I didn't even know we had a school at Ft. H. But that was part of the problem and lent to it being closed, don't you agree?

Sometimes these things come to a cost and utilisation issue. Spend thousands of dollars TDY on a S2 guy who never leaves his building once he's in theater to track? I mean really. Ft. H is about analysts (the computer using type) and signals; much like the geographical isolation it has from the rest of the Army the things taught there are isolated from the maneuver community.

Then Boris gets it right too, because there are other issues. We have shortened time at home station, take the 18 month timeline-- two months of leave, two months of guys going; ARFORGEN says this is the individual training time. But who is there to train? Not to mention you have all the "BS" taskings that float down from on high that you have to keep throwing the diminishing manpower at.

Then when you start collective it's all about the gunnery gunnery gunnery, and getting out in the field. By now the DIV focus is on the BDE behind you to get those individual slots, but of course it's too late for them too, because they had the same problem you just did. The taskings are still coming too, and now you have to send a joe to this three day, and another to this four day, and one of your E5s to another week long thing of some sort of theater specific equipment you may or may not ever see.

And suddenly you're on the plane. It's very easy to blame our system.

This stuff is basic fieldcraft, but unfortunately that is now tribal knowledge held at about the O4/E7 level because of the Army's OPTEMPO. I think the challenge that we as Leaders have is how to we train things like tracking within our own? Identifying who has the talent for it, and helping them pass on that knowledge to the left and right. This is especially crucial within maneuver units.