Indiana into an urban combat training site.
The once-quiet grounds of what is now the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center now include a simulated Middle Eastern marketplace and devices used to replicate natural gas explosions that are used for preparing troops before they leave for deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan.
"We want to train like we want to fight," said Brig. Gen. Clif Tooley, the Indiana National Guard's assistant adjutant general.
The military expects by 2014 to have spent $200 million on the Muscatatuck site. The National Guard in 2005 took over the former Muscatatuck State Developmental Center, with its heavily wooded 1,000 acres and dozens of buildings.
Among the planned projects are construction of a fake oil field and a building resembling a mosque along with the transformation of an existing structure to resemble the layout of an American embassy, which soldiers will practice defending.
The center about 60 miles southeast of Indianapolis already has prison complex furnished with cells so that soldiers can train in scenarios such as freeing prisoners from their captors. It even has a livestock barn with chickens, donkeys and goats that Tooley said are used to make its marketplace scenario and others more authentic.
The government is also using the center for civilian training, such as a two-week exercise involving 4,000 federal emergency response workers that concludes Nov. 14.
The National Guard said the Muscatatuck center was being used as the site of a community hit by a catastrophic event.
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