U.S. troops prep to face an invisible enemy

American soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division -- 700 of them -- are to leave in just two weeks for a mission that's anything but typical, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Axelrod.

Usually troop deployment takes six months of preparation, but this time troops will train and be ready to ship out in a total of just six weeks.

Sergeant Anthony Maddox told Axelrod that in his 15 years in the Army, he's never had a day like this.

"Just like a hostile combatant on the battlefield, it can kill you," Maddox said. "But this one isn't so much ... you can't see it -- you know it's there, but you can't see it."

Maddox and more than 100 of his fellow soldiers from the 101st Airborne spent four hours in a training facility Thursday.

They're learning safety measures and being outfitted with gear to protect them from the new, invisible adversary, the deadly Ebola virus.

Troops were taught how to put on different pieces of protective equipment.

They'll use Hazmat-like suits -- the yellow for standard protection, the white for more dangerous environments -- and rubber gloves and gas masks to protect their faces and lungs.

They were paired up to check and double-check everything was in its proper place and to help decontaminate each other when taking their suits off; that's when the majority of contaminations occur.

But so far, the men don't seem worried about contracting the virus.

"I haven't heard anyone express that, no," said Battalion Commander Nikolaus Guran. "They want to know about it, and they want to learn about it, and they want to learn how to deal with it."

The U.S. Military has 350 personnel in West Africa already, with almost 4,000 more expected to be deployed.

Costing nearly $1 billion, the mission will help with logistics and to build medical centers with 17, 100 more beds.

But the vast majority of the soldiers don't expect to come into direct contact with the disease.

"We're supporting, so it would be very unlikely that one of our soldiers would encounter Ebola or someone infected with Ebola," Commander Guran said.

Still, soldiers like Sergeant Maddox are not taking anything for granted.

"It makes you more cautious, you feed off it," Sergeant Maddox said. "And it makes you prepared to be that much more careful when you're dealing with this particular threat."

Officials said Thursday the mission could last for as long as a year. It all depends on how fast these countries are able to contain the virus.