JERICHO, Vt. — The Vermont National Guard has broken ground on a new $27 million facility for its U.S. Army Mountain Warfare School.
The school in Jericho has trained military and other personnel around the world in techniques of high-altitude and mountain operations and combat.
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“As we ask our young men and women to be ready for conflict throughout the world, we owe them the best training resources and education that they can receive,” Maj. Gen. Gregory Knight, adjutant general of the Vermont National Guard, said at the groundbreaking on Thursday, MyNBC5.com reported. While much of the training is done outdoors there is also classwork and other indoor training and the current facility no longer meets the program’s needs, Knight said.
“We’ve been outgrown from that facility for a number of years. The location is not that great; it’s in a flood plain,” he said.
The new 82,668-square-foot facility will have a drill hall with a four-story climbing wall, classrooms and other spaces, a dining facility and more. It’s designed to be energy efficient and will have solar power, geothermal heating and cooling and a state of the art energy management system, the Guard said. The facility is expected to be completed in the spring of 2022.
