Staff-to-Staff input requested

**davidbfpo** · 08-17-2009

I would suggest an enquiry with the British Defence Liaision Staff, in Washington. I suspect that a Royal Engineer officer will be seconded to the home / school of your engineers. They should be able to help you get access. If the UK Army has websites that can help they are probably behind a barrier and not open access.

The in-house British Army Review regularly publishes articles on how we've inter-related with other armies; a recent issue has one on the ANA, but I'd expect older issues had ones on the IA. The Royal Engineers has a journal, which may also have shorter such articles and a magazine 'Sapper'.

I did find this on a UK RE with the IA Engineers: http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/De...aqiSappers.htm

I'll PM a POC and other bits.

davidbfpo

**TheCurmudgeon** · 08-18-2009

Thanks everyone for the advice and help.

I was able to find some documents on the Deeks language page on AKO. Very helpful.

I also pulled down the Mosul Case Study and scanned it as it is over 300 pages and chapter five was still TBP (Marc).

I had my first meeting. I can say that it was more business-like than I expected. Very little small talk. It could have been that they are engineers.

It was probably my lack of personality.

In any case the tea was sweet, the lunch was great, and we have a lot of work to do. Soldier training has already started. Staff training is in the works.

I need to find a publication on the Iraqi Army for Dummies. What is their institutional training consist of for Officer/NCOs? How do they get equipment? What training facilities do they have? What is the relationship between the various units and how do they support each other. For example, do they have higher level maintenance somewhere? I already know the parts system is a mess. Standardized personnel records, training records, job descriptions, individual tasks, collective tasks - does any of this exist? I will assume that it has to be created until I find out otherwise.

I will pass on what I can for the good of the order.

If anyone had any other suggestions please let me know.

**Red Rat** · 08-27-2009

When I was working with the Iraqis I discovered that one of the problems was that every Coalition team that came in taught them a different thing...

Then I discovered that the Iraqi Army had its own doctrine, heavily based on US doctrine and which included some very swept up aide memoires, field manuals and the like - naturally all in Arabic... Could I get an English translation? Could I hell! But I did find out that they were produced through MNSTC-I.

Echoing previous advice - find out what they are suppossed to be doing, what their doctrine is (they do have it), get a translation of their doctrine and take it from there.

Oh - and my first meeting with my CO was very business like as well with little chat. However by the end of the tour the Ops Officer wanted to leave his wife for e and the CO was feeding me the choicest cuts from the sheep's head. Stick with it - but be careful of the Ops Officer!

**William F. Owen** · 08-28-2009

Originally Posted by Red Rat

Oh - and my first meeting with my CO was very business like as well with little chat. However by the end of the tour the Ops Officer wanted to leave his wife for e and the CO was feeding me the choicest cuts from the sheep's head. Stick with it - but be careful of the Ops Officer!

So basically what you are saying is that the Ops Officer just wasn't your type?
Get your ass to Tel-Aviv mate. Lots of openly gay soldiers here. You'll have ball... literally!

Eych... I do miss the banter!