Military Review English Edition January-February 2014 | Page 78

after another without the opportunity to retrain to
standard at the individual and small unit level. They
want the time to build proficiency from the bottom
up so that their soldiers have a strong foundation
of the basic skills, but too often they are not given
the chance.
Our companies rarely have enough time scheduled to retrain identified areas of weakness. The
failure to retrain to standard has emerged as a bad
habit because, in the brief training experience of
young commanders and first sergeants preparing
for combat, there was never enough time to do
so. They were always under incredible pressure to
move on to the next stage of construction. We began
an effort to change this approach in our BCT with
a professional discussion on the fundamentals of
training with our battalion commanders following
a BCT training meeting. Our BCT was moving
down the training path too fast. We all agreed that
there must be a few days dedicated to talking about
training at an off-site location where there was
symbolically no rush and sufficient time to work
carefully through a discussion of our long-range
training path, the direction we should move, and at
what pace the training should progress. Only after
these discussions with battalion command teams
would we publish the brigade’s training guidance.
The guiding principle for mission command in
the U.S. Army is trust, and the intent of our training symposium was directly related to solidifying
that trust before embarking upon a training path.
The outcome was remarkable. We achieved a
comprehensive treatment of issues that had been
burning in the minds of our leaders, and we not only
synchronized the planned training events but also
achieved buy-in from the senior leaders across the
BCT. We all agreed that the graduate work of integrating fires into training and instilling a combined
arms maneuver approach in the training progression
began with our own organic fires battalion.

Moving in the Right Direction
We resolved from the start of our training path
that the role of the fires battalion commander would
graduate at some point to that of brigade fire support coordinator (FSCOORD). This would occur
after his individual sections and batteries trained
and certified to standard. In an effort to see the end
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state of training from the beginning, he was asked
to develop a comprehensive fire support exercise
designed to train every company-size unit in the BCT.
As the FSCOORD, he required the latitude, time, and
access to BCT and division level resources to develop
a method to take the entire BCT where we needed
to go. Put another way, his task was to improve our
“team play” on the training field.
We agreed that combined arms maneuver training
for us would replicate the contemporary operational
environment and encompass more than the old “walk
and shoot” where fire support systems were limited
to artillery and mortars. “Walk and shoot” live fire
exercises served as a demonstration and maneuver
confidence builder. The centrally planned, controlled,
and executed exercises and scenarios included only
rudimentary leader decision-making challenges.
We felt more opportunities were needed to prepare
young leaders for conventional combat operations.
The deliberate training and certification of our leaders was the first and most important requirement if
we were to progress beyond the rudimentary. We
invested the most time and energy in developing
leaders and their confidence to make good decisions
under pressure. Integrating mortars and artillery into
our plan was fundamental. In addition, close air
support, close combat aviation, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms were included
with the “enterprise managers” we depend upon on
the battlefield (joint tactical air controllers, brigade
aviation officer, and BCT collection manager). These
enterprise managers were involved in every stage of
the planning and education process leading up to this
training event in order to ensure the integration of
available combat power. We focused on presenting a
three-dimensional view of combined arms maneuver
to our junior leaders.
We charged all leaders in the brigade with mastering the science of applying and employing every
modern weapons platform available to them. This
was to occur first in the classroom with a foundational review of the technical aspects followed by
the virtual employment of these same platforms.
The difficulty of the scenarios was gradually
increased. We charged the battalions with integrating their tactical assault command posts and tactical
operations centers at the appropriate time in the
training progression. Because company commanders would never have direct access to and approval
January-February 2014 MILITARY REVIEW