EXPLAINER: Why Dutch soldiers were at Indiana military camp

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Before three Dutch soldiers were shot, one fatally, in downtown Indianapolis, they were training in a southern Indiana military camp where international soldiers enter highly specialized urban combat simulations they might not be able to get in their own country. At Muscatatuck — where the three Dutch Commando Corps members involved in the shooting were training — “everything in the city and surrounding property, including the people, is ‘in play,'" its website says. “Our primary intent is to simulate real-world, urban scenarios through real and virtual training for first responders involved in counterterrorism operations,” then-Indiana Guard Adjutant General Martin Umbarger said in announcing the creation of the Muscatatuck center in 2004. Those materials detail a training environment that mimics a city — with a five-story hospital, an oil refinery, a coal-fired steam plant, among many other features — as well as bits of infrastructure that might be found in a war zone, such as downed aircraft, searchable “rubble buildings,” a caved-in parking garage and a collapsed rail trestle.