The best training many of us experienced has always taken us outside of our comfort zone. For military forces this is of critical importance – you can master personal or section, even company drills well enough in a variety of places, but when you start to operate with different parts of the military you get force integration stresses. These tensions need to be worked out well before you meet an adversary on the battlefield – ideally with a thinking team of professionals acting as a dynamic adversary who will thrash you, while giving you the opportunity to learn, grow and master new skills in extremely testing conditions. It is a big ask – it costs a lot of cash, and uses a huge area of space. More than that, the training itself needs to be conducted by people who really know what they are doing. One such place in the US National Training Centre at Fort Irwin. It represents the gold standard in unit and formation training globally – and has been doing it since 1980, when it was reopened and now acts as the center for final pre-deployment training for Brigade Combat Teams from the US Army.  In this conversation, Peter is joined by Brigadier General Curt Taylor, the Commanding General of NTC and Fort Irwin. His aim, it seems, is to “give you your worst day in combat”, before you even leave the United States.