by Tom Kratman
Supplementary Wire
8-60. Supplementary wire obstacles are employed to break up the line of tactical wire to prevent the enemy from locating platoon weapons (particularly CCMS and machine guns) by following the tactical wire.
4 Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System. For any non-military readers, thin: A system of laser tag on steroids.
5 Opposing Force
6 The Old Guard, the Third Infantry Regiment, is the Army’s ceremonial organization in the Washington DC area.
III
Tasks, Conditions, Standards
Everything in training in the Army and Marines, though the terminology may differ in the Corps (or in the other services), is a task, done under certain conditions, to certain standards. That, at least, is the theory. In practice… well, not so much.
One of the problems resides in or around the concept of standards.
The first of these problems is, well, just what do standards mean without conditions. Everyone’s seen the captain whose company always puts on a good show, where the troops’ hair is always cut, the lockers sorted to perfection, the floors in the barracks gleaming, never a cigarette butt in the police call area, etc. Quite likely, too, that there’s never a DUI, that everyone contributes to Army Emergency Relief, and the operationally ready rate for the vehicles approaches one hundred percent. “That captain has high standards,” say his superiors.
Does he really? What if looking good is all they do? What if the reason for the one hundred percent OR rate is that the vehicles are never used, nor even inspected closely, lest something go wrong or be found wrong?
In fact, that captain has a very different set of task, conditions, and standards he’s operating from. The task is: Look good enough to higher to get that coveted water-walking OER. The key conditions are: To the exclusion of everything else. And whatever standard we might think to apply are meaningless, because of the real task and the real conditions.
That example is extreme, of course, but it is not unreal. Sometimes it even works to advance the inherently illegitimate task, and the clear bastard of an officer. And, naturally, the troops not being dummies, and training being everything and everything training, this kind of program is also training them, to put appearances first, last, and always.
Vignette Six: Nobody is useless, but some people’s highest and best use is as a bad example.
The mission to attack Cerro Galera, on the southwest corner of the Panama Canal Zone, just northwest of Howard Air Force Base, was so miserable – it being densely overgrown and extremely steep – that it was assigned almost by roster. The mission was partially evaluation driven, with serious bad OER karma for commanders of units that failed the evaluation. It was also partially real world driven as, in the event of hostilities with Panama, there was a fair to middling chance that the heights would have to be cleared.
The battalion commander could apparently care less about real world considerations; what mattered to him was his OER, and part of his set of conditions for gaining that water walking OER was, “to the exclusion of all other ethical and moral considerations.” In support of that, and even though he could not have done it for real war, nor for legitimate training for war, he spontaneously and surreptitiously altered the conditions. Instead of the attack up Cerro Galera going in as a real simulation, the battalion commander had ropes installed all along the slope to make the going much easier and faster than it should have, or legitimately could have, been.
(As an aside, it came as a surprise to no one who knew this battalion commander when, later, as a colonel promotable, commanding a training brigade, he browbeat his headquarters company commander into falsifying his Army Physical Fitness Test score. It was something of a surprise, though, when the Chief of Staff of the Army allowed the wretch to be promoted to brigadier general and then retire, rather than court-martialing him as he plainly deserved. But then the Army’s major task is, all too often, “look good” with conditions, “no matter the cost in ethical precedent.” Oh, yes, it is. How do you suppose officers like that thrive?)
This illustration leads to something else:
Axiom Nine: In the absence of valid conditions, standards are completely meaningless.
A few examples: 1) Task: Engage target with a rifle … Conditions: Given range of one hundred feet, an infinity of ammunition, a zeroed rifle, no wind, on a perfectly clear, sunlit day, with the target painted bright orange. Standards: hit the target at least once. 2) Task: Run twelve miles. Conditions: Given three days, a smooth flat pavement, athletic clothing and shoes. Standard: Arrive. 3) Task: Conduct reconnaissance patrol. Conditions: given an MTO&E1 infantry squad, a perfectly flat golf course overlooked by a hill, the hill being accessible, in the absence of an opposing force, with various displays laid out on the golf course, in plain sight, without camouflage, said displays showing friendly and enemy equipment, in an inactive NBC environment, with a working radio, in the daytime, without fog or precipitation. Standards. The unit identifies eighty-five percent of the equipment displayed…
You get the idea. Cub scouts could do any of those. Brownies could do any of those. There’s nothing wrong with the standards, per se, but the conditions make those standards meaningless.
Conversely, try this:
Task: Conduct Deliberate Attack
Conditions: Given an MTO&E infantry company, with sixteen hours to prepare, from issuance of the warning order from battalion to crossing the line of departure, with the operations order from battalion coming not more than four hours after the warning order, the LD being at a distance of four kilometers, the objective being two kilometers past that, with the entire area between the LD and the objective subject to direct enemy fire, mines, indirect enemy fire, in an active NBC2 environment, with an enemy platoon one third the strength of the company, dug in, said platoon blocking access to the objective, with trenches and bunkers, the enemy having tactical, protective, and supplementary wire emplaced, plus a protective minefield. The OPFOR has both MANPADS3 and light cannon for air defense. The company will be supported by the battalion’s heavy mortar platoon, two sorties of A-10s, and one battery of 105mm towed guns. Ammunition for indirect fire support is not constrained. Terrain is jungle. There may be streams and / or swamps to slow progress. Casualty assessment will be mixed MILES and evaluator judgment.
Standards: The objective is taken. The OPFOR platoon blocking the way suffers not less than seventy-five percent casualties. The company suffers not more than twenty-five percent casualties. No friendly unit endangered by friendly fire or action.
I trust it’s not too hard to see how those standards are actually fairly tough to meet, given those conditions.
Note that changing any of those standards or any of those conditions requires some thought and judgment. If you reduce the size of the enemy force, maybe you want to eliminate the two sorties of A-10s. If you make the minefield more substantial, maybe you need to give the company more time and attach a platoon of engineers.
As a general rule, too, I’d suggest that for collective combat tasks the following table for force rations should be adhered to.
Yes, by the way, I am saying that the most rear echelon of service support units still needs to be trained to fight, to defend and also to attack, and that that table gives a fair estimate of the chief condition – force ratio – to do so successfully and train to do so successfully. What? A maintenance platoon conduct a deliberate attack? Yes. See the German “Snail Offensive,” Russia, 1942, at Military Improvisations During the Russian Campaign, CMH Publication 104-1, which is available on line, for free, at history.army.mil.
So that’s one problem with standards, when they’re established without reference to the conditions. The other problem is when the standards aren’t really standards at all, when, instead, they become “performance measures.” What’s a performance measure? It’s generally a step which, if taken in the right sequence, is thought to equate with success at the task. The ARTEP, the Army Training Evalu
ation Program, is replete with performance measures masquerading as standards. The big problem, though, is that performance measures usually lack quality control and too often key on trivia. Trivia? I recall a test on using a lensatic compass at Fort Stewart, in the 1980s, whereby whether a soldier passed or not had to do with which thumb went over which when using the center hold technique. It was absurd, the more absurd for how seriously it was taken.
Not quite so trivially, but perhaps as uselessly, the ARTEP will have dozens of steps, say, for that deliberate attack mission, from receive the warning order to initiate necessary movement, to establish assembly area, to conduct troop leading procedures, to move to the line of departure…
All of those have some value for an evaluator to look at, but none of them, taken alone or together, equals success in quite the same way as: “The objective is taken. The OPFOR platoon blocking the way suffers not less than seventy-five percent casualties. The company suffers not more than twenty-five percent casualties. No friendly unit endangered by friendly fire or action.” And if you can’t evaluate based on those, once again, look to the conditions to see if you have made them thorough enough, and difficult enough, to simulate war reasonably well.
Changing conditions, toughening them, is also a way to effectively heighten the standards but without the demoralization attendant on changing them, which changes say, in effect, “I told you you were good before. I lied. That’s why I’m raising standards now.” Toughening the conditions can consist of reducing preparation times, changing light and weather conditions, adding obstacles, directing the route over unbreached and unbridged obstacles, making it an active (as in they’ve been used) chemical warfare environment, increasing the enemy force, change it to a nighttime task, etc.
1 Modified Table of Organization and Equipment
2 Nuclear, Biological and Chemical. Inactive means nobody’s using them.
3 Man Portable Air Defense Systems. Stingers, Redeyes, Blowpipes, Strellas, Grails, etc.
IV
Vignette Seven: oh, of course the enemy will always set himself up for maximum vulnerability to your drills and standard operating procedures.
(The following is extracted from Carnifex, Volume II in the Carreraverse)
Cano was pissed. Being taken by surprise, ambushed himself by the Duque, was just too fucking much. Bad enough that—
“Relax, Tribune,” Carrera said, not ungently. He was actually impressed with the kid. “I just have some questions. It was a good ambush. Really. What bothers me was that maybe it was too good. Why do you think it was so good?”
Cano didn’t relax. Sure, he wasn’t a signifer anymore; he was entitled to tie his boots in the morning without tying the left one to the right one. Even so, this was the bloody Duque. He was a bastard; everyone knew it. Cano could just see his career flying off to parts unknown and unknowable. He could—
“I asked a question, Tribune,” Carrera reminded.
“Oh . . . sorry, sir. I was . . . I just wasn’t expecting you to—”
“I asked a question, Tribune.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Well . . . sir . . . we’ve done this ambush here maybe a dozen times just since I’ve been leading the platoon. The boys know what to do and, then again, we drill the shit out of it . . .”
Aha.
“Jamey! Call the Chief of Staff, the I and the Ia. I don’t give a shit if they’re asleep. Get ’em up.”
Vignette Eight
Hamilton couldn’t figure it out. He knew the company—his new company—was well drilled. Yet every problem thrown at them this brisk Fort Stewart morning they pretty much flubbed. It was taking longer for them to react than it should have if they’d never drilled a step.
It took the common sense of his driver to explain it: “Everything you’ve thrown at them is different this morning, sir. For example, that ambush? Well, you had it placed over there on the right and behind. Normally, it’s always up ahead, either right or left.”
“So?”
“So they’re having to stop, think, overcome the conditioning of years of doing it the other way, then think of what to do for this. And they’ve drilled so much they’re not good at thinking quick.”
“Oh. How come you’re still a private.”
“I’m new, sir. Not stupid, but new.”
Battle Drills and SOPs1
Drills are preset and rehearsed to the point of conditioned solutions to common battlefield problems. Though I can see the point, for some of them, I’m not a huge fan, overall. There are a few reasons for my lack of enthusiasm. One is that, used enough, the enemy can study them at leisure and arrive at the perfect counter to almost any given drill. Another is that war is chaotic and unpredictable such that the drill is usually somewhat inappropriate. The same generally holds true for Standard Operating Procedures, individual tasks done to perfection, crew drills, and formations.
There are some very good armies that historically have been utterly dependent on battle drills, crew drills, SOPs, and the like. Almost every army uses at least some of that. But for those that use only some, there’s a marked reluctance to get too very dependent on them, in part, I think for the time training them (to the point of conditioning) involves, and in part because an army dependent on drill will tend to select for leadership people very comfortable with drill, with present solutions, which are precisely the wrong people to put in charge of an inherently and irredeemably chaotic endeavor like war.
There are a number of other objections to overreliance on drill besides the two I mentioned, above. I suggest using the below as a set of filters for what should and should not be turned into drill.
Drills, if they’re to be reliable, must be conditioned into troops, almost as if the troops, leaders, too, were Pavlov’s dogs. So if the subject of the drill simply can’t really be conditioned in a normal human being, well enough to rely on it, don’t try to make a drill of it.
Even if the matter is something a normal human being can be conditioned into, conditioning usually takes a lot of time. Time, of course, is usually at a premium. Thus, even if something can, in theory, be conditioned, if you don’t have the time to condition it, don’t waste what time you have on the impossible.
Drills—like the other things, mentioned above—are executed under certain conditions. If those conditions are subject to radical differences such that no amount of practical drilling can condition them all, do not train as a drill something that will only be true infrequently.
Military units suffer losses. They are almost never at full strength. If a drill requires a particular level of manpower or equipment, and you can reasonably predict that that particular level of strength will rarely be met, don’t bother.
Those last two are related. We legitimately and effectively use crew drill for armored vehicle crews. And why not? The inside of a turret—the key condition—doesn’t change. The crewmen have seats they stay in. The gun doesn’t move laterally or horizontally relative to the crew. The internal communications gear typically works. For the other key condition, strength, the crew of an armored vehicle generally lives or dies together; they generally suffer no attrition that matters in the short term. Yes, it sometimes happens but not commonly. So a drill for a crew like that—a crew drill—makes sense.
The same holds true for much that the mortars and artillery do. Their positions may change from place to place, but the important thing, the gun, is always the same. The positions they build to protect the gun and themselves are always the same, too. The casualties they take, mostly to other mortars and artillery, or air, tend to be either catastrophic or insignificant.
Artillery and mortars don’t usually come under small arms fire. Mines are only rarely a problem for them. For the most part they lose men to aerial attack and counterbattery fire from enemy artillery. That fire either is close enough to emulsify the crew, or it’s far enough away, when it explodes, to do only limited damage to the crew, or it is so far away it is irrelevant to the crew.
&n
bsp; In the first and the last of those cases, that the artillery crew was drilled numb doesn’t hurt matters. It can still either do the job or it is dead. In the middle case, because gun crews are much larger—or at least ought to be— than the bare minimum needed to load and fire the gun, and because artillery crew drill is simple enough that everyone can be, and in a good crew is, trained to do all the jobs. Therefore, even with some losses, the gun can still fill the important jobs with adequately trained troops and still function at a reduced rate of fire.
The drill at the crew level becomes much more problematic when we rise above the level of a single, simple crew to a platoon of mortars, tanks or tracks, or a battery of guns. Then the key condition is no longer the same all the time. Units above the crew level always have to adjust: to terrain, to the enemy situation, to their own strength. Indeed, the variables for infantry are infinite, a few drills won’t do and the number that might do is impossible.
In any event, before you decide to train something as a drill, ask yourself also whether the conditions—to include your own strength—are likely to be the same in war all the time.
Note that the Russians, one of the more thoroughgoing drill-based armies, show a key point for drills above the crew level: a line remains a line, even when you erase some portion of it. As they do, if you plan on doing a drill or formation with any unit above the crew level, you had best consider making it some variable on a line or similarly simple geometric shape. A wedge or echelon, for example, counts as a line. Only that kind of formation or drill is very sustainable after losses.
