A Worrisome Report on the Eroded Combat Skills of an Army Stryker Regiment
11.24.2012 at 01:51am
A Worrisome Report on the Eroded Combat Skills of an Army Stryker Regiment by Tom Ricks at Foreign Policy's Best Defense.
The 2nd Cavalry Regiment (Stryker) is reamed out in an internal Army study for its performance last month at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center, a training ground in Germany. It is worrisome that this unit appears to have deteriorated so much, yet paradoxically reassuring that the Army is using its maneuvers identify shortcomings.
The conclusions are hair-raising. Everybody from the way senior leaders understand command to the way privates poop comes in for criticism…
Unsolicited advice. Read the report before commenting. Anyone with a day in uniform will have a more educated perspective than Tom Ricks…
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_documents/121121_2CR_JMRC_13_01_Collection_Report1.pdf
This report could have been written about a unit in the mid-90s, too- when we are arguably performing at our best at the CTCs. The CTC AARs are often cut and paste- the same things happen over and over again- and the same things are hard to do “right”, especially in the training environment. We don’t have to be “good”, we just have to be “better” than our opponents- and there is no concievable opponent who has anything like a CTC for training.
For some comparisons, see LTG Bolger’s books Dragons at War (NTC in the 80s) and The Battle for Hunger Hill (JRTC in the 90s)- then imagine the happenings in those books written in the language of the lessons learned report.
Frankly, CTCs are currently a training distractor that get in the way of redeploying back to war- not to say that units don’t learn things there, but the difficulty and time spent moving to the CTC takes time away from training.
maj.rod is right- take this assessment for what its worth from a man with little or no experience. I’m very good friends with on of the BN CDRs in 2SCR, and his take on the rotation is completely different.
It is interesting that while this CALL article stirs alot of comments both here and over at Tom’s blog—virtually all the CALL AARs that have come in from the NTC/JMRC/JRTC DATE rotations are showing the same weak abilities in basic conventional Army skill sets.
A majority of the CALL comments were applied to all the warfighter skill sets—and that is the telling story of this particular CTC rotation.
This unit is by the way undergoing a loss of a majority of their officers by March—a nasty habit the Army has in transitioning officers either prior to their deployment or just right after their redeployment-thus the concept of institutional knowledge remaining in the unit is nonexistent–meaning those that participated in the train up will not be available for the deployment—forcing new officers into a really steep learning curve and we wonder why we have micromanagement.
Not my field of competence. Where in the report was any indication what the eighteen other partner nations thought? That struck me as a rather odd gap.
Just a side comment concerning AARs—yes the OC-T has a job to do and yes the quality of them has eroded as has the Force—but the basics are the basics and if we cannot do the basics then we really must ask WHY?
The core question that needs to be asked is—Why after ten years on a war treadmill do we not have a deep residual institutional knowledge base in each and every unit even down to the Company/Platoon level via the current Officer and NCO corps?
Why do we have a deep distrust between Officers/NCOs, NCOs lacking basic NCO skill sets at all levels, distrust and micromanagement by Officers and Cmdrs—Why do we have deep and lagging skills in good ole MDMP—WHY is Design dead in the water–WHY is mission command being viewed one sided as strictly the C2 side and not the Cmdr/Staff side who drives the C2.
The Army throws the terms “Trust” and “Team” out there everyday–BUT do we really have “Teams” and do we really “extend Trust to others on that Team”?
WHY do we as in the ARR mention mission command as if it part and parcel of being strictly C2—we discuss mission orders BUT what is the true concept of mission orders as it is envisioned in Mission Command ADP 6.0.
Where in the AAR do they discuss the lack of dialogue and Trust—read between the lines of this particular AAR and you will see it as many OCs do—the problem is no one wants to talk about the “fuzzy” things like Trust and dialogue. WHY because MCTP and OCs strictly checklist the blocks and are not taught the “fuzzy things”. It takes personal confidence/experience and credibility to discuss the “fuzzys”.
Debate these questions and then you will understand this particular AAR.
The Commander who pushes for the basics in the CTCs should be applauded. You cannot get to a village to “help it “if you cannot maneuver to it. Currently our answer for all thing maneuver is more armor, more jammers, and less exposure (CROWS systems). That way we can cut the maneuver portion out of the CTCs and focus on chai. Lets get back to the basics. I remember reading a silly quote somewhere along the lines of: train for certainty, educate for uncertainty. While CTCs are certainly an education, they are a training venue. Shoot, move, communicate, medicate. Look at what McChrystal was lauded for implementing with the Rangers when he was a BN CDR. The pillars. The basics.
Seen the posts and checked the AAR report and have been moved to highlight a couple of things. The bottom line is that it is a unit’s responsibility to train it’s units and soldiers, and it is the CTCs responsibility to highlight deficiencies in the training plan (or lack of) to make the unit better. There are however other factors that play into the unit’s ability to train.
1. ARFORGEN. The process does what it is supposed to do. Get a unit to the appropriate level of readiness to deploy (on paper and in human capital). However, the process does not compliment training your unit. It is hard to teach your soldiers how to do x, y, and z when there are no soldiers to teach. It is equally hard to develop junior leaders in all aspects of the DATE model (even the basics) when you have very limited time windows due to manning and changeover. Receiving personnel in waves only creates repetitious training such as gunnery and rifle qualification because as soon as you get one group trained the next group arrives and you have to rinse, wash, repeat. Therefore annual training requirements become almost monthly training requirements to get 100% of your soldiers to standard for the year. All of this takes coordination, resources, and time away from a training strategy.
2. Competing deployment requirements (because this unit is getting ready to go downrange too). The constant flow of incoming personnel created by ARFORGEN also requires you to do time and manpower intensive tasks such as medical evaluations etc (FORSCOM 58, or by the way ISAF has a list too). The paper and time required to clear people to go downrange (not to mention track and report all of the data) also rob you of training days.
3. As to the lack of trust in subordinates issue highlighted in the AAR. The last 10 years of war have not helped us and this issue is much deeper than 2CR. Just take a look at the policy letters on FOB ____ anywhere in Afghanistan. You can’t move around without a reflective belt and soldiers can’t enter a DFAC even after patrol because they are too dirty. Things such as this become large issues usually taking undue time from many SGMs and CSMs, however in some cases Company commander’s are delegated the authority to determine uniform requirements outside of the wire, and oh by the way when something bad happens or they didn’t read the boss’s mind they get flamed for it. As stated….much bigger issue than 2CR.
This is not the “bad olden days of the cold war” where I have had the same soldiers in my CO for x amount of years and only have to worry about annual training requirements annually. As things draw down in Afghanistan and the Army gets back to training and stabilizing personnel turnover in most of it’s units the basics will get better because there will be less training chaos. Just want to make sure that you do not take my comments as making an excuse for the unit. They have several things that they can work on and I am sure they are aware of that. I just wanted to superimpose some reality of the current training environment (put the readers in the boots of the S3’s etc.). Understand that 12 months between notification of DATE rotation to execution for a unit only equals roughly a few weeks of collective training even at the CO level.
Having been a part of this unit during its last deployment, I believe there is an issue that has been overlooked. It redeployed from Afghanistan in June 2011, and is set to deploy again this coming spring. Understanding that it’s personnel was decimated in the traditional post-deployment fashion, then incrementally built back to resemble a manned unit, hitting 85% in June, 2012 (5 months before the DATE), as previously stated. What do you think their priorities were? They will conduct a pre-deployment train-up in the beginning of the year, then back to Afghanistan. So I ask what YOU would prioritize your efforts on? Full Spectrum Ops (Decisive Action, or whatever the latest catch-phrase is for war-fighting), or look to the real fight 100m out, Afghanistan? The squad-leaders to company commanders aren’t concerned about their performance of a DATE, nor did they realistically change their METL to incorporate armor threats and screening missions. The real question that hasn’t been asked is why did a unit conduct a DATE right before another deployment? What were the real performance expectations?
Yes, there are many serious concerns about the fundamentals, but be careful of over-arching comments. It may have been a couple of isolated examples that were described, but we read them as a common trend across the entire formation. I can tell you that the Infantry Company and Squadron I was with accomplished incredible feats in battle and truly improved the AO we were assigned when deployed. Having been in light Infantry units for 18 years, it was the best organization I have ever been a part of. I welcome discussion and criticism about the performance, but we must keep in mind the context to which these performance measures are judged, and the realistic priorities the junior leaders have.
Para one says it all. Transitioning from the Fort Apache model used in Afghanistan to the mobile offense/defense of a euro battle takes time, and retraining. It ain’t a ‘basic skill’ unless it gets a regular workout. That doesn’t happen in Afghanistan.
What any of the on-lookers might have thought would only have been by way of a salutory lesson in the difficulty of re-adapting to new circumstances. A fact of warrior life that has plagued the ‘opening numbers’ of all wars, and cost victory in a few.
It’s just a good thing there weren’t a couple of Russian Rifle divisions or a Taliban armored unit involved.