The Importance and Role of Training in Creating/Sustaining the Best Possible Forces

[Uboat509]

With all due respect, Norfolk, you clearly don't know what SF does. If "building guerilla armies" was all that we did then we might have ceased to exist a long time ago. We perform a whole series missions, many of which are not for public consumption. We do not simply duplicate what the big Army is already doing. On the contrary, we avoid certain missions because other units are already doing those missions and it would be a pointless duplication of effort and a waste of resources. Much of what we do, we do because no one else is trained or equiped to do it.

I fail to see how MAJ Thornton's training, awesome as it was, could be considered SOF training. SOF training is training for SOF missions it is not simply regular infantry training with more resources. Contrary to popular belief we do not have unlimited budget and resources either. Could regular forces be brought to a higher standard, given suficient budget and resources? Of course, but can they do do the same missions that SOF does as well as SOF? If they could then the conventional Army would have gotten rid of us long ago.

SFC W

[Norfolk]

Uboat, I am well aware that the US Army SF perform a very wide range of roles, from Strategic Reconnaissance to Mobile Training Teams to Humanitarian Assistance, et al. But their raison d'etre to begin with was guerrilla warfare, and they would not have been formed in the first place had that not been defined as their primary mission at the time; much of the rest has followed in subsequent years as guerrilla warfare receded into the background for being increasingly unlikely.

And if you had undergone a Commonwealth 6-month infantry syllabus followed by service in a Battalion, you might have found much of it to be suprisingly familiar, and strenuous - and not like what you would have experienced (or expected) in many a regular US Army battalion. One of my old Battalion's (a Reserve Bn) US Army training partners was a NG SF Bn - 3rd Bn, 20th SFG. Perhaps much of Rob's Unit's training was not SOF-type per se, but a lot of it was honing the basics to a much higher level of proficiency, which is essential for handling tasks that in the US Army are typically reserved to SOF. In the Commonwealth, things are mighty different. Get yourself attached to an RCR Battalion or a Royal Marine Commando for a year or two; it's not like the US Army.

[Surferbeetle]

Rob,

Good thread, as we all know education/training is the keystone of success in both the military and civilian world.

I have been lucky enough to serve in the AUS, ARNG, USAR, & civil service (Army & Navy) as well as having worked a few years in the private sector prior to joining the USG. This experience has shown me that trained individuals (completing training is a mark of the individuals motivation and suitability for the task) who are adequately resourced (and understand the difference between need and want) and who have good leadership are in general more successful at accomplishing the work mission than those who lack these things. Gear is good, but good people are better than good gear.

The US Military, in my opinion, does a good job of balancing societal needs and the requirements of necessary expertise to accomplish its mission of defending the Nation. Teams/Nations benefit from having members/inhabitants with shared experiences and shared education/training. One of the missions of the US military is to provide this training/education to our citizens. On the flip-side of training/educating all-comers our organization still needs experts who can guide the organization to success. To use the bell curve analogy the bulk of a population will always end up in the middle and those at the upper and lower ends of the bell curve are small in number. Adequately educating a population for a required task is a function of limited time and resources and always will be.

Conventional Forces need to accept that full-spectrum operations are the required skill set and ensure that their teams/units are continually and heavily trained. Since the bulk of the Conventional Force will not stay for more than 4 years training time and thus skill developing time is limited. Good NCOs, many CTC rotations, extensive military schooling which teaches full-spectrum operations, and of course operational experience are the keys to training success. The bulk of the US Military can accomplish this. Conventional Forces are more generalists than specialists and need to be assigned missions with this in mind.

SOF needs to accept that the population of participants is limited and true joint operations allow us to maximize our effectiveness. SOF work requires specialized professional civilian skills, advanced infantry skills, language capabilities, and extensive in-country experiences in order to accomplish specialized missions. To acquire these skills requires more time and resources in order to vet and educate appropriate people who are suited to the task. Limited time and resources mean that only a small population will be able to get this type of training and experience. SOF are more specialists than generalists and need to be assigned missions with this in mind.

'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure' and 'Diplomacy is the art of gaining strategic advantage through negotiation' are two truisms that always apply and ones that we as a Nation need to revisit regularly. DOS/USAID/Peace Corps needs to be beefed up and placed upon an equal to or better resource footing than the US Military.

DOS/USAID/Peace Corps, SOF, and Conventional Forces all need to refocus and redouble their efforts on training the team/squad, since teams/squads are the building blocks of successful organizations. This means that team/squads must have extensive shared educational and 'real-world' experiences so that they can gel and excel. Both generalists and specialists are necessary to the Nations success. Bottom line? All of us need more training to excel and this requires steady resource streams, extensive planning, and most importantly good people.

[Uboat509]

Norfolk, I don't think that you are fully aware of what we do given that a good deal of what we do is classified. You seem to be assuming that SF are just extremely well trained infantry but that is simply not correct. Big Army does not, as a rule, like elite formations and would not tolarate any such organiztion that simply duplicates what conventional units already do. We are not simply an elite infantry formation, in fact, many SF soldiers have never served a day in their lives in the infantry. SF is drawn from all branches of the Army. The majority are former combat arms but that is not a prerequisite.

As for the likelihood of needing guerilla warfare skills, 5th Group's actions in the initial stages of Afghanistan are textbook UW. Since then, we have made great use of those skillsets (albeit on a smaller scale) in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

SFC W

[Norfolk]

I am aware that a great deal of what the SF do is indeed classified and for obviously very good reasons. And I am not saying that Line Battalions should fully replace SF, by no means, and certainly not that SF are just well-trained Light Infantry. But I am saying that much of the skills levels - though not all the specific skills, let alone all the roles performed by SF - should be integral to US Army infantry units. Your terms of reference seem to be framed by US Army practice; such practice is not universal by any means.

For example, in the US Army, the Scout Platoon of an Infantry Battalion performs conventional reconnaissance, surveillance, and screening/security tasks for its parent Battalion; a LRS Det or Company handles both the LRRP (to some degree anyway) and surveillance tasks for the Battalion's parent Formation. In The RCR, the Battalion Reconnaissance Platoon (including snipers) had to be, and was, trained and equipped for both roles - tactical and operational reconnaissance tasks of all manner - as well as HUMINT; and whether that meant operating strictly on foot, helicopter, using an assault boat from an O-Class sub (no longer in service - that was a while ago now), or from the back of a Lynx, or whatever, then that's what was done, mission-dependent.

An Infantry Battalion could perform a number of other unconventional tasks. Providing bodyguards for domestic and foreign VIPs, for one - done out of hide - training taken at either Chichester or the Secret Service course in Virginia (a buddy of mine was one of the guys who got the tap for that). A great deal of the Combat Swimmer role was performed either by Pathfinders (not quite the same as their US Army counterparts) or by Combat Engineers. For other, more "strategic" tasks, individuals or certain groups were likewise tapped on the shoulder and received the requisite training (if it was lacking) and detached out of the Battalion to attend to their duties. Since SF have been formally brought back (starting in '92) in the Canadian Army, some of this has since changed. An Infantry Battalion is not an SF Unit, nor am I arguing that it should be; but a well-trained Infantry Battalion is capable of a surprising range of SOF missions, and regular Infantrymen should be, and can be, trainend accordingly.

What I am trying to point out here is that outside of the US Army, there are several Armies where the distinction between Main Forces and SOF becomes decidely blurred. Which is one of the reason why Commonwealth forces prefer SAS and Delta-type SF to handle full-fledged SF missions and tasks, and let the regular battalions handle the stuff on the outer fringers (somewhat as the Rangers do in the US). Many SF units do not have the time to conduct all the myriad missions, some of which are at cross-purposes from a Unit-training standpoint. It's not unknown for one mission or task or set thereof to take up so much time that another becomes neglected, but that's sometimes because a Government sets policies and makes committments - especially to other Governments or actors - that strain available troops and resources.

As SF don't always have enough time to handle all the missions that their Governments thrust upon them, letting Line Battalions train to standards (though anything like the full skill sets) approaching that of SF makes for far more capable and flexible Line Infantry that may be able to relief SF of some of the "fuzzier" stuff on the blurry line that distinguishes between SF and Main Forces, while at the same time making for regular units that are genuinely capable in the "Full Spectrum" of Operations - not like what happened in 2003, when after crushing the Iraqi Armed Forces, the US Army had to re-learn COIN almost from scratch. It did not have to be that way.

If many people, even within the US Army, look down somewhat at regular US infantry and deride them in terms not far removed from the draftee armies of the past, it's not because the US Infantryman is not capable of being more or less of Ranger-quality. It's because the Army, for various reasons, won't let them.

And this is where the present structure of the US Army SF may in some ways be problematic. "Delta" or whatever it's called these days, represents one of the high-ends of US SOF - comparable to the SAS, etc. But the rest of the Army SF (I'm just talking about the SFGs, not CA, PsyOps, et al.) has no parallels in the English-speaking world at present, or even in much of the rest of the world. In the rest of the English-speaking world, the missions that the Green Berets (exclusive of Delta here) perform are divvied up between an SAS-type SF and the regular infantry, with perhaps a few Commando Forces units for more specialized roles (particularly parachuting and mountain warfare).

Strategic Reconnaissance - amongst other missions, is certainly best handled by a dedicated SF unit. No arguments there. But I suspect that Government policy drives a demand for SF aside from SAS-type units to an extent that may be unnecessary. And some other missions presently handled by SF may be handled quite well by highly-trained infantry battalions.

[William F. Owen]

Gentleman,

At the end of the day, US and UK Infantry training still resides in a WW2 paradigm. You all know my views on this from my Patrol Based Infantry paper. To date, no one has really pushed the envelop of what WELL TRAINED infantry can do, because the mind set is still incredibly limited. Assuming you have men with the intelligence to be a carpenter or plumber, then you have vast potential.

What holds the current debate back is culture and the need to protect the status quo. A very good infantry unit is easy and affordable to train. We just choose to things the way that we think they should be done, and not the ways that allow for a real increase in capability.

At the tactical sub-unit level there is vast commonality in so called COIN and Warfighting TTPs if they are rationally and objectively approached.

A. Infantry Battalion is capable of a surprising range of SOF missions, and regular Infantrymen should be, and can be, trainend accordingly.

B. And this is where the present structure of the US Army SF may in some ways be problematic.

A. Correct, and how the hell did these missions become associated with SF anyway? As Rob Thornton points out, Slim was pretty much correct.

B. More than you know. US SOCOM is a hostage to the institutions and events that created it. You always get back to the "I wouldn't start from there, if I were you." Look at all the mucking about in the re-creation of the 75th Ranger Regiment. If you started with a clean sheet of paper, things would look a whole lot different. - same for UK SF.

[selil]

Norfolk, I don't think that you are fully aware of what we do given that a good deal of what we do is classified. You seem to be assuming that SF are just extremely well trained infantry but that is simply not correct. Big Army does not, as a rule, like elite formations and would not tolarate any such organiztion that simply duplicates what conventional units already do. We are not simply an elite infantry formation, in fact, many SF soldiers have never served a day in their lives in the infantry. SF is drawn from all branches of the Army. The majority are former combat arms but that is not a prerequisite.

As for the likelihood of needing guerilla warfare skills, 5th Group's actions in the initial stages of Afghanistan are textbook UW. Since then, we have made great use of those skillsets (albeit on a smaller scale) in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

SFC W

My Dad was an early SF soldier in 1962 Vietnam... He was a nuclear power engineer for the Navy in the civilian world. I bet he was just a grunt too. ...

[Rob Thornton]

I think Surfer Beetle's post and U-boat's make a good point - we were not training to conduct a SOF mission, and I don't think Slim thought he was either. "Special" I think has a number of connotations - but to me it implies a specialized mission requiring specialized training.

The question that Slim asks I think is appropriate (although it was not really my question) - how much of a "specialized" force is required, and then he ponders the price of creating too many types and in too large numbers - but I think you have to consider his perspective looking back at WWII - what exactly were most "specialized" forces doing - particularly in the Burma and Pacific AORs?

I think his point is that most were operating much more closely to conventional Infantry missions - penetrations, infiltrations, raids, etc. then to some of the missions we now associate SOF with.

Clearly there is a high demand for SOF these days- there is also a mandate to grow (as there is a mandate to grow the regular Army and the Marines). There are a number of good reasons I think why we have made decisions to grow them all, clearly our potential commitments for employment have convinced us there is a need. I also think Surfer Beetle's IA growth comments have strong merit - if you recognize that your foreign policy appetite or inter-action is beyond your capabilities, then you better either take an appetite suppressant (unlikely - and maybe impossible given who we are and what we believe), or grow your capabilities to meet it. The state that only grows its military at the expense of its other elements of power is left with few options to resolve its policy issues. It goes to the ounce of prevention - hard for the bean-counter's to justify in quantitative fashion - but its the truth I think.

Its all inter-related. I also like SB's comment regarding rational for investment:

Conventional Forces need to accept that full-spectrum operations are the required skill set and ensure that their teams/units are continually and heavily trained. Since the bulk of the Conventional Force will not stay for more than 4 years training time and thus skill developing time is limited. Good NCOs, many CTC rotations, extensive military schooling which teaches full-spectrum operations, and of course operational experience are the keys to training success. The bulk of the US Military can accomplish this. Conventional Forces are more generalists than specialists and need to be assigned missions with this in mind.

I think William's point:

At the end of the day, US and UK Infantry training still resides in a WW2 paradigm. You all know my views on this from my Patrol Based Infantry paper. To date, no one has really pushed the envelop of what WELL TRAINED infantry can do, because the mind set is still incredibly limited. Assuming you have men with the intelligence to be a carpenter or plumber, then you have vast potential.

is really what I was getting at - I've seen what happens when a talented CDR like Brown (and I've met quite a few leaders like him) brings a vision and a commitment to a unit that gets beyond the "we can do only what is written from on high and anything beyond that is beyond us" - it goes to the art of the possible.

The catalyst seems to be either a need, or an opportunity - Slim had a need - get after and destroy the Japanese Army in Burma with what he had - out of this grew the "art of the possible" using the resources he had available - I think while Slim may have been largely convinced it could be done - it must have seemed almost counter-intuitive to many - can you imagine some of these guys scratching their heads at first when the word came down - "we're going to get rid of a great many of our trucks to achieve greater mobility" - anytime an Army re-invents itself there is probably going to be some skepticism. Look at how his Army innovated in its use of Air, and Armor.

I think we've gone through something along those lines recently - War requires the Art of the Possible in ways that Peace Time can never do - Peace Time training does not require that limits be strained, nor does it really encourage it - some of the stuff that Schaill and Brown underwrote for me I heard of CO CDR's getting relieved for under BN and BDE CDRs who were intolerant of risk or mistakes - it was as much a result of their tolerance and understanding our need to learn from our mistakes, as it was the type of training or resources required - the leader plays a huge role in achieving results.

War changes the level of tolerance for many I think - it more clearly identifies the needs and costs of failure - its not like going home from a CTC and saying - well at least we learned something. As such I think we are becoming better at identifying and managing risk, and as such we are becoming less risk averse - its just a condition we must negotiate in War.

I think if we can bring that forward to our training and apply resources against it we will come away with a much more capable force. Are there areas where GPF/MPF are now doing tasks and some missions that prior to 2001 would have been considered mostly SOF proprietary by the GPF/MPF community - I think so - the Advisory mission comes to mind - but a good deal of the COIN mission set as well. Ask many a GPF fellow who he'd have negotiate for his unit in pre OIF and he'd probably say that is what his CA attachment is for - who'd have thought the demand and operating conditions would require the scale of demand that out paced the traditional resources. Now - a well trained CA fellow with language skills is almost always better (but not always) - but the reality is we don't have enough, and in some cases we have guys with natural intuitive personal skill who are born negotiators and who have continuity in the area.

This did not happen overnight - but over the last 5 years. We now can look back and see more of what is possible. While I think that those missions and tasks that require the most specialization must remain largely the property of specialized forces (barring the demand continues to meet available resources), we have an opportunity to re-evaluate what the words "General" or "Multi-Purpose" really mean when it comes to skill sets. However - we will continue to have to put resources against it - ex. many conventional units have est. partnerships with Local LE and Emergency Services as part of their train up, many installations have hired native speakers to add realism to their training events (way beyond only the CTCs - who have done a fantastic job of making the right resources available and in good quantity - at a quick turn since the war began), many medics get to practice on more realistic GSWs in training, we shoot a good deal more in the post 9/11 world, and many other resources that have made the art of the possible possible.

I think we can still do even better - we must sustain what we've been doing, but because we've realized our potential, we should push the envelope a bit more - I believe there is room and I believe there is justification.

Best to all - Rob

[Rob Thornton]

Although not necessarily the subject of the thread - it leads into it. In the last chapter I mentioned Slim has a section on Special Forces - again, he is talking about forces grown, equipped and trained for a specialized purpose:

"There is however one type of special unit which should be retained - that designed to be employed in small parties, usually behind enemy lines, on tasks beyond the normal scope of warfare in the field. There will be an increasing need for highly qualified and individually trained men - and women - to sabotage vital installations, to spread rumors, to misdirect the enemy, to transmit intelligence, to kill or kidnap individuals, and to inspire resistance movements.They will be troops, though they will require many qualities and skills not to be expected of the ordinary soldier and they will use methods beyond his capacity (Rob's note - think about what Slim is implying when he says beyond capacity and link it back to some of the possible missions he's outlining). Each small party would study and train intensively for a particular exploit and should operate under the direct control of the Higher Command (Rob's note - we are still learning about this one - and it gets more to unity of effort and purpose then command I think). They should rarely work within our lines. Not costly in manpower, they may, if handled with imaginative ruthlessness, achieve strategic results. Such units based on the Army, but drawing on all Services and all races of the Commonwealth for specially qualified men and women, should be an essential component of our modern Armed forces."

pg 548 of Slim's memoir.

I think Slim has it about right, and I think it is what we have endevoured to do with our own SOF - the mental mindset issue I've tried to address is not on the part of SOF by and large, but with our own (GPF/MPF) mind set - where we sometimes suffer from self-imposed constrained thinking (until War began to change it).

Slim goes on to address control of SOF, but then transitions to a new section on the future - contrast his thought on SOF to these:

In Burma we thus developed a form of warfare based more on human factors then on lavish equipment, which had certain characteristics. The chief of these were:
(i) The acceptance of normal of the regular movement and maintenance of standard formations by air (Rob's note - normal means just that - not specialized DIVs, etc.)
(ii) Great tactical freedom for subordinate commanders (Rob's note - emphasis on "what" not "how" and purpose over task)
(iii) The operation, over wide distances, in most difficult country, in tactical independence but strategic combination.
(iv) Reduced scales of transport and equipment, supplemented by ingenuity and improvisation from local resources (Rob's note - we might call this agile and adaptive mindsets- or the agility and innovation piece guys like SWC member TT spend allot of time thinking about)
(v) The high quality of of the individual soldier, his morale, toughness and discipline, his acceptance of hardship, and his ability to move on his own feet (Rob's note - given the conditions and the requirements. I'd also extend move on his feet - to being able to think on your feet - again the agility and adaptiveness issue)

pg. 549

Slim goes on to expand on his chief characteristics as he considers the challenges in the post WWII environment - much in the same way we consider the Joint COE and in the way the Army considers the FOE (There is no FOE currently in Joint doctrine I think). Again I think he had it about right with regard to linking what is needed with what is possible - the interesting part for me is Slim was considering the post WWII commonwealth, and in many ways the U.S. may have inherited (or assumed) many of the roles in which he was considering.

Finally Slim tells a story about an encounter he had as a cadet. He was pouring over Jomini's "Principles" as describe by the Field Service Regulations when along came the SGM:

"Don't bother your head about all them thing's me lad, there is only one principle of war and that is this. Hit the other fellow, as quick as you can, and as hard as you can, where it hurts him the most, when he ain't lookin!"

Sound familiar - funny how other leaders in other wars from other countries often divine some of the bare bone truths - Slim's SGM's quote sounds allot like "get there first with the most" - what teacher experience is.

I like that, and also like his thoughts just prior to telling that story:

Until the very horror of mass destruction forces men to find more sensible ways to of settling national disputes, war will remain, and while it remains it will continually change. Yet, because it fought between men rather then between weapons, victory will still go, when armaments are relatively equal, to the side which is better trained and has higher morale - advantages- which are obtained neither easily, quickly, nor without the sacrifice of more then money in peace. War remains an art, and like all arts, whatever its variation, will have its enduring principles.

I like this for a number of reasons - Slim gets to the challenges of preparing for the unknown, and the hard choices that accompany those challenges. He also opens up the consideration of comparing different types of advantages - it might not just be in weaponry or technology! He also outlines why people are important - because men go to war to achieve political purposes as defined by other men -but once we begin waging war -the rational for achieving victory is apt to change.

Now I know that is a kind of round-about way to address the topic - but it gets to the value and rational for investing more resources into training the men (and women) who go forward to wage war.

Best, Rob

[Ken White]

Thanks, Rob. It preempts a blog article I was working on but that's good -- hopefully, it'll get more discussion here. Everyone above has some great points!

Rob asks:

"I’d also like to ask if we think we could do better? Is the training and resourcing available to our SOF the best we can do, or could we extend that level of training and resourcing to the larger force"

That is an important question and it gets obscured here and elsewhere because, IMO, the issue becomes not one of roles, missions, capabilities and the attainment of the desired effects for the US but rather a battle of egos, turf, dollars and spaces. Having been on both sides of the Big Army and SOF curtain I have no doubt that BOTH sides are guilty of this.

There is no question of a need for SOF or for SF -- the two are not synonymous regardless of efforts to make them so -- but I believe there are roles and missions questions that will impact training. We are confronted with the fact that a Battalion from the 82d is doing Ranger like missions for a variety of reasons -- and doing them well. We are confronted with the fact that organizations designed for the UW mission (and some of its highly classified adjunct missions) are being employed on ID missions. There are certain skill sets form UW that translate very well to ID; there are also a number of UW skills (to include those adjunct missions) that are not needed for ID.

As Norfolk says, most Armies use their conventional forces for ID and do it well; thus we are confronted with SF being essentially over qualified for the ID mission. We're using Hummers to do pickup truck work. A further concern is the quantity of folks required for ID; the SOF community cannot and should not provide the quantities required, to even attempt to do so will cause a dilution of quality problem in the community. My question is that, accepting the need for a UW mission capable force for a large variety of missions in both peace and war, should that difficult to obtain capability be roled as a primary ID element to the detriment, however slight, of its primary mission?

The Groups are also used for DA missions -- that amounts to using those same Hummers for sports car work. Not that they cannot and do not do the missions well; just that it's misuse and has the potential to do damage as individuals switch between missions. The great guys will cope -- everyone isn't great. The question to me is should DA be a SF mission or are competing skill sets and perhaps a different mental attitude and full time focus required?

Look also at Strategic Recon, an openly known mission. Is SF best for that job? They certainly can do it but in some cases they are again overtrained with regard to total skill sets and perhaps not as well trained in some desired skills as they might be. That mission is so difficult and dangerous that we may be sending that Hummer to do a job better suited to a Motocross bike (IOW, are we spending a quarter mil to train folks for a 60 K job? Can we afford the loss of the hard and long time to develop UW skills to a mission a different training regimen can handle?). The question is should that mission devolve to a new and different sort of unit that is culturally tuned to use extreme stealth?

The issues then for UW versus ID are that the Groups are over qualified and their critical skills are degraded (and this is even more disadvantageous when the DA mission moves to the fore; in the current or most envisioned environments mentoring local Security Forces is perhaps more important than taking down HVTs even if it isn't as much fun), they do not and probably never will have the quantity of people needed for ID in a medium sized nation. Regardless of all that, the question that then arises is can they do it better than conventional forces which have been provided better training? I think not but that is certainly arguable. What is not arguable in that case is that best is the enemy of good enough...

None of that should be construed as SF/SOF bashing, it is not. Been there and done that -- I am merely asking questions that I think deserve honest consideration. This is not the place to answer them in any detail, certainly -- but thinking it through wouldn't hurt.

All that is way off the question that Rob raised; can we do a better job of training our conventional units. I submit that the answer is, emphatically, yes. That we do not is due to habit (we're still operating on WW I parameters), inertia (as Wilf said:

"More than you know. US SOCOM is a hostage to the institutions and events that created it. You always get back to the "I wouldn't start from there, if I were you." Look at all the mucking about in the re-creation of the 75th Ranger Regiment. If you started with a clean sheet of paper, things would look a whole lot different. - same for UK SF." (emphasis added / kw)

and parochialism. We really need to take an objective look at what we're doing, realize that the Army of today is not much like the Army of even 2000 -- much less 1918 -- and fix the problem.

Lieutenants today are routinely doing things that the LTs of 2000 in most units could not dream of doing and that's a good thing. Joe today has gear that only some SOCOM elements had in 2000 -- and generally, he uses it well. It's a different Army, it trains better than it ever has before and, IMO, that's still not good enough. It deserves better training, most particularly at the enlisted and officer entry levels.

Another part of the problem is that there are senior people who are not terribly enthusiastic about fighting wars, they'd prefer waxing and polishing combat vehicles, brassoing cartridges, fretting over uniforms and haircuts and worrying unduly about their and their units reputation or mystique -- and I have, unfortunately, worked for folks who did all those things -- instead of truly thinking about how to do the job better and doing what's best for the nation. Those kinds of folks have always been around and probably always will be. There are more of them in the big Army simply because it's bigger; they also exist in elsewhere. They just have to be bypassed.

Norfolk also mentioned the training and employment of Battalion Scout Platoons in Canada and here. I have to agree with him. I've watched Commonwealth Armies do Recon and they have us beaten across the board. Our so-called Recon elements are ideally structured and equipped for Flank Screens, Covering forces and Economy of Force employment and they do those things well -- they are not trained and equipped for reconnaissance and, mostly, do not train for it very well so they naturally don't do it well. That doesn't address the problem of Commanders who do not know how to use their recon elements -- or are afraid to 'risk' them doing their designed job...

I noted the organization for the HBCT Cav Squadron and was happy they had created a true Recon element (except for the M3s, don't get me started on that vehicle) -- until I found out that the new proposal is for three Brad plts and two Tank plts per troop. Great for the combat missions but they ain't gonna be Scouts. Regardless of the fact that both CTCs have nicked most units for poor to non-existent recon work for years and still do so...

Back to the north German plain...

Rob also posts some more of Slim's thoughts, all of which are still totally valid, all of which we also learned in WW II and all of which we too often ignore today. We need to take care of Joe -- and we are not doing that.