Battle Drill

[William F. Owen]

Immediate action drills for reacting to contact and breaking contact are another matter, at least according to Vietnam era recon vets.....

Many recon vets of B-52 Project Delta and SOG credit well rehearsed immediate action drills with their survival.

Drill just means common aims and means, so as you say, AI drills are very useful. Battle drill is just an extrapolation of that. Some drills get called SOPs.

@ I figure that competent and well-trained infantry and infantry leaders don't need Battle Drill, or if they do, only for very limited purposes. And on the other hand, Battle Drill can serve to disguise the poor tactical judgement of weak infantry and especially their leaders.

@ For those reasons, I think that Battle Drill should be ditched and the German system adopted. It's easier to find out who's got the goods, and who doesn't, in peacetime if they don't have the cover of Battle Drill to hide behind.

@ I think you are right. I am not a fan of Battle Drill, in terms of the name. IA drills are essential however, as is an objectively based form of infantry training. The real problem is Battle Drill is it is usually taught very badly, because people are confused by the language, so resort to simplistic iterations of what they think is right. That is why you have Section Attacks, and not Section IN the Attack.

@ What is the German System? - and how do you measure tactical skill in peacetime. When I went up to ITC Brecon, back in the UK and suggested that TES kit be used on all tactical courses, everyone fell over in horror! To quote one SI "You can't learn anything once you become a casualty" - and yes he really said that.

...now, forgoing the idea of something called "a German system" I think you are right, and there are some pretty obvious ways to do it.

[Norfolk]

@ What is the German System? - and how do you measure tactical skill in peacetime. When I went up to ITC Brecon, back in the UK and suggested that TES kit be used on all tactical courses, everyone fell over in horror! To quote one SI "You can't learn anything once you become a casualty" - and yes he really said that.

...now, forgoing the idea of something called "a German system" I think you are right, and there are some pretty obvious ways to do it.

Yes, TES puts the fear into the hearts of Slackers and Ruperts alike. MILES became very unpopular very quickly in certain quarters here in the Great White North, particularly after Platoon and Company Attacks made using laser simulation kit revealed the utter tactical incompetence of a distressing number of Infantry Officers and NCOs alike. Attacking Platoons were being reducing to half a dozen men or so, pinned down, against a like number or so of aggressively-handled Enemy Force. Needless to say, MILES is sadly avoided by many Units as much as possible.

The lads on the other hand, love it; although they hate the part where they have to sit out the rest of the fight when they get zapped, and not magically brought back to life by umpires. Every Field EX possible (Live-Fire excepted for obvious reasons) should be run with full TES/MILES support.

The German System:

Well, here's a start (Stan and slapout dug this up for us a little while ago) -

Special Series No. 9, The German Squad in Combat (1943):

http://ahecwebdds.carlisle.army.mil/...AslnIxyQ__.pdf

[slapout9]

Hi Norfolk, I also found a manual on the German Rifle Company but for some reason it was never translated. The whole manual was published in German as part of the US Intell special reports project. Not sure of the reasoning behind that but they did it.

[jcustis]

The lads on the other hand, love it; although they hate the part where they have to sit out the rest of the fight when they get zapped, and not magically brought back to life by umpires. Every Field EX possible (Live-Fire excepted for obvious reasons) should be run with full TES/MILES support.

Ah, but it is best employed when we actually have the requisite quantities of blank ammunition to replicate a combat load. I've never seen that happen across dozens of MILES exercises. It's usually been a handful of rounds per each man, so the exercise or lane is run as far as it can go until one side runs dry. There was rarely enough ammo to employ sufficient suppressive fires to facilitate an assault, especially in MOUT town.

Come to think of it, there was never any exercise of the battalion-to-company-to-platoon logistics flow during the exercise. No ammo planning, and very little "battlefield calculus" where leaders considered what the rates of fire would be and then factored in planned resupply throughout the fight. We always did a great job of pointing out casualty collection points on the terrain model though...

Sometimes I sit back and seriously believe we suck, but have just sucked less than our opponents the last few go-arounds.

[Ken White]

. . .
Sometimes I sit back and seriously believe we suck, but have just sucked less than our opponents the last few go-arounds.

Been that way for over 200 years I think...

Sad thing is it need not be that way; politics, parochialism and egos are a big part of the problem but our national traits of impatience and unwillingness to think ahead contribute. Those things and our penchant for trying to substitute technology for good training.

The kids generally pull us out of it; bless 'em...

[jcustis]

Been that way for over 200 years I think...

Sad thing is it need not be that way; politics, parochialism and egos are a big part of the problem but our national traits of impatience and unwillingness to think ahead contribute. Those things and our penchant for trying to substitute technology for good training.

The kids generally pull us out of it; bless 'em...

Simple, profound, and so damn true!

[William F. Owen]

Sometimes I sit back and seriously believe we suck, but have just sucked less than our opponents the last few go-arounds.

To paraphrase (no pun intended) an officer from 2 Para said at Goose Green, "We didn't so much win this one as the other side lost it."

[MattC86]

Come to think of it, there was never any exercise of the battalion-to-company-to-platoon logistics flow during the exercise. No ammo planning, and very little "battlefield calculus" where leaders considered what the rates of fire would be and then factored in planned resupply throughout the fight. We always did a great job of pointing out casualty collection points on the terrain model though...

Once the logistics train was complete to battalion level, did they just assume the ammo or supplies would get to each platoon as needed?

Given that since men having been running out of ammo in firefights at the most inopportune moments since gunpowder made its appearance, (and probably archers and other missileers before them), you would have thought they would have realized that ammo expenditure is always going to be higher than predicted, and logistics planning must adjust accordingly. . .

Matt

[Ken White]

... you would have thought they would have realized that ammo expenditure is always going to be higher than predicted, and logistics planning must adjust accordingly. . .
Matt

but that was the time before and all the ammo wasn't used and had to be hauled back and the Ammo guy got chewed out and determined not to make that mistake again.

Now, after another chewing; next time he'll make sure they have too much...

And so it goes. People, ya can't trust 'em

[jcustis]

Once the logistics train was complete to battalion level, did they just assume the ammo or supplies would get to each platoon as needed?

To be frank, yes. There tends to be this presumption that there will be extra ammo back on the track or HMMWV, or that the company gunny will provide it so long as you give him a grid and link-up instructions. Better yet, you'll get your resupply when he stops by to pick up casualties. Too often the fairy dust wand is waived (at least in the Corps) because we either do not actually have the resource on hand (like a full combat load of blanks), or we have to rely on someone else to get it to us. That's why we've had CH-53 5-tons, 7-tons, and white buses for tactical insert for ages.

It isn't terribly realistic, but the wand gets waved A LOT!

On another note, I sat and browsed through a couple of OIF "playbooks", "battlebooks" and what have you, and started to make several observations. A lot of the guidance and issues for consideration that get pushed out to the troops before each rotation aren't typically in response to actual cognitive learning about the enemy. They are also very unlikely to be new TTPs because we have figured out a better way to go about doing something. Too often, it seems as though the volume of stuff we learn is because we do a poor job of conducting situational based training exercises where much of this should be figured out already. If we have figured it out already, as in a CAX or at the JRTC/NTC rotation, we've allowed the CALL and MCCLL publications lie fallow and failed to incorporate those lessons into the subsequent training. The concepts and tools are often already within our doctrine, but we either don't read our own doctrine, or assume that the unit tacsop is good enough.

Some of these weaknesses become terribly apparent when an entire battalion has to move, especially during periods of limited visibility. I know of too many occasions when I would curse a HQ element for moving in or around the coil with lights on, in total ignorance of the light discipline SOP. Truth be told, someone made a "command decision" because they didn't think it was safe to move into the coil blacked out, but in fact many drivers simply didn't have the training or experience to dive with NVGs. Instead of leaving the exercise with a plan of action to rectify the deficiency, it was back to the shop to conduct maintenance, go on a little libo, and then back to the hum-drum of HQ life. Very rarely did someone take action and say, "Well sir, instead of taking the whole battalion out for the next exercise, we'd like to have the equivalent amount of time to run a HMMWV licensing school and complete more than the baseline hours of night driving." Instead the usual game of musical chairs would happen and cohesion would change.


Sorry for the rant, but I just came back again to the realization that we so often suck...just less than the opponent.

[Norfolk]

jcustis wrote:

To be frank, yes. There tends to be this presumption that there will be extra ammo back on the track or HMMWV, or that the company gunny will provide it so long as you give him a grid and link-up instructions. Better yet, you'll get your resupply when he stops by to pick up casualties. Too often the fairy dust wand is waived (at least in the Corps) because we either do not actually have the resource on hand (like a full combat load of blanks), or we have to rely on someone else to get it to us. That's why we've had CH-53 5-tons, 7-tons, and white buses for tactical insert for ages.

It isn't terribly realistic, but the wand gets waved A LOT!

Come to think of it, so little practical attention has been paid to this most basic of all tactical logistical problems that not so much as a single bored staff officer has even published a single Battle Drill for it (AFAIK).

jcustis has raised over the past few posts the matter of one of the most vital of all battlefield functions, the resupply of troops in the midst of battle. I can't remember who wrote or said this, but someone once said that one of the reasons that many battles are lost is that the ammo simply ran out, but that fact very often doesn't get mentioned in the histories.

I wonder if any us here have ever participated a "battlefield" resupply during a "simulated" firefight - and not just during the consolidation/re-org? Ken may be able to fill us in a little on how said was accomplished in Korea and Vietnam. I certainly have not done so, and even in training I have not seen Squads/Sections or even Platoons and Companies perform any meaningful battlefield ammo resupply whilst in "contact", not until the re-org/consolidation anyway.

Yep, that fairy dust wand sure gets a lot of use in peacetime, and it most certainly is not just used by the Corps. Funny how it magically disappears when it's most needed (fickle, perfidious fairies).

[Norfolk]

Hi Norfolk, I also found a manual on the German Rifle Company but for some reason it was never translated. The whole manual was published in German as part of the US Intell special reports project. Not sure of the reasoning behind that but they did it.

Hi slap. Yeah, I found that rather frustrating too. I was even more flustered when I discovered from a specialist source that the traditional German/Prussian script that The German Rifle Company is written in is supposedly almost incomprehensible to most ordinary Germans these days. There is some guy who does translate these things over in Germany or Brit-Land, and he's been swamped by such requests. He tries to get a few manuals translated a year, but it's a really long, tough slog to do so. I've just tried to track him down, but I seem to have lost him.

Here are a few of links to the Evolution of the Section and Battle Drill for whom it may interest:

http://www.canadiansoldiers.com/medi...fantry_Section

http://www.canadiansoldiers.com/medi...fantry_Section

Incidently, the following link comes from the Regiment that introduced British Army Battle Drill to the Canadian Army, and it was the Regiment that was commanded by the author of On Infantry, Lt.Col. John English:

http://www.calgaryhighlanders.com/history/battle.htm

jcustis:

Yeah, blank ammo, never mind live ammo, is almost always grudgingly and stingily doled out. In The RCR, we got around that by loading "Militia Bullets" (shouting "Bang! Bang!" - pathetic isn't it?) when our regular ammo ran out. When we ran out of "Militia Bullets", as the Section Commander would quickly tire of this nonsense, he would issue the order to "Load Insults!", and thereupon, we would continue the notional firefight with unsocial expressions of ill-will towards the Enemy Force.

We were told that the rear Sections and what not would resupply us with ammo and the like during the Firefight; never saw it done, and I have real doubts that it is practical under many conditions. Didn't somebody say something about the Army that wins is the one that is the least disorganized?

[William F. Owen]

Yeah, blank ammo, never mind live ammo, is almost always grudgingly and stingily doled out. In The RCR, we got around that by loading "Militia Bullets" (shouting "Bang! Bang!" - pathetic isn't it?) when our regular ammo ran out.

I have real issues with blank ammunition on field exercises. Blanks, without TESEX kit, or very good umpiring and role players, provide negative reinforcement, - or bad training, - but there doesn't seem to be any other way to get around it. This one really keeps me thinking.

[Ron Humphrey]

I have real issues with blank ammunition on field exercises. Blanks, without TESEX kit, or very good umpiring and role players, provide negative reinforcement, - or bad training, - but there doesn't seem to be any other way to get around it. This one really keeps me thinking.

but I know the groups of soldiers who go paintballing together become very adept at working together, And the sting kinda gets the point across to.

Get guns close enough to familiar feel and you could get great drilling anytime anywhere with just a quick stop at your local wholesaler.

[Penta]

At some point in reading this, I wonder why nobody's ever tried to invent flash suits a la "Ender's Game" for training use - your whole body freezing up when you 'die' would, I think, do much the same as paintball hits, and with less environmental damage.

[Rex Brynen]

but I know the groups of soldiers who go paintballing together become very adept at working together, And the sting kinda gets the point across to.

Get guns close enough to familiar feel and you could get great drilling anytime anywhere with just a quick stop at your local wholesaler.

You do have to be careful with paintball as a form of tactical training--it teaches some lessons well--and others very poorly.

To start with, paintballs are sufficiently inaccurate that rapid movement provides far more protection than it does on a real battlefield against an enemy equipped with automatic weapons. Overwatch is harder because its difficult to hit anything out past 30 meters. Indeed, at ranges much beyond that, the paintball is so slow, and the trajectory so arced, that a good player can often simply dodge the incoming round--assuming that you can put it anywhere near them. Even when they hit, they usually won't break, and you may not even feel them.

That doesn't work with either 5.56 or 7.62

You can compensate for this somewhat with electronic triggers or fully automatic markers, but then you run into another problem: fire discipline and ammunition supply. I can easily go through a couple of thousand rounds of paintballs in a day with a standard unmodified semi-automatic marker. Similar rates of ammunition expenditure in combat conditions could be fatal.

Third, cover works different. With paintball, leaves and small branches are enough to provide semi-hard cover. That's not a lesson you want your soldiers to learn It would better at training for MOUT, where shorter ranges and snap-to-fire times reduce the differences between real weapons and paintball markers a little.

As for the sting, try playing in the winter up here. Paintballs aren't quite so soft then, and its damn hard to run through several feet of snow