The Army We Need

[Ken White]

Excellent point! Now how do you do that in a non-bias manner?

for a few promotions instead of selecting everyone who doesn't screw up for too many promotions. That means eliminating DOPMA which is a Congressionally imposed fairness to all effort. War is not fair. It's not unbiased, either. There will be many who say that cannot be done. I disagree. There will be others who do not want it to be done -- those are people who espouse mediocrity and easy duty. I don't.

If you get the right guys evaluating you, they will share value added observations that will help you realize your unit's strengths and weaknesses. If you get some egotistical idiot whose only comment is that isn't how we did it my unit, then the evaluation is a waste of time.

Both points are correct, proving yet again that my contention that our egos are a big BIG part of our problems in the Armed Forces. Solution to that is to forcefully tune them. That's a hint to the senior leadership of the services...

I suspect that is why the Army came up with objective evaluation criteria...

Partly. Having been around at the birth of that foolishness, I know it was really an honest effort to do just that -- but it failed for three reasons. The frailty of humans; an effort to produce ever more 'empirical metrics' to satisfy the numbers hounds; and a quiet, behind the scenes effort to remove any stigma from what was graded -- actually, it was to remove any penalty for failing...

Before the sorry effort called an ARTEP came into being, units ran Army Training Tests, those ATTs were subjectively graded by peer units. Since the 3d Bn provided OPFOR, support and OCs for the 1st Bn, for example, they had pressure to be fair and unbiased because in the round robin scheme of things, what went around came around -- it kept the system reasonably honest. The downsides in the eyes of some were (a) that the grading was essentially subjective, the scientific types hated that; and (b) that those who failed were replaced by a hopefully better person. That applied generally fairly; i.e. sometimes a Cdr went, sometimes an S3 or the S4, a Platoon leader or sergeant here or there. Sometimes nobody went. Generally just a few; those who really fouled up badly.

However, folks saw their friends gone and so a bunch of very smart Majors and Captains at Benning in the early 70s created the ARTEP as a new idea (it was not, not even close; same stuff as the old Army Training Program [ATP] and ATT combined in a new package; most tasks didn't even change) and pushed the civilian educator espoused ideal of no grading stigma {{ADDED:that was at the start of the 'self esteem' craze. I won't even go into the fact that a civilian educator with no knowledge of the Army is dangerous for an Army to listen to on any topic}}. In essence they used smoke and mirrors plus a new name and no grading to insure that when they got to be LTC or COL, they wouldn't get relieved if they screwed the pooch on an ATT. Like I said, very smart...

My observation is that the Army has gone downhill in many respects since.

Thus we're confronted with the FACT that a Commander can take a unit into combat to get people killed but he cannot be risked to take a test and be relieved if he fails. What risk? The terrible risk of upsetting the Personnel system that will maybe have to find the dispossessed a job and will certainly have to find a replacement for said dispossessed...

...life isn't objective, we need a way to inject more subjectivity into our training. We need more mentoring around the camp fire, and less focus on checklists (they have their place, but there is more to training than check the block).

Yep, I think so...

The failure to rely more on the absolute subjectivity that is a judgment on any tactical evolution outside of combat (there it is definitely Pass or Fail) is due to the pressure of DOPMA to say that all officers of like grade and specialty are equal. It is an absolute fact that is incorrect but in an effort to support what they were told to do, the Army had to try to produce an 'objective' grading criteria; that meant 'metrics' and 'no subjectivity' -- it also induced a lack of trust because EVERYONE knows that system is flawed and allows incompetents and incompetence at all levels. It's really sad IMO.

Happy new year, Bill

[ODB]

Should have explained it a bit better. Was referring back to my days as a Pvt in the infantry (15-16 years ago) and think to this day for me at that time in my career it paid off. Point I was trying to make is that for some years now we have changed focus from training individual core tasks to training collective tasks.

Bill Moore Funny you mention the medical training aspect of things now. This last PMT we had to go through 101st T-CCC to check the block. Found that one to be quite the tongue biter. 50% contradicted what our medics were now training.

Funny story. I deploy with 3-187 Mar 2002 to Afghanistan. We get back in Aug 2002. Two months later we were in JRTC getting blessed off by the Army that we were ready to go to war. The single worst, yet funniest CTC rotation of my career. Then 2-3 months later was sitting in Kuwait waiting to cross the boarder.

Rob Thornton Brings up a huge issue, ranges available to train on. I don't know about other places but here things get extremely crowded. One of my personal rants is this issue and how it was/is handled here, but will save that for a better time. As an Army we are extremely guilty of wasting money that could be well spent providing training resources. Do we really need a 10 foot all brick wall surrounding the entire front of the post? Do we need $30 million command centers? Do MPs need brand new Yukons to patrol post in? This doesn't even scratch the surface of gross fraud, waste, and abuse IMO. When will they realize that the number one "platform" they need to be investing in is the individual soldier, not some multi-billion dollar technology platform?

Happy New Year to all.....

[Ken White]

and has it right, I think.

All things considered, the biggest training problems are two things; too much bureaucratic BS in the way and most of that due to the second issue -- the training systems are designed to make life easy for the systems owner or operator, not for the unit training...

[ODB]

Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
December 17, 2008

Conventional Forces, SOF Could See Roles Reversed

The two most pressing technology needs of U.S. forces in combat remain precision close-air support and counter-IED capabilities, according to Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward, the new deputy commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command.

Moreover, the sequence of combat involvement may be flipped on its head, with conventional forces learning how to support special operations forces (SOF), instead of the current practice of using SOF to support conventional warfare, Harward told defense reporters at a breakfast Dec. 16.

Describing the JOE report as a “hard turn away from the classic theater warfare focus to emphasizing irregular warfare” — including increasing dependence on unmanned sensors and aircraft, small fighting units, directed-energy weapons and cyberwarfare — “is very accurate,” Harward says. He describes the new realm of hybrid warfare as “a very dynamic, uncertain environment” that produces a lot of change and persistent conflict.

“Were focusing a lot on the training method…in the joint, interagency and multinational environment,” he said. “That’s probably where [JFCOM] has its strongest influence across the spectrum.”

To that effect, planners want to have a high-fidelity, fighter-pilot-like simulator for ground soldiers so that training and response to attacks, ambushes and other actions are well rehearsed before anyone is thrust into a combat situation. Moreover, the latest lessons learned from irregular warfare — such as recent fighting in Baghdad and the Second Lebanon War — will be fed back into the training.

Source considered but still scary IMO

http://gunnyg.wordpress.com/2008/12/...oles-reversed/

Just found this tidbit and thought it releavant to our training issues, we can see where they want to take training in the future.