by Tom Kratman
Which is a shame, really, because, once you paid the price in time and effort, you could continue to draw dividends on your investment more or less forever.
Crime and Punishment (at the company and battalion levels, and below)
We don’t really punish, via non-judicial punishment, to deter; anyone who can be deterred from breaking the rules in a serious way by the fairly trivial punishments company and field grade officers can impose is probably too deficient in character ever to make much of a soldier. Instead, starting with the premise that most of the men want to do the right thing, if only to think well of themselves, we punish to prevent demoralization of those righteous soldiers, which demoralization will result from failure to punish the wicked.
Most official punishment will be non-judicial and related to minor infractions. If you’re having to court-martial someone, presuming he’s found guilty, he will cease to be a problem for you, for the most part.
Here are a few rules, taken from a long ago OPD session with my lieutenants and used – in a somewhat exaggerated version – in my novel, H Hour:
Rule One: Non-judicial punishment should be very rare, indeed. Most problems can and should be handled well before it gets to you. If you find you’re having regular NJP sessions, there is something wrong with your command.
Rule Two: Take the time to plan the event. That means write out the script and rehearse it, if only in your mind. If you’re a decent human being; it’s hard to be a harsh bastard. Rehearsal helps.
Rule Three: Use it as an opportunity to build your chain of command. Get input in front of the culprit from the squad leader, platoon sergeant, and platoon leader. Ask the question: ‘Is this soldier salvageable?’
Rule Four: Always max out the guilty bastard, but then suspend any punishment you think is excessive, or likely to do more harm than good. Taking money or rank or both from a married man hurts his family, something you ought not want to do, if it’s at all avoidable, because it is likely to ruin someone salvageable, to say nothing of harming the innocent. Restricting him to the barracks hurts him, in fact, gives him a serious – possibly terminal – case of lackanookie. Tie that in to the recommendations from his chain of command. Remember, too; suspended punishment reduces the probability of appeal, which helps uphold your authority.
Finally, Rule Five – and I cannot emphasize this enough: Always, always, always add to the punishment, ‘and an oral reprimand.’ Once you invoke those words, you can give an ass chewing so abusive that it might get you court-martialed in other circumstances. There is perhaps no practical limit in what you can say and how you can say it, because you will have invoked the magic words. To the best of my knowledge and belief, there is no legal limit. (Oh, go ahead; check with JAG. I’m getting on in years, after all, and things change.) This also tends to partially cover up your excessively kind and generous nature in suspending a goodly portion of the more material punishment. That said, sometimes you will want to do the oral reprimand first. And, in any case, remember that a commander is always on stage.
But, again, this sort of thing ought to be rare. How do we keep it rare? How do we keep it rare in an army springing from a litigious, rights obsessed, Mammy Yokumesque (“Good is better than evil because it’s nicer!”) society? A bureaucratic society? A society that insists on consolidating power up, rather than distributing it down?
There was a time when most disciplinary problems were handled by sergeants with anything from pushups to extra duty to a minor beating. We can, I think, do without the beatings, but is it really wise not to trust the men and women we trust to lead our soldiers in war with the power to discipline those soldiers?
My approach – I commend it to you – was to tell the troops, “When your sergeant tells you to drop for pushups, or gives you a spot of extra duty, take it as a compliment, that he sees some worth in you. He doesn’t have to be that lenient. He can bring you to me for much worse punishment. If you don’t want to do the pushups, don’t. If you don’t want the extra duty, fine, no one will make you. At least until the non-judicial punishment is imposed.”
Of course, if you’re going to do that, it’s best to explain to the sergeants not to, and how not to, abuse it.
Notes:
1 The Army doesn’t actually do this anymore, which is maybe just as well.
2 Army Physical Fitness Test. The Marines have their own, as do the other services.
3 Equal Opportunity, the bureaucratic successor in interest to the race relations bureaucrac
4 Battalion Training Management System. While imperfect, and imperfectly understood and executed, it was one of those things – once mandatory, now defunct – that helped the Army out of the post-Vietnam doldrums. I believe it was done away with on the premise that its guidance had become part of the Army ethos. I strongly recommend at least considering bringing it back to recover from the middle eastern and Afghan campaigns. For the reader, you can find something about BTMS and its history at Anne Chapman’s The Army’s Training Revolution, 1973-1990. Also, a fair number of used books for the various levels of BTMS have found their way into commerce. No, you can’t have my copies.
VI
Collective Training
There are a number of different approaches one can take to collective training. If I had to characterize the American technique, I would say we use the building block approach, heavy on repetition. By “building block approach” I mean we train on, say, assembly area procedures as an independent item, as we may train on conduct of a vehicular movement along a road as an independent item, and as we may train on bounding overwatch or react to near ambush or assault as independent items. To a considerable extent, drill is the mortar that holds those building blocks together.
I am unconvinced that this is the best way to do it. The reader may take that as meaning, “I am fully convinced that this is not the best way to do it.” In the first place, review those filters I gave for drills. Again, most things we train on as drills ought not be done as drills. This makes for a very weak mortar, heavy on the sand. Secondly, this approach really doesn’t grab the troops’ attention, their hearts and minds. “Boo hoo…so we missed X in the assembly area? So what?” Thirdly, this approach, being mostly performance measure oriented, tends to lack quality control. “Yes, you did Z. How well did you do it and how do you know? Oh, someone checked he blocks for performance measures, did they?”
Instead, I offer the following as a better alternative to the building block approach.
A Mission Essential Task List (METL) for a Mechanized Infantry Company or Battalion
Conduct Movement to Contact culminating in a Hasty Attack / Meeting Engagement
Conduct Movement to Contact culminating in a Hasty Defense
Conduct Airmobile Raid
Conduct Deliberate Attack
Attack on Urbanized Terrain
Defend on Urbanized Terrain
Defend Battle Position
Delay in Sector (Company and Battalion) / conduct anti-armor ambush (Platoon and Squad)
Conduct Recon Patrol (Squad and Platoon task, with implications for higher)
Conduct Ambush Patrol (Squad and Platoon task, ditto)
Provisos:
Every building block-like step in the ARTEP can be included in these mission essential tasks, and will be qualified and verified by whether the unit succeeds in meeting the standards (not performance measures) for the tasks. Assembly area procedures and troop leading procedures? They’re in every mission. Road marches? They’re in almost every mission. Reaction to X or Y or Z? That’s up to you to include in the conditions for whatever missions you see fit to include them in.
The number ten is key, because of the way the troops – leaders, too, usually – think. “Ah, we can do everything but the airmobile raid so we’re about ninety percent combat capable, which is not bad.” The number ten is also sufficient to give just about every imaginable set of conditions and enough variance in missions to develop problem solving ability for pr
oblems involving the use of force to overcome force.
Trick of the trade: it is usually very difficult to come up with enough opposing force to make a recon patrol a real challenge. Try this: As part of a competitive exercise, start the troops – we’ll assume nine squads – in a circle with about a kilometer or kilometer of so between each of them, a roughly ten kilometer circle, in other words. Hmmm…go ahead and draw that rough circle on a piece of paper and label the positions for squads 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Imagine that 1 is at the top, or north. Now find the center of the circle. Now emplace a recon objective, maybe it’s the battalion mortar platoon, due south, about one third of the distance between the center and the circle. That is the objective for squads at points 1, 2, and 3. Now go around one hundred and twenty degree and emplace another recon objective, maybe a mess tent. That is the objective for squads beginning at points 4, 5, and 6. Do the same for 7, 8, and 9, with perhaps a headquarters tent with much radio traffic noise. Note that because of the way the thing is set up, squads starting at 1,2, and 3 must pass through – or fight through – six other squads, near the center of the circle, to get their information, and are very likely to run into two more close to the objective. Again, if part of a competitive exercise, this will make for a tough, tough, tough recon patrol. Randomize the starting positions for the squads.
Helicopters are expensive to use, hence often hard to come by for training for a mech unit. A raid is a difficult mission, indeed one of the most difficult. To me it makes a certain sense to use this hard to get asset under the most difficult circumstances, to get the maximum feasible training benefit.
Surprise is a hard thing to simulate in peacetime training. Yet taking advantage of surprise, and working to achieve it, is very important in war. Still, time counts. Like those ambushes Hamilton’s squad had to walk through, if he hadn’t known they were there he’d never have been certain to walk through them, which would have made the exercise a waste of time for the ambushing units. In that kind of case, it’s sufficient to tell the troops walking into the ambush, “Pretend you don’t know they’re there until they either open fire or you actually hear something suspicious.” For things, though, missions like raids, where surprise is key and the defending force, if ready, can basically stomp the raiding party in a way they couldn’t in war, you have to go a step further. One approach that can work is to put the defending troops in their sleeping bags, dressed and with boots but with their equipment off. When they think they hear something they can alert and move to their defensive positions as soon as they have their equipment on and in hand. If they alert falsely, they go back to their sleeping bags, with their boots off. That means that when they alert, they’ve got to get their boots on before moving. If they alert falsely again, off come the uniforms. This also serves to train the raiding force to move fast once the enemy knows they’re there.
The other principles of war: Mass, Objective, Security, Maneuver, Offensive, Unity of Command, Simplicity, and Economy of Force, also should be drivers of your training. While you’re at it, add in my modifications: Attrition, Annihilation, and Shape.
Any of those missions can, with imagination and even a modest degree of moral courage, be trained as live fire exercises.
The US Army tends to emphasize maximum fill of supply at all times. This made a certain sense in front line spots like West Germany and Korea, where moving to one’s battle positions on short notice was more important than training for tough times. In the states, however, or Germany now (not Korea), though, keeping the fuel tanks constantly full is conditioning for the easiest circumstances, logistic plenty. It would be better, as conditions for the tasks in the above METL, to drain the tanks and restrict the amount of fuel the S-4 (supply officer and section/ supply and transport platoon fuel section) has to give out to no more than the minimum needed for the next mission. That, rather than conditioning the troops to fill tanks, conditions them to conserve, and to plan, and not to waste.
History is also a grand driver for setting up exercises. Read Infantry in Battle, What Now Lt? (the 9th Division one, not the Robert Babcock book…if you can find a copy. I have one; so does the War College. That may be it), or Make Every Shot Count (though I have some issues with that). The Center for Military History is replete with free publications that are useful reading for a soldier, and also useful for setting up problems.
There is a temptation, almost insuperable, given the expense of first class training, to squeeze every little plus and minus out in the after action review, or AAR. DO NOT BOTHER. The troops will learn what they learn from what they experience in an exercise. They will listen to about three each plusses and minuses, after which it all is either tuned out or lost in the noise. Keep your AARs short and sweet, tell them whether they met the stands and if not, why not, and limit yourself to three of each, up and down.
There is a strong prejudice against last minute changes to the training schedule. Most of that prejudice is residual, from the days that the post-Vietnam era ruin of an Army simply could not plan and keep to a training schedule. That is still something to be wary of, and changes ought never be permitted due to – people ought to be fired over – simple laziness and inability to plan and supervise. That said, there is one excellent reason to change the training schedule even at the very last minute and, rather than being blameworthy, it is highly praiseworthy. Try this: every day, contact Range Control to see who has cancelled X range for the following day (or even, if you are very good, and your command is, that very day). Why? Because the odds are very good indeed that it isn’t just a range or training area that’s not going to be used, but ammunition, too. And, as the unit that has cancelled is not going to want to lose their ammunition allocation for next year; they will probably be willing to just give it to you. You might be surprised how often you can do a night ambush, or a movement to contact live fire, with ammunition someone else ordered but cannot use.
I’ve recently become aware that the Army, which used to have a great many useful subcaliber devices and simulators to simulate major rounds of ammunition at a fraction of the cost, now has few or none. Puff Boards? The last one was turned in from Fort Benning about six years ago. Where once there were pneumatic firing devices for mortars, which cost nearly nothing to use, now there are collections of unserviceable parts and questions: “Hey, anyone know what this was for?” There used to be 14.5 mm for artillery and 22mm inserts for dummy sabot rounds for mortars, now those are gone. Gentlemen, ladies: Austere times are coming; indeed, they’re already here. Get those sub cal devices back in operation. Order new ones. That said, sub cals can be made a lot better by following this procedure: ind an open sandy area for the subcal impact area. Build a bunker at one edge of it. Make sure the bunker cannot see anything full size. Reduce the viewport as necessary so it can’t. Dig a trench to the bunker, that turns into a crawl tunnel near the end. The objective is to get the troop to lose track of full scale, so that when he looks through the firing / vision port of the bunker it all looks normal. Treat the open area as a big sand table. Put in hills, dunes, streams, lakes, buildings, roads. Make a map, with grid system. Add toy tanks and troops. Even if you don’t have sub caliber ammunition to use, get your best pitcher, with grenade simulators, to toss them at the grid the FO sends. Have an FDC verify the data for different types of calls for fire.
Training is a matter of life and death. There is no such thing as “good enough.” There is only, “as good as we can be given the time and resources.” And if you are good enough in a task, meeting the standards? Toughen the conditions. And if you are good enough and the conditions are tough? Move on to the next task.
Collective Live Fire Training
By live fire I do not mean knocking down targets on an administrative qualification range somewhere. Something is not a live fire merely because of the use of live ammunition. By live fire I mean the execution of those METL tasks, above, or other, similar tasks, with targets substituting for a live enemy (though they ought to act f
airly alive) and the unit doing all those things it would do in war against a live enemy.
Live firing is, potentially, the most valuable training we can give people. There we can train skills: Shooting, moving, communicating, planning, giving orders, supervising. We can condition people against fear to some extent because, properly done, there's a heightened element of risk. We can develop their problem solving ability in problems involving the use of force to overcome force. We can test our equipment and doctrine under conditions most closely approaching war. And we can select for leadership and elimination from service, in part because of the heightened risk.
Sadly, live firing in the Army or Marines can be, and typically is, the worst, the most counterproductive, training on offer.
Why? Well how about that walk-crawl-run thing? You know, the one where leaders, rather than developing their own order, are issued their order. You know, the one where the troops go through a flat open range, with maybe a few piles of logs and low berms, about seven times going, “bang…bang…bang.” You know, the one where they then do it three more times with blanks. After which, maybe, that is to say if the man responsible for the range is totally convinced that all training benefit has been eliminated, that every possible value has been sucked from it, they do it with live ammunition.
We call it, “Walk-Crawl-Run,” but, in fact, from start to finish, the troops never are running. At that last rendition they’re still crawling; they’re just doing it on a moving sidewalk.