Fort Riley will serve as a training site for approximately 23,000 National Guard and Reserve troops this year.

Junction City Mayor Mick McCallister said it’s an effort by Major General Wayne Grigsby Jr. to get more capability training out of Fort Riley. “While Fort Riley ( troops ) are deployed we have the greatest training area in the Army sitting vacant. So he’s trying to get these Reserve and National Guard units to come out here and train while Fort Riley is elsewhere.”

McCallister stated that has helped, and a lot of troops will visit the post to do their training. He said the training will be spread out through the entire year. “It’s kind of almost constant. There’ll be a group that comes in, they’ll train for their 10 to 14 days, and then there’ll be another group coming in behind them. So that schedule is kind of ongoing. It’s not like all 23,000 will be here at the same time, but it’s an increase of at least a battalion size company that comes out and trains, so it will be a bump in population throughout the summer.”

McCallister updated the Junction City Military Affairs Advisory Committee on this topic this past week.