Ill Informed Blog Post at AM on Advisors

[Tom Odom]

I guess I expect more from AM. This one does not cut it. The reasons for the shift to Polk deal with the congruence in training objectives at the JRTC.

Polking the Advisor Mission in the Eye
This is the third in a four part series on training advisors.

Six years into the Long War, efforts to train advisors remain mediocre. But they are improving. Fort Riley Training Mission commander Colonel Jeff Ingram deserves special plaudits for taking a thankless mission after having the combat forces gutted from his brigade and attempting to foster effective, survivable combat advisor teams.

As an advisor-in-training in October 2006, the training we received was the worst I had received in the Army to date. The training schedule seemed to be an hour ahead of our current location, and often an hour behind. The idea that operating in Afghanistan might be different than Iraq had perhaps crossed the trainers' minds, but the solutions was simply to train as though we would go to Iraq and finish by saying, "Well, this should help for Afghanistan as well." If I had ten dollars for every time an instructor said, "So, where are you guys headed in Iraq? Oh, you're going to Afghanistan. Well, its about the same thing," I could have foregone combat pay.

A really ignorant comment read:

The main reason is that Polk is looking for a mission in life vs the somewhat low number of personnel going through the JRTC---why not go to Irwin which is in fact in the desert- replicates both Afghanistan and Iraq has a 1200 role number of Iraqi/American, has a replicated IA/IP, a very active OPFOR, and a scenario built to replicate Diyala Province down to the governance piece, has HTTs, PRTs, NGOs,-has a BCT every month going through and is being strongly supported by the SOF community.

It is dumbfounding how ignorant some folks are. JRTC has trained the majority of units in both theaters for the past 5 years. Most of what goes on at Irwin replicates the JRTC.

Tom