Two-dozen soldiers opened fire on an angry mob after an insurgent in the crowd lobbed a grenade at troops securing a key transport route in a recent exercise in former Soviet Georgia.
Had this been a real life situation in Iraq, two of the 538 Georgian soldiers currently being trained by US Marines for service in the war-torn nation, as well as scores of civilians, would have been killed.
"They opened up on the crowd. That sounds like bad news," one of the Marine trainers, 1st Lieutenant Roberto Ingham said as instructors assessed what the death toll would be if the event had been real.
Mercifully, this is just one of many realistic scenarios - peppered with explosions and gunfire - which Georgian troops are being put through this week before their battalion ships off for peacekeeping duties in Iraq next year.
As the United States increasingly asserts itself in the South Caucasus, a region until recently part of the domain of Washington's cold war-era foe Russia, it has increased military co-operation with local regimes under the auspices of the global war on terror.
"The Georgians are part of the larger war on terrorism. They're playing a real role," US Ambassador to Tbilisi, John Tefft said during a visit to the disused Soviet-era air base some 35 kilometers (20 miles) from Tbilisi where Georgia's 22nd battalion carries out its training.
Embassy officials said the US hoped the program would help make Georgian troops "interoperable with Nato," the US-led military alliance.
US trainers were assessing the ability of Georgian troops to handle scenarios as diverse as protecting a polling station from suicide bombers and defending an army base under rebel assault.
"We're trying to retrain them from a Russian military mindset," said the program's spokesman, Marine Staff SSgt. Jonathan Moor.
The US has trained and equipped close to 3,000 Georgian soldiers since 2002, or over a fifth of the small nation's total military force.
Meanwhile US pressure has helped Tbilisi reach an agreement on the pullout of Russian troops from its territory, following a visit here by US President George W. Bush in May.
A strategic region both because of its military value as a conduit for Nato over-flights to Afghanistan and for its location between Russia and Iran, the Caucasus also attracts Washington's attention because of its proximity to the Caspian Sea's considerable oil reserves.
The US has spent over a quarter of a billion dollars on military aid to Georgia and its oil-rich neighbour Azerbaijan, where it trains the Coast Guard and has built radar sites on Russia and Iran's borders.
The US has said the aid to Azerbaijan is directed at countering the movement of illicit cargoes and suspected militants over the sensitive Caspian.
Azerbaijan is the starting point for two Western-backed multi-billion-dollar pipelines that will for the first time carry Caspian oil and gas directly to Western markets bypassing Russia - through Georgia and Turkey - starting next year.
"This is really important for the United States and for Europe, because so much gas and energy, oil, can come through here," Ambassador Tefft said.
Georgia, which like Azerbaijan grapples with internal instability stemming from unresolved separatist conflicts, has been a willing participant in coalition missions to Afghanistan and Iraq because of the experience its troops gain there, observers say.
"Our guys get used to modern warfare, terrorism and partisan war thanks to the US," said Alex Rondeli, head of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, a Tbilisi-based think-tank.
The US has stressed, however, that it supports a peaceful resolution to Georgia's conflicts with the Moscow-backed regimes of breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia hopes to one day join Nato. Its pro-Western president Mikhail Saakashvili, who came to power on wave of popular revolt in 2003, ordered one of the capital's streets to be renamed in honour of Bush after his visit.
After Azerbaijan held widely criticised parliamentary elections last month and violently broke up peaceful opposition protests, Washington's willingness to continue its strategic partnership with Baku has pleased authorities there.
"We're doing our military training, but it's also a political showpiece. We're trying to build up relations," said Moor.
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