Your Brain In Combat

[JMA]

I may have read your comments wrong on training...but from my perspective our training gets better in wartime. We have/develop a sense of urgency in wartime. As our uniformed instructors disappear for deployment responsibilities, contractors (often retirees) are hired. They are gold for instruction and legacy knowledge. As for the needed instructors - well, it's time to purge our supply rooms, stop putting color printers in every office, implement some effective ways of increasing efficiency and stop wasting money - that will go a long way toward paying the salary/benefits etc for added instructors. Instead of issuing smartphones and spending millions to develop gaming technology, we need to invest in people and expertise.

What I am saying is that the US has had a few shots at wartime mobilization of troops. I am assuming there is a plan for this somewhere which gets updated annually (or whatever). The scale of this type of activity is beyond my imagination but obviously a nation will need the skeleton staff now on which to build the larger army. My point simply is that if there are significant problems being experienced with training resources and instructors with the current (say) million man military how does the military cope when the immediate need becomes to treble, quadruple or more the current strength? Where do you find the quality NCOs? Where do you find the quality officers? Where will you find the sergeant instructors of quality to take raw recruits and turn them into capable trained soldiers in say 90 days or whatever? I suggest that unless there is a clear staffing plan to cater for such a mobilization eventuality which is adhered to you immediately start watering down your instruction and command quality.

Yes one can retread (as in a worn out tire) retirees who at one time or other showed some instructional ability and reintroduce them back into the system. What would you rate the efficiency of these retreads as compared with your current crop of instructors? 50%? 60%? More? Less?

Once general mobilization begins quality of instruction starts to diminish. I have no idea whether the line on the training efficiency graph keeps heading downwards or does it bottom out after time and start to rise again. I would be interested if anyone has experience of this.

I suggest that one relies on the fact the enemy are having similar problems and strives to keep one step ahead of them.

[bumperplate]

What I am saying is that the US has had a few shots at wartime mobilization of troops. I am assuming there is a plan for this somewhere which gets updated annually (or whatever). The scale of this type of activity is beyond my imagination but obviously a nation will need the skeleton staff now on which to build the larger army. My point simply is that if there are significant problems being experienced with training resources and instructors with the current (say) million man military how does the military cope when the immediate need becomes to treble, quadruple or more the current strength? Where do you find the quality NCOs? Where do you find the quality officers? Where will you find the sergeant instructors of quality to take raw recruits and turn them into capable trained soldiers in say 90 days or whatever? I suggest that unless there is a clear staffing plan to cater for such a mobilization eventuality which is adhered to you immediately start watering down your instruction and command quality.

Yes one can retread (as in a worn out tire) retirees who at one time or other showed some instructional ability and reintroduce them back into the system. What would you rate the efficiency of these retreads as compared with your current crop of instructors? 50%? 60%? More? Less?

Once general mobilization begins quality of instruction starts to diminish. I have no idea whether the line on the training efficiency graph keeps heading downwards or does it bottom out after time and start to rise again. I would be interested if anyone has experience of this.

I suggest that one relies on the fact the enemy are having similar problems and strives to keep one step ahead of them.

As far as I can tell, there is no "plan", there is only hope.

As for the retirees, I have to say they are awesome. They provide so much in the way of legacy knowledge. Also, it is very, very rare that we see a retiree instructor who's last day of duty occurred before 9/11/01, now that we are ten years past the event. So, they are pretty current. Also, because they are enduring elements in the schoolhouse, they are generally more polished as instructors. I have no problem with our retirees, especially in more cerebral disciplines. I had them as enlisted and officer. Great stuff each time.