The Importance and Role of Training in Creating/Sustaining the Best Possible Forces

[Ken White]

Thanks, Rob. It preempts a blog article I was working on but that's good -- hopefully, it'll get more discussion here. Everyone above has some great points!

Rob asks:

"I’d also like to ask if we think we could do better? Is the training and resourcing available to our SOF the best we can do, or could we extend that level of training and resourcing to the larger force"

That is an important question and it gets obscured here and elsewhere because, IMO, the issue becomes not one of roles, missions, capabilities and the attainment of the desired effects for the US but rather a battle of egos, turf, dollars and spaces. Having been on both sides of the Big Army and SOF curtain I have no doubt that BOTH sides are guilty of this.

There is no question of a need for SOF or for SF -- the two are not synonymous regardless of efforts to make them so -- but I believe there are roles and missions questions that will impact training. We are confronted with the fact that a Battalion from the 82d is doing Ranger like missions for a variety of reasons -- and doing them well. We are confronted with the fact that organizations designed for the UW mission (and some of its highly classified adjunct missions) are being employed on ID missions. There are certain skill sets form UW that translate very well to ID; there are also a number of UW skills (to include those adjunct missions) that are not needed for ID.

As Norfolk says, most Armies use their conventional forces for ID and do it well; thus we are confronted with SF being essentially over qualified for the ID mission. We're using Hummers to do pickup truck work. A further concern is the quantity of folks required for ID; the SOF community cannot and should not provide the quantities required, to even attempt to do so will cause a dilution of quality problem in the community. My question is that, accepting the need for a UW mission capable force for a large variety of missions in both peace and war, should that difficult to obtain capability be roled as a primary ID element to the detriment, however slight, of its primary mission?

The Groups are also used for DA missions -- that amounts to using those same Hummers for sports car work. Not that they cannot and do not do the missions well; just that it's misuse and has the potential to do damage as individuals switch between missions. The great guys will cope -- everyone isn't great. The question to me is should DA be a SF mission or are competing skill sets and perhaps a different mental attitude and full time focus required?

Look also at Strategic Recon, an openly known mission. Is SF best for that job? They certainly can do it but in some cases they are again overtrained with regard to total skill sets and perhaps not as well trained in some desired skills as they might be. That mission is so difficult and dangerous that we may be sending that Hummer to do a job better suited to a Motocross bike (IOW, are we spending a quarter mil to train folks for a 60 K job? Can we afford the loss of the hard and long time to develop UW skills to a mission a different training regimen can handle?). The question is should that mission devolve to a new and different sort of unit that is culturally tuned to use extreme stealth?

The issues then for UW versus ID are that the Groups are over qualified and their critical skills are degraded (and this is even more disadvantageous when the DA mission moves to the fore; in the current or most envisioned environments mentoring local Security Forces is perhaps more important than taking down HVTs even if it isn't as much fun), they do not and probably never will have the quantity of people needed for ID in a medium sized nation. Regardless of all that, the question that then arises is can they do it better than conventional forces which have been provided better training? I think not but that is certainly arguable. What is not arguable in that case is that best is the enemy of good enough...

None of that should be construed as SF/SOF bashing, it is not. Been there and done that -- I am merely asking questions that I think deserve honest consideration. This is not the place to answer them in any detail, certainly -- but thinking it through wouldn't hurt.

All that is way off the question that Rob raised; can we do a better job of training our conventional units. I submit that the answer is, emphatically, yes. That we do not is due to habit (we're still operating on WW I parameters), inertia (as Wilf said:

"More than you know. US SOCOM is a hostage to the institutions and events that created it. You always get back to the "I wouldn't start from there, if I were you." Look at all the mucking about in the re-creation of the 75th Ranger Regiment. If you started with a clean sheet of paper, things would look a whole lot different. - same for UK SF." (emphasis added / kw)

and parochialism. We really need to take an objective look at what we're doing, realize that the Army of today is not much like the Army of even 2000 -- much less 1918 -- and fix the problem.

Lieutenants today are routinely doing things that the LTs of 2000 in most units could not dream of doing and that's a good thing. Joe today has gear that only some SOCOM elements had in 2000 -- and generally, he uses it well. It's a different Army, it trains better than it ever has before and, IMO, that's still not good enough. It deserves better training, most particularly at the enlisted and officer entry levels.

Another part of the problem is that there are senior people who are not terribly enthusiastic about fighting wars, they'd prefer waxing and polishing combat vehicles, brassoing cartridges, fretting over uniforms and haircuts and worrying unduly about their and their units reputation or mystique -- and I have, unfortunately, worked for folks who did all those things -- instead of truly thinking about how to do the job better and doing what's best for the nation. Those kinds of folks have always been around and probably always will be. There are more of them in the big Army simply because it's bigger; they also exist in elsewhere. They just have to be bypassed.

Norfolk also mentioned the training and employment of Battalion Scout Platoons in Canada and here. I have to agree with him. I've watched Commonwealth Armies do Recon and they have us beaten across the board. Our so-called Recon elements are ideally structured and equipped for Flank Screens, Covering forces and Economy of Force employment and they do those things well -- they are not trained and equipped for reconnaissance and, mostly, do not train for it very well so they naturally don't do it well. That doesn't address the problem of Commanders who do not know how to use their recon elements -- or are afraid to 'risk' them doing their designed job...

I noted the organization for the HBCT Cav Squadron and was happy they had created a true Recon element (except for the M3s, don't get me started on that vehicle) -- until I found out that the new proposal is for three Brad plts and two Tank plts per troop. Great for the combat missions but they ain't gonna be Scouts. Regardless of the fact that both CTCs have nicked most units for poor to non-existent recon work for years and still do so...

Back to the north German plain...

Rob also posts some more of Slim's thoughts, all of which are still totally valid, all of which we also learned in WW II and all of which we too often ignore today. We need to take care of Joe -- and we are not doing that.