Taking the Initiative in U.S. Army Training

I attended many schools in my time in the Army, just to sport a shiny new badge or record it on my annual eval for my enthusiastic participation. I would often return to the unit and find the newly acquired skills immediately went into atrophy due to the lack of time or effort to maintain proficiency. The push was always to go, go, go to any and every school I could get my hands on and to never turn down an opportunity. It was sort of viewed as building a chest-worn resume. Looking back now, so much weight, focus and attention was put on this seemingly irrelevant drive. It seemed like Cub Scouts all over again, going from one badge to the next. This expectation for professional development and growth of course was always sprinkled in with an already oversaturated deployment tempo, but “By God, get those schools under your belt; it will only help for promotion,” right? Even more hilarious is how much Kool-Aid was stirred that a specific military education opportunity would bear any weight in the civilian world.

“Sorry, I almost just spit out my coffee. I digress!”

I stress two points in this article:

1) 75% of the schools you attend while in uniform have zero translation in the civilian world. You’re going to get out at some point; whether it is after your first enlistment or a 20+ year career. Most military specific schools have no bearing on the outside world and most civilians don’t even know how to conceptualize what we do.

2) What is actually happening on the backside, after graduation and back at your unit from these profound military schools is usually nothing. So, the question I often pondered after leaving my family and attending an “important position-shaping course” is: “Am I really utilizing this newfound skillset to hone my craft or was it all just an exercise in just filling butts-to-seats in order to maintain relevancy for employing instructors at a schoolhouse?” It’s an important question when weighing both your future and precious time.

It wasn’t until I wore the First Sergeant diamond and saw the eventual sun setting on an illustrious career that I finally had this “A-ha” moment. Seeing a gap where my bubbas would attend and graduate from the Sabalauski Air Assault, Pathfinder or Spies/Fries courses were then only met with mindlessly utilizing their time back at the Troop to conduct mandatory 350-1 training or motor pool ops. Field exercises were few and far between, always a circus parade and usually met with a struggle to get range time. However, to fill the calendar white space, the unit would spend time and money to send a kid to school, expecting him to graduate, only to have him come home to sweep rocks around the footprint or underutilized during the duty day while sporting a new, shiny badge.

This is when I started looking around the motor pool to create and implement a “Proficiency Petting Zoo” specifically for the Air Assault and Pathfinder courses on post. I also looked into workshops at the unit level for the Soldiers to practice and maintain skills learned in courses offered for their rank level that they were expected to attend in order to stay on glidepath for their MOS. It was certainly a culture thing, but being the world’s only Air Assault Division, it made sense to churn out as many air-mobile qualified Soldiers from the “Wing Machine” down the street.

I’ll give a couple vignettes and examples here for understanding of what I refer to as a “Petting Zoo” and workshops available so maybe those of you that are still serving can use to engage and synergize at your local level. The icing for all of this is it only calls for using organic equipment that is already on the books or contracted through Big Army for training the unit. If you have a signature card holder for the on-post Training Aids, Devices and Simulations & Graphic Training Aids (TASDS) & (GTAs) office, you can really expand upon these initiatives. These ideas don’t even require a Risk Assessment or going to range control to jockey for land.

Petting Zoos

At Fort Campbell, the biggest hurdles I saw my bubbas have for both Air Assault and Pathfinder Courses was Sling Load Phase. The tested material and hands-on portion caused so much stress on both the study-up and the test-day portions that often Soldiers would fail themselves; sometimes just based on their level of test anxiety and lack of stress management. To secure a slot, all Brigade cared about was PT test and Ruck performance. At Air Assault, Phase One (Knowledge) and Phase Three (Rappel) were pretty easy for the guys, but Phase Two (Slingload) was always the skunk in the room. For Pathfinder, it was a grueling three straight weeks of arduous load rigging and inspections.

My guys knew the procedures on how to rig a load and what to look for because we did it as a collective out in the field or the Combat Training Center (CTC) rotations with all the time in the world and access to handbooks. But faced against a schoolhouse, two-minute time constraint and the sneaky schoolhouse riggers, it was often the little things that were overlooked and missed. If not identified correctly and timely, Joe’s test sheet was met with the infamous red pen and a fat “NO GO.”

The picture of sending Joe back to the Squadron with poopy pants is a pitiful sight indeed. I’ve been there and it sucks; both as the leader and the Joe with soiled trousers! So, as a senior leader, I tried to meet Joe with grace. But a little ribbing from his peers and Team Leader usually solidified the fact that he was going back and not to screw it up again. For me and the CSM, it came down to building our force capability for the Squadron Commander. But it also meant collecting numerical statistics for the Brigade for bragging rights across the Division. Obviously being the best Brigade on post, the Rakkasan’s had to make sure our stats were always tight.

“Ahem…digressing again!”

The fix was simple and glaring to me; Conduct pre-train up for unqualified Soldiers waiting for a Brigade school slot, not only in the arena of physical fitness, but by attending unit level workshops and testing on organic unit equipment to get those routines and deficiency identifiers down as muscle memory. It was obvious; we had the exact equipment used during test day laying around or locked up in conexes down in the motor pool. Vehicles; check. Sling equipment; check. A school trained NCO or Jr Officer to evaluate; check.

“Boom-let’s go!”

So, after bringing up the concept to the Squadron Motor pool Officer, XO and the CSM to carve out some space in the back of the motor pool yard, securing a separate conex to store some old, but worthy sling equipment and pitching the idea to the other First Sergeants, the unit’s first “Petting Zoo” was born. This space not only facilitated train-up for Air Assault and Pathfinder courses but also for knot and bridge tying equipment beneficial for Ranger/Sapper/Mountain Warfare schools as well as rigging Spies/Fries. An engineer-taped-area for vehicles enabled Load Master and Unit Movement Officer (UMO) course officers a train up area and was permanently staked out. We even made signage to showcase our new pet project. This dedicated area also was a space to teach young Staff Soldiers and Officers the art of terrain board construction and theory. We identified it as a great place to relocate all the portable generators with lights for pre-mission Squadron OPORDS that usually went on into long nights before jumping in the field the next week. This simple idea created a nest and then quickly found its wings.

I can’t say how the Petting Zoo maintained its lifespan and relevancy after I transitioned out and the unit’s motor pool location moved down the street. After all, once you lose visual of something you created, it normally folds unless its advocated for. But word is, the idea spread like wildfire throughout the rest of the Brigade. I hope it provided value; the idea itself really had legs. For your unit, it can create and maintain critical unit Mission Essential Task List (METL) proficiencies to endure the Command Team’s vision and mission as well as give Joe a purpose during the duty day. Assigning an NCO from each Troop also gave them an additional duty and a way for Troop leadership to evaluate a young NCO’s performance and potential for promotion board criteria.

Take this idea for what it is, what it could do for your unit as well as keep your teams occupied. Get creative and build upon it. You already own the equipment, so use it and maintain proficiencies!

The Battle Lab

Now days, most major installations host a civilian led Training Support Center, dedicated to teaching classes, and run simulations for units at no cost. These local centers-of-excellence are normally staffed with knowledgeable and seasoned civilians and contractors that instruct and evaluate the very programs, concepts and procedures for equipment and software that the military is currently using in battlefield operations. These facilities are a great place to invite out of town Mobile Training Teams (MTT) to utilize for home-station training, as well as a perfect place to host secure VTC’s to parent units downrange; due to their secure communication platforms and SCIFs.

One such class I had the opportunity to participate in was an Operations Battle Lab Workshop. This could not have been better timed. As the senior NCO arriving to the unit while the Squadron was deployed downrange I was met with a broken S3 shop. Newly assigned as the Rear Detachment Ops NCO, I walked into an Operations cell that was completely dysfunctional and disjointed. To be honest, the Squadron Command Team took the Varsity team Ops cell they trained up for the overseas mission forward with them and just inserted untrained, unseasoned leftovers to run operations back home based on senior ranking with little direction. Wait, it gets better! The Rear-D Squadron Senior Officer in Charge (OIC) was a young First Lieutenant with only a recent Afghanistan tour under his belt as a Platoon Leader. He was woefully overwhelmed with Soldier discipline issues and a pile of Brigade and Division detail requirements and due outs being missed and piling up. But he’s an officer, right? He can handle it…..

Moreover, the Schools NCO, the Brigade LNO and a med-board Staff Sergeant Senior NCO riddled with medical appointments was left in charge of the Squadron and were not working well together. Everything was completely stove piped with zero flattened communication, no synchronization of tasks and a list of other deficiencies. They were piecemealed from different Troops, so they had no working knowledge of each other or the responsibility that lie in front of them. The Squadron was missing higher suspenses and having no shows to Brigade/Division level details. The unit as a whole looked like a complete bag of ass to the Rear-D Brigade CSM.

Enter me, stage left.

Having just come from a well-oiled Operations Group supporting non-stop global operations as the Ops SGM, I assumed responsibility of this shitshow. We needed focus and organization fast. I found out quickly that the General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) team at the post Training Support Center down the street from our footprint hosted an Operations Battle Lab Workshop. It was a weeklong workshop tailored towards exercising all the S shops of a Squadron level Command and Staff for downrange operations. I inquired if the workshop could be tailored to facilitate a newly formed Rear Detachment team; instructing on both the equipment and software their peers were using downrange but also on things like cross-communication within a team and executing the Brigade standardized FRAGO used to run day-to-day operations. They were fully supportive of the idea and so I pitched the idea to the forward Command and Staff team. Though it was originally focused on battlefield TTPs, this workshop would allow us time and space for our shop to run through a tailored training culmination exercise and AAR to help build some urgency, interoperability, and camaraderie and morale within the crew.

Throughout the weeklong course, I found that these Soldiers left behind really wanted to deploy with the unit and felt a sense of abandonment and purposelessness. They were all ready to just get out or PCS away from the unit as soon as possible. The important thing during the workshop was to articulate and show the team that the purpose back home was just as important; maybe not towards National and Strategic goals, but we had to without fail keep the lights on back home and keep the boat afloat for the Squadron to come home to in seven months. That included keeping the unit out of the crosshairs of the many senior onlookers. There was a barracks revamping initiative for the Brigade, so the LT and I pressed the importance of creating the certainty of a good homecoming for the forward team.

As the week and exercise ended the team became much more open to sharing information and working as a team. Back at the unit, we started hitting all of our Brigade objectives; little by little. We got out from the dark shadow of higher and became a resource for the forward team to leverage the Rear D Intel shop for reach back information. We weren’t great, but we were functional. This all spawned from jumping into a flooded foxhole and quickly identifying the absolute need to bail the water out; bucket by bucket to keep from drowning.

I say all of this because these training resources are available at every major duty station now. I just Google “GDIT” and it usually finds the locations on their website. Then, all it takes is getting with your Schools NCO and tracking down the center on base. This is where you, as a leader, get to exercise your initiative and networking skills to create lasting connections. More importantly is the passing along, and connecting your replacement leaders, to maintain those newly formed relationships. The individuals at these training centers are usually retired NCOs and Officers, so they speak the same language as you and I and most likely will outlive your time at your current duty station. So go create and maintain a continuity book, with all pertinent information; whether analog or digital for your unit.

A unit better for it

I can be pretty long winded with these articles, and I have plenty more examples. But to capitalize on the built-up motivation and ideation here, I am going to close this for you to go out and get inspired. And if you mention this to an eager Team Leader or Spec 4, you’ll most likely unleash the honey badger in them; just watch!

Again, it goes back to personal and team initiative, creativity, and imagination. In these days of fiscal uncertainty and the lack of opportunity to put your Joes out in the field for a week and work on mobility or live fire, take a look around your own command post and find the opportunities. Make time to back away from the desk, your laptop and this week’s Command & Staff slides to go create some opportunities for your Junior Leaders to train up their teams. Soldiers hate 350-1. They hate inventories. What they are looking and craving for is the technical and tactical training opportunities to learn, grow, instill a sense of purpose, and write home about. That’s what keeps good people reenlisting.

And Command Teams: Inspire your leaders. Shelter them from the mindless “ankle biters.” The world always has time for yet another briefing, but there’s never enough time for good, solid training. Go create and inspire your replacements!

This is the time to do it.

__________________________

This first appeared in The Havok Journal on March 11, 2024.

Robb is a retired active Army veteran of 21 years, primarily serving as a Cavalry Scout. Having accomplished multiple combat tours, diverse global assignments and leadership roles, Robb retired as a First Sergeant of Shadow Troop, 1-33 CAV (Rakassans). From there, Robb went on to attempt his luck in the civilian sector as a Reliability Engineer at an international paper processing company during the pandemic. Not quite satisfied and feeling the draw to serve once again, Robb made his way back behind the gate working with some of the nation’s tip of spear warfighters on Fort Liberty, NC.

It was during this time that he was drawn into an esoteric spiritual journey of self-discovery and began peeling back the onion of how vanquishing spiritual warfare can serve as a personal force multiplier. Dropping all ties to dogmatic religious principles, Robb solely embarked into studies of the mystical and metaphysical for the answers of life. Now forged with this newfound purpose, Robb blends his current path of spiritual ascension along with his past experience of the rigors of military service in order to uplift the future of his brothers and sisters in arms.

“The answers we all seek lie in potential.”

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.