At a Change of Command ceremony yesterday, I ran into my old 1SG when I was an XO, and he is on mid-tour leave from MiTT in Balad. He said he is lucky that he's attached to a good IA unit, that are not hesitant to go out and get the bad guys. He also said they've cleaned up the Balad area. As a former convoy commander, going through the Balad Market area on MSR Tampa was never a pleasant experience, so clearly the IA and US are working well together. His complaints, though, were with the MiTT training. He wondered why he was doing BRM and licensing for a humvee? He is a MSG, he has driven a truck, and zeroed a rifle before. He enjoyed the culture and language classes, but felt the basic Soldier tasks were a waste of time considering the experience level on the team. He wanted more advisor/culture, not check the box training. Anecdote from another friend on MTT, during live fire, their "instructor" advised them to carry a drop weapon in case wrong person was shot. They reported him and he was removed, but that was the instruction they were receiving.

Quote Originally Posted by Tom Odom View Post
b. What are we training? Military basic skills or advisor skills? A purely military (as in uniformed) effort is a partial answer that works OK if you are concentrating on the former, especially if your trainers are conventional military, few of whom have advisor experience. But it is not sufficient for training advisors; they need to start as a ready for war Soldiers and then go through training. It cannot be a mobilization station or extended EIB camp with advisor tacked on. You need military who have done the mission in different locales and different cultures and you need civilians with skills that come from previous military experiences as well as those who practice the skills of an HTT.
The Army is having a hard enough time filling these teams for 60 days + 12 months, and out. To resource 6 months of training for each advisor, Combat Advisor needs to become a branch or functional area (with that new tab?). Wait, there already is a branch that does FID. Those who want to advise, have already submitted packets and went to selection. Further, many captains do not want to go on these teams because they take you out of the command loop for a year and a half. Could the Army only put key developed (formerly branch qualified) captains in these slots? Good luck finding them, they're already being used elsewhere. Senior NCO's I know on teams look at it like a Korea tour (pretty routine with senior Bragg SGT's), but they mostly wonder what they know about advising and hated the training. Random 13 series NCO's are serving as Fire Support Advisor, even though they have spent their years behind the cannon or MLRS, not calling for fire.

The Army has to "reward" current members with a "say" in their next assignment. If you locked people in at Fort Polk, as an Advisor lifecycle, with 6 months training, 12 months deploy, 18 months trainer, you would take these officers and senior NCO's out of the force for 3 years at a time, and leave them stuck in Polk. How many people would volunteer for that? Also, aside from SOF community and previous MiTT members, where can we find qualified instructors in sufficient numbers? There's already a numbers problem.


c, How long are we going to train advisors? I will tell you that 60 days is NOT enough time even if their soldier skills are up to speed. Six months would be better for novice advsors. Should we do second tier training for experienced advisors? I believe we should especially if we can do that as a parallel and connected effort with novice training. I hammer the point to people that I cannot teach/train experience. I can teach and train you on skills; you have to use them in a meaningful way to develop relevant experience. Recycling advisors as advanced students who serve as trainers would take a step in toward sustaining experience in the advisor force. If we cannot have a standing advisory corps we have to do something to retain hard won experience. Maybe we need a warrant program for advisors?
This is a key mission, but the Army is not resourcing or managing it as such. Training, personnel management, promotions, schools, etc, need to change to reflect the MTT mission. Right now, the Army seems to be paying lip service. If this is going to become a core function of the Army, realize that many people do not want to do it, and the makeup of the Army may change. Effects of GWOT are already hurting Field Artillery branch (all but 2 1LTP in my battalion submitted a packet to change branches). Moving MiTT to Polk, to tie it in with the JRTC resources, is a good plan if all the support (pax, $, training) it needs will actually move with it. If it is just being moved to free up a brigade from 1 ID, then it is essentially doing the same thing over again, "Hey, JRTC, do this now." (Earlier, "Hey, 1st ID, do this now.")


Late night in Fayetteville, so if this is slightly disjointed or rambling, I apologize. Good discussion despite my efforts.