Fort Benning
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Location of Fort Benning, Georgia
Fort Benning is a military base facility of the United States military southwest of Columbus, Georgia. The base is located in Muscogee County, Chattahoochee County and Russell County. It is named for Confederate General Henry L. Benning, a native of Columbus. Established in 1918, the base covers 182,000 acres (737 km²).
The base has a large basic training facility for infantry. It is home to the Infantry Training Brigade of the United States Army as well being the Army's foremost airborne (parachuting) training center. Further, it is home to a Basic Combat Training Brigade (BCTB) on Sand Hill. This is distinguished from Infantry Training Brigade (ITB) in that BCT is 9 weeks compared to IT's 14 weeks. BCTB is used to train non-infantry personell.
There are four main cantonment areas on Ft. Benning. They are the Main Post area, Kelley Hill, Sand Hill and Harmony Church. Main Post houses various garrison and smaller FORSCOM units of Ft. Benning such as 36th Engineer Group, 988th MP Co., and 29th Infantry Regiment (training support) and misc. TRADOC-related functions, i.e. OCS and airborne school, for instance. Kelley Hill houses the 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division(Mechanized). Sand Hill is the primary location of the Infantry Training Brigade and Basic Combat Training Brigade, while the Harmony Church houses the Sniper and Ranger schools.
Fryar Drop Zone, the drop zone that airborne students land into, is actually in the Alabama portion of Fort Benning.
Fort Benning is also home to:
- The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), formerly known as School of the Americas
- The US Army Pathfinder training school
- US Army Officer Candidate School
As of April 2005, Major General Benjamin Freakley is the current post commander. Col. Ricardo M. Riera is the current garrison commander.
Because of all of the essential programs it is home to, Fort Benning is considered extremely unlikely to be hit with a base closing, unlike many of Georgia's other military facilities which are at risk.Template:TRADOC Template:Mil-stub