Reserve Soldiers with the 276th Support Maintenance Company, out of Puerto Rico, are gaining on-the-job experience at their military occupational specialties

Reserve Soldiers with the 276th Support Maintenance Company, out of Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico, are gaining on-the-job experience at their military occupational specialties with Fort Leonard Wood’s Fleet Management Expansion Directorate, as part of a U.S. Army Materiel Command initiative called Operation Patriot Press.
The initiative links Army Reserve and National Guard units to real-world missions during mandatory annual training periods to better support the Army’s overall strategic objectives, said 2nd Lt. Luis Perez Andujar, executive officer for the Reserve unit. “The reality is we don’t do this 24/7,” Perez Andujar said. “We don’t have the facilities back home that Fort Leonard Wood has here, so this maximizes our two-week training requirement.” According to Donald Ungerecht, FMX support operations manager, the FMX is part of the Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command that supports the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command schools on the installation. The FMX has three divisions, the Engineer Support Division, Maintenance Support Division, and Weapons and Specialty Support Division. He says, “We have Soldiers from the 276th Support Maintenance Company supporting missions in all three of our divisions. We place the Soldiers in divisions based on their MOS, but also take into consideration any specific training need that the 276th leadership requests. With the diverse fleet of equipment, we support here at Fort Leonard Wood, we have the flexibility to provide their Soldiers with the opportunity to work on vehicles they do not get to see back at their units.”