Training the Soldier for COIN

[Strategic LT]

-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.

You are spot on with your comments on training management. Few commanders are doing it. The excuse you often hear is "there is not enough time, we deploy in only a 10,9,8,7,6.... months" What it really is, is piss-poor time management. I have been through two commanders and neither one of them were wizards when it came to planning training. As the XO this makes the my job even harder because I don't have the buffer built in that allows me to resource the training to the max. I have essentially resorted to driving training by getting resources and forcing the commander to plan training for it. Anyway, where was I.....