Training for Afghanistan

[Red Rat]

Apologies (MarcT ) for the tardiness!

Background

The UK army training system is based around the Formation Operational Readiness Cycle (FORM Cycle). This sees formations undergoing a cycle of (6 months on each stage):

Special to Arm Training up to sub-unit level
All arms training sub-unit to unit level
High Readiness (blurring into)
Mission Specific Training
Operational deployment

Non-mission specific training was focused on maintaining 'conventional' major combat operations (MCO) capabilities with the ethos that we could 'ramp down' to COIN but could not ramp up from COIN to MCO. Fighting in Helmand and Basra indicated that we needed to be able to maintain our MCO capabilities. This training cycle did not however build in any sort of Influence training and failed to take into account that the structures and processes used in both Iraq and Afghanistan were moving away from those adopted and used in generic training.

The good news is that we have moved away from that system to one focused much more tightly on the current campaign and COIN.

As a brigade we will conduct our unit level training in mid-2010, with mission specific training commencing late 2010. Rather then 'carry on normal jogging' we are trying to take all the elements that we can from the new system (accepting that we will not have the resources in most cases) and super-impose them on the old cycle. That means for the most part a great deal of conceptual training and re-writing all our exercises to make them more relevant.

For conceptual training we have come up with a series of Study Days to be held in Germany. Outline details are attached. We have also developed a reading list for which funding has come through and it looks like it is going to go army wide. That is fine for the broadbrush detail, but now we are looking at the nitty gritty:

Exercise Design
Inculcating Influence Awareness and Practice at all levels
Cultural Awareness at all levels (acknowledging that exercises will not be set (or resourced to be) in Afghanistan under the current system).

there is a large amount of churn underway at the moment and a great deal of time is spent sorting wheat from chaff at my level!!! The move to the new system has generated a great deal of turmoil and we appear to sit astride all the cracks! That said we are already developing a reputation as the brigade with best practice - no small part due to this forum.

I will upload shortly detailed training objectives for some of the study days as well as a declassified version of our cultural and language training plan.