Quote Originally Posted by Cavguy View Post
"The risk we run as a force is that we have a generation of officers [who] have spent five to six years [at war] that never have done their conventional competency," Neal Smith says. "And if we were expected on short notice to fulfill that conventional competency, we would struggle very hard to do it as well as we did in 2003 during the attack to Baghdad."
I disagree with that. I think the training that we did prior to OIF was pretty weak and the training prior to 9/11 was a complete joke. What I recall doing in training, especially prior to 9/11 but also prior to OIF, was a lot range safety briefs, rodding weapons, absurd weapons handling safety guidelines that have no place in combat or in training for combat, burdensome range safety restrictions (we weren't even allowed to transition from M4 to sidearm), and frankly I thought that NTC was as fake, canned, and safetied to death in 2000 as it was in 2004. Hopefully that has changed for the better.

When my unit prepared to return to Iraq for OIF III we did the same Table 8 / Table 12 stuff, using that as the foundation for the additional, mission-specific training (additional LFX's (CSS, convoy, etc), more reflexive fire, shoot house live fires, and so on). The Table 8/12 stuff was much better than what we did in preparation for OIF I because the chain of command recognized just how absurd prior safety restrictions were, so they did away with most of them. As a result, we did BETTER conventional training in preparation for OIF III than we did for OIF I. And while I deployed with a different unit for OIF V, I know that this process was repeated because I had to plan it all as the AS3 before I PCS'd.

Besides, forces are built from the bottom up. The average platoon of infantrymen today is far and away more lethal, competent, and experienced that the average platoon from ten years ago. The improvement in combat readiness among our non-combat MOS's is even more pronounced. Suddenly, they have a reason to actually train for combat. Cross-training is also significantly greater, with Soldiers relying less on mechanics and medics because they don't have time to wait and the mechanics and medics becoming more proficient shooters. And I could go on forever about all of the intangibles.