Army unit from Utah moving to Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A new Army Reserve unit will move out of Salt Lake City and be relocated to the Las Vegas area around Oct. 1 amid a nationwide reorganization, military officials said.

The 650th Regional Support Group is a nondeployable, command-and-control headquarters unit consisting of 60 soldiers commanded by a colonel. "The Army Reserve has decided it needs a command-and-control brigade in Las Vegas due to increasing population in that area," said Col. Steve Mogan, chief operating officer for the 63rd Regional Readiness Command in Los Alamitos, Calif. About a dozen of the 60 will be full-time soldiers, Mogan said.

The entire unit will drill once a month on weekends with annual training of two weeks to four weeks per year.

Mogan said the readiness command's engineer is looking at leasing a facility or building a new one to house the 650th.

The addition of 60 Army Reserve soldiers will bring to 735 the number serving in Nevada-based units.

The 650th now falls under the 96th Regional Readiness Command at Fort Douglas, Utah. But the 10 regional readiness commands nationwide are being transformed into four regional readiness support commands. The nationwide consolidation of Army Reserve commands has created the new 63rd Regional Readiness Support Command at Moffett Field, Calif., to oversee Army Reserve facilities in Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico along with those now under the 63rd in Nevada, Arizona and California.

The reorganization is expected to be completed by 2009.