Improving Combat Readiness: Developing and Implementing Effective Training

Infantry Magazine, Sept-Dec, 2000 by Colonel Thomas M. Jordan

A cursory glance at defense articles in recent years will indicate a disturbing trend that reflects declining readiness and poor unit performance at the Army's combat training centers (CTCs) such as the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin. A wide variety of observers report that units rotating through the CTCs often lack skills in such fundamental areas as logistics, battle command, and communications.

We should all ask why. The Army training methodology outlined in Field Manuals (FMs) 25-100, Training the Force, and 25-101, Battle Focused Training, is unparalleled by most major corporations. Our officers and NCOs spend hours learning the training system at basic and advanced training courses. Why, then, are soldiers and units arriving at the CTCs untrained in basic individual and collective skills?

Developing and implementing a solid training program has always been a challenge. A host of constraints ranging from unit turbulence, last-minute taskings, and unplanned visits can play havoc with the best plans. Junior leaders become unavailable due to new requirements. Red cycles, and other large-scale taskings, consume battalions for weeks at a time. Busy leaders sometimes fail to provide adequate resources. They don't give trainers the time they need to prepare. Perhaps they don't think through their plans enough to make sure all the details have been worked out. Whatever the reason, the cumulative effect of these constraints contributes to a loss of focus and, more important, to soldiers less trained than they should be.

Certainly the Army today is doing more with less. A recent Congressional Quarterly Report confirmed that a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the military services are busier than ever. These additional deployments have brought a new focus on operations other than war. While some claim that peacekeeping operations do not degrade the warfighting skills of individual soldiers and leaders, the fact remains that units preparing for or conducting peacekeeping shift their primary focus to nontraditional tasks instead of honing traditional warfighting skills.

Undoubtedly, 15 consecutive years of declining buying power has taken its toll on training opportunities. The lack of funding for base operations causes commanders to shift money from training accounts, and the result is that units arrive at the NTC at a lower skill level.

Another reason for declining performance at the NTC is the lack of emphasis on training fundamental combat skills at company and platoon level. As new conditions have limited the mass home-station train-up model, we have not adjusted company level training programs to make up the difference. Now is the time to shift our focus.

With the average daily cost of a full-scale NTC deployment now exceeding one million dollars, this should not be the first place that soldiers learn how to boresight and zero their individual and crew-served weapons, Bradley fighting vehicles, and tanks. Moreover, to get the most payoff in this age of limited training opportunities, units should arrive trained on such fundamentals as land navigation, squad and platoon tactical maneuver, command and control, and logistical sustainment.

To that end, this article offers some recommendations for battalion and company leaders on developing and implementing a training program based on the fundamentals. Second, it suggests a number of training management techniques that will help leaders develop a more effective program.

A few years ago at a division quarterly training brief, the division commander asked a battalion commander to depart from the briefing chart and elaborate on several individual and collective training events. Specifically, the general wanted to know how the battalion and company mission essential task lists (METLs) related to individual skill training and platoon battle drills. Furthermore, the general wanted to know the frequency of training on each task, and how that frequency had been determined. He asked the commanders to discuss the performance standards that would provide specific measures of effectiveness. Finally, he wanted to know how the commander would certify trainers and how soldiers would receive feedback. In retrospect, it was a fair question and the battalion commander should have answered easily, but the pause and the stricken look on his face made it painfully apparent that the general's probing question had uncovered uncharted territory. Taking the unfortunate commander's silence as a refle ction of a lack of training expertise, the general proceeded to deliver a long tutorial on the fundamentals of training management.

As FM 25-101 indicates, determining what to train on should flow from the METL process. Commanders should feel comfortable with their METLs and, more important, the METLs should reflect the critical collective tasks that make up the unit's wartime mission. Some argue that peacekeeping tasks should be included in the METL, but I would argue that they should not. The Army has always supported the nation by performing tasks outside of war-fighting requirements. But this does not detract from the fundamental purpose of Army units, which is to deter or to fight and win the nation's wars. While a unit may temporarily support peacekeeping operations, firefighting, or any other non-related tasking, it is important that we do not lose sight of the primary purpose that our organizations serve.