Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Formation level operations require practising skills to that have a major flow down effect. For the fire team, there may not be a lot of difference, but for Coy Commanders on up, there will be, and very little can be adequately practised doing a CPX.

EG: A Formation level passage of lines, at night to launch to one battle group into an opposed obstacle crossing.

Training fire teams is cheap and easy. Training formations is vastly expensive and very complicated.

You need bridging kit for all the vehicles, plus you need multiple bridging sites
Having spent time as a staff officer (GSO3-Ops) at a brigade HQ I have to agree fully with you that the potential for a mark one c*ock-up threatened where the staff had not been exercised live and often.

That said I believe if I understand the context of this thread correctly it is the dexterity of the soldier in his ability to switch from a conventional operation to COIN ops without having to undergo training. I believe we got fairly close to this in the RLI and again the key to success was the understanding at corporal level.