Originally Posted by
jcustis
If you have not been in country, you need to go. It should be very easy, if this program has any actual teeth and patrons who are at all serious about the effort. A San Diego newspaper reporter made it to way south Helmand pretty easily, and do did a Filipino Reuters photographer. Same with a German writer for some military-related glossy mag.
You need to get on the ground in Sangin or Gereshk, or the Korengal to see it this stuff at work. And you need to sit in a shura or two and see how Soldiers--if they care to open their mind and learn--can pick up much of what it is they need to know about who's who in the zoo from:
1) listening to the unit they are replacing
2) doing a bit of studying of the problem set before they go
3) just stopping and talking to folks
4) spending some time listening to their linguists
You could validate all of the training's assumptions by going into country just before the next unit rotation, to observe the unit in place, and then watch these newly-trained Soldiers show up and begin to operate.
There would be no anecdotal information collected from surveys, AARs, etc. All primary source observations.
I am dead serious about the relevance of getting on the ground. If there was integrity to the analysis of the training's effectiveness, I venture to say that you'd see there isn't really quite the need that some folks think.
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