operator western hemisphere institute for security cooperation
The ___MASK53___ Armor School is a training school located at Fort Benning , Georgia . Its primary focus is the training of ___MASK53___ soldiers , NCOs , and commissioned officers in the operation , tactics , and maintenance of Armor forces and equipment , including the M1 Abrams main battle tank , the Bradley Fighting Vehicle , assorted crew - served and personal weapons , and various other equipment including radios . The school is also the site where U . S . Marines are sent for training on the Abrams tank . The Armor School moved to Fort Benning in 2010 as part of the United States ' BRAC program . Choi Kwang Jo ( born March 2 , 1942 ) is a former South Korean national champion in taekwondo , and is one of the twelve original masters of taekwondo of the Korea Taekwon - Do Association . Following a career in the South Korean military , he emigrated to the ___MASK8___ in 1970 . Choi is the founder and head of the Choi Kwang Do international martial art organization , with headquarters in ___MASK71___ , Georgia , USA . Fort Benning is a ___MASK53___ base straddling the Alabama - Georgia border next to Columbus , Georgia . Fort Benning supports more than 120 , 000 active - duty military , family members , reserve component soldiers , retirees , and civilian employees on a daily basis . It is a power projection platform , and possesses the capability to deploy combat - ready forces by air , rail , and highway . Fort Benning is the home of the ___MASK53___ Maneuver Center of Excellence , the ___MASK53___ Armor School , ___MASK53___ Infantry School , the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation ( formerly known as the School of the Americas ), elements of the 75th Ranger Regiment , 3rd Brigade  3rd Infantry Division , and many other additional tenant units . Military personnel in Fort Benning have been taught Choi Kwang Do under grandmaster Kwang Jo Choi for purposes in military combat . Columbus is a city in the U . S . state of Georgia and the county seat of Muscogee County , with which it is consolidated . According to the 2013 estimates from the U . S . Census Bureau , Columbus has a population of 202 , 824 residents , with 316 , 554 in the greater Columbus - Phenix City metropolitan area . The metro area joins the nearby Alabama cities of ___MASK70___ and Opelika to form the Columbus - ___MASK70___ - Opelika Combined Statistical Area , which has an estimated population of 501 , 649 . Columbus is directly to the east across the Chattahoochee River from Phenix City , Alabama . Situated at the heart of the Chattahoochee Valley , Columbus is Georgia ' s second - largest city and fourth - largest metropolitan area . The ___MASK53___ Infantry School is located at Fort Benning , Georgia , is a school dedicated to training infantrymen for service in the ___MASK53___ . Alabama is a state in the southeastern region of the United States . It is bordered by Tennessee to the north , Georgia to the east , Florida and the Gulf of ___MASK17___ to the south , and Mississippi to the west . Alabama is the 30th - most extensive and the 24th - most populous of the U . S . states . At nearly , Alabama has one of the nation ' s longest navigable inland waterways . The Chattahoochee River forms the ___MASK2___ half of the Alabama and Georgia border , as well as a portion of the Florida border . It is a tributary of the Apalachicola River , a relatively short river formed by the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers and emptying from Florida into Apalachicola Bay in the Gulf of ___MASK17___ . The Chattahoochee River is about long . The Chattahoochee , Flint , and Apalachicola rivers together make up the Apalachiacola  Chattahoochee  Flint River Basin ( ACF River Basin ). The Chattahoochee makes up the largest part of the ACF ' s drainage basin . The ___MASK53___ ( USA ) is the largest branch of the United States Armed Forces and performs land - based military operations . It is one of the seven uniformed services of the United States and is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution , Article 2 , Section 2 , Clause 1 and United States Code , Title 10 , Subtitle B , Chapter 301 , Section 3001 . As the largest and senior branch of the U . S . military , the modern U . S . Army has its roots in the Continental Army , which was formed ( 14 June 1775 ) to fight the American Revolutionary War ( 1775  1783 ) before the U . S . was established as a country . After the Revolutionary War , the Congress of the Confederation created the ___MASK53___ on 3 June 1784 , to replace the disbanded Continental Army . The ___MASK53___ considers itself descended from the Continental Army , and dates its institutional inception from the origin of that armed force in 1775 . A U . S . state is a constituent political entity of the ___MASK8___ . There are 50 states , which are bound together in a union with each other . Each state holds administrative jurisdiction over a defined geographic territory , and shares its sovereignty with the United States federal government . Due to the shared sovereignty between each state and the federal government , Americans are citizens of both the federal republic and of the state in which they reside . State citizenship and residency are flexible , and no government approval is required to move between states , except for persons covered by certain types of court orders ( e . g ., paroled convicts and children of divorced spouses who are sharing custody ). The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation ( WHINSEC ) , formerly known as the US Army School of the Americas , is a United States Department of Defense Institute located at Fort Benning near Columbus , Georgia , that provides military training to government personnel in US - allied Latin American nations . The school was founded in 1946 and from 1961 was assigned the specific goal of teaching `` anti - communist counterinsurgency training , '' a role which it would fulfill for the rest of the Cold War . In this period , it educated several Latin American dictators , generations of their military and , during the 1980s , included the uses of torture in its curriculum . In 2000 / 2001 , the institute was renamed to WHINSEC .