Quote Originally Posted by Xenophon View Post
Have you taken those courses? Do you really think staring at a computer screen trains a Marine to clear an M240 jam under fire? Or give a buddy a needle decompression under fire? Those things require muscle memory. Getting kids to care about media relations and big picture, war on terror adversaries requires involved leadership, something Marinenet takes out of the training process. Quality in training is being completely destroyed by expediency. The only saving grace of the PTP Marinenet courses is that the test is one question, "Did you view the course?", so the Marine can simply skip to the test, click yes, and not waste his time.
Here's my question to you: What are you doing to raise the bar in your Devilpups' training? How are you enhancing their training experience?

I take issue with the highlighted and underlined sentence. It sounds as if The "system" is bringing you down, which, to be honest with you, is a pretty weak excuse. Here's a list of questions designed to determine training planning and strategy at your level. It should help you identify weaknesses within your own plan that you can affect at your level.

-What restrictions or parameters are being placed upon you as a leader that prevents you from conducting good training at your lowest organizational level?
-Further, if there are restrictions, what actions are you taking as a leader to counter those restrictions?
-What do motorpool operations look like in your unit? Is it four guys doing the work in the platoon while the balance talks about what they did last weekend? -How involved do your NCOs get in the training?
-How involved do you get in the training?
- How far out do you plan training?
-What guidance do you give them for individual, crew, section, and platoon collective training?
-Does the Company have a Mission Essential Task List?
-Have you determined the platoon critical tasks that support the Company METL?
-Have you conducted METL crosswalk to the individual task level?
- Do you have training themes for the month (ie. We'll work on individual tasks supporting the Comapny's Offensive METL task for the month of March)
-What is your training strategy to train your Marines/Soldiers at the individual level that will feed into the crew/section/platoon collective tasks?

Here's why I write this: I'm of the opinion that training management has taken a backseat in the last 5 years to the point where few remember how to do it anymore. This is one of those "if the shoe fits" catagories. If you've got sound answers to all of the above questions, then you're tracking well. If you don't, you're tracking like an aborted TOW Missle.

I see Stan in the area. Perhaps an old(er) NCO could give some good training management pearls of wisdom....