Draft initial Entry Training For An Army at War The United States Army is An Army at War



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An Army at War
The United States Army is An Army at War
Despite the tremendous victory of the United States and the coalition during the major combat operations of the Iraqi Freedom campaign, today the US Army finds itself at war. Yes, the Saddam Hussein regime is no longer in power and yes, the coalition occupies all the major centers of power in Iraq, and yes, a nascent government is slowly emerging to fill the power vacuum left by the destruction of the Ba’ath regime. Yet, everyday in many areas of Iraq American troops are attacked by ambushes, improvised explosive devices, snipers, mortars, and hit and run attacks. The Saddam regime and much of its leadership may be gone, but the remnants fight on. Defeated on the battlefield, but not in spirit; desperate fugitive Saddam loyalists joined by “freedom fighters” infiltrating from neighboring countries fight on, perhaps in the misguided hope that casualties and lack of progress in reconstructing the country will drive the Americans out of Iraq. Regardless of their motivation, the existing security situation in Iraq is one in which every military movement is a combat patrol and every military operation, no matter how peaceful its intent, must be conducted under the assumption that combat could break out at any moment. Meanwhile, active military operations to hunt down and capture or kill remnants of the Hussein regime and its supporting forces continue day and night across the country.
At the same time, a smaller number of American Army forces remain in Afghanistan; restoring order, securing reconstruction, building an Afghani Army and continuing the hunt for Bin Laden and the remnants of Al Qa’Ida. These operations are just as dangerous, and require the same deliberate combat preparation and execution as those in Iraq. In both these cases, US Army conventional forces and Army Special Operations Forces continue the dangerous and lethal campaigns begun by the joint and coalition forces in Operations Enduring Freedom (OEF in Afghanistan) and Iraqi Freedom (OIF in Iraq). To add to the challenges facing the Army, lower intensity, but still potentially lethal conventional force peace support operations (PSO) continue in Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Sinai. Around the world smaller combat operations continue in the Philippines, the Horn of Africa and elsewhere as the Global War on Terrorism continues unabated.
In order to conduct these operations, the overwhelming majority of the operational Army is either currently in combat, or in the process of deploying to combat. With the exception of the 2d Infantry Division in Korea and the brigade in Alaska currently transitioning to a Stryker organization, every Brigade Combat Team in the Active Component is either in combat, scheduled to deploy to combat within six months, or just returned from combat (as is the case with the 3d Infantry Division, just now returning home after fighting from Kuwait to the center of Baghdad and then conducting nearly four more months of lethal security operations). Additionally, every Army Special Forces Group either just fought in Afghanistan and Iraq or is executing other operations in the Global War on Terror. And, along with those BCTs comes the full range of combat support and combat service support units required to execute full spectrum combat operations. In order to command and control these Army Forces the V Corps Headquarters and nine Active Division Headquarters and their supporting division troops are either in combat or gearing up to join the fight.


But, not only is the Active Component decisively engaged, the Reserve Components of the Army are committed to a greater extent than ever before. Next spring, for the first time since the Korean War, National Guard Brigade Combat Teams will go to war. Six of the fifteen National Guard Enhanced Separate Brigades will deploy to Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo joining over 100,000 National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers currently engaged in combat operations in support of OEF and OIF. Command and control demands will require National Guard Division Headquarters to command US forces in Bosnia and Kosovo (employing both Active and Reserve Components in a continuing demonstration of the “Total Army”). Today’s Army Reserve and National Guard will continue to be mobilized and deployed alongside their Active Component brethren in lethal combat operations for the foreseeable future.
The COE as experienced in OEF and OIF
Not only is our Army at war, but our soldiers are also experiencing a different kind of war, against a different kind of enemy, in different and ever changing environments and contexts. During the late 1990s, the Army’s thinking and understanding of future opponents began to coalesce into a concept called the Contemporary Operating Environment or COE. In the COE, the enemy, or threat, is considered linked to operational environment, including terrain and weather; non-combatants; government organizations; ethnic, social and political organizations; economics; and the information grid. The environment of the post-Cold War and post-9/11 world is considered violent, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA). Potential opponents within the COE are envisioned as combining some traditional conventional forces and operations with unconventional or paramilitary forces, including terrorists. Opponents of US forces continue to learn from our operations and continue to adapt, seeking alternative or asymmetrical approaches to fighting US forces strengths.
The COE was vividly demonstrated in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, the US-led coalition initially opposed reasonably organized Taliban and Al Qa’Ida forces in the north, who attempted to employ conventional defensive tactics. Those conventional tactics were defeated by US Army Special Forces and US airpower, so as the campaign progressed the enemy adapted to dispersed, unconventional operations in southeastern Afghanistan. Today US Army forces in Afghanistan face a COE opponent that has adopted the hit and run, ambush style tactics employed successfully by the Afghani rebels against the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.
In Iraq, the COE is unfolding with even more clarity. Saddam’s combination of conventional Regular Army and Republican Guard with unconventional Fedeyeen and Ba’ath Party Militia were supplemented with the regime’s security forces and Special Republican Guard. These combinations confronted US Army soldiers with a wide range of opponents and situations. Additionally, Saddam’s tactics of fighting from cities and employing massed dismounted attacks were certainly asymmetrical, if ultimately ineffective. Today, ambushes, mines and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED), snipers, mortars and terrorist attacks harass and threaten US Army personnel throughout Iraq, 24 hours a day. These two campaigns continue to demonstrate the VUCA aspects of the COE and will challenge and hold at risk the life of each soldier deployed to either theater.
The experience of the 507th Maintenance Company is a grim reminder of the realities of the COE. In the midst of a vast armada of American armor and airpower slashing north through Iraq and destroying everything in their path, the 507th Maintenance Company met with a tragic small-unit defeat. In the dispersion found on today’s battlefield, even in full-scale major combat operations, there is no rear area and no sanctuary. And, the enemy is going to try and kill our soldiers because that is the only way the opponent can win. The lesson of the 507th Maintenance Company is that every unit and every soldier, regardless of task or MOS, must be prepared to fight to stay alive and accomplish the mission.
IET graduate attributes derived from the COE
There are several conclusions that must be drawn from the strategic posture of today’s Army and the experiences of major combat, stability, and support operations since 9/11. The first conclusion is that soldiers engaged in modern warfare require more and different knowledge, skills and attributes than their predecessors in order to succeed and survive. During the late 1990s and first few years of this century, the focus of IET was on inculcating the Army Values into the young men and women who were joining our Army and providing training to standard on some, but by no means all, common and MOS specific Skill Level One tasks. OEF and OIF demonstrated clearly that the Army Values program is a success. But for today’s IET graduates, heading directly into combat in the COE, the Army Values are not enough. Today’s soldiers must exhibit:


  • Warrior Ethos – Among other lessons, the ill-fated 507th Maintenance Company reinforced that all soldiers must be warriors first and foremost. In Afghanistan, during Operation Anaconda, it was the Forward Support Battalion and Brigade Headquarters Company (-) which manned the perimeter in Kandahar in order to project sufficient Infantry to destroy the Al Qa’Ida in the Shah-i-kot mountains. The warrior ethos—mission first, never quit, never accept defeat, and never leave a fallen American behind--are the fabric that tie the Army’s core values together.

  • Self-discipline – On the distributed battlefield soldiers must do what’s right without being told to do so, as unit leadership is often not physical proximity to the subordinates. This is in sharp contrast to the current focus of IET on group discipline. The current IET model does not attempt develop self-discipline until AIT or the latter stages of OSUT. With many AITs only 3 – 5 weeks in duration, the responsibility of completing the development of a soldier’s self-discipline falls squarely on the deployed unit in combat.

  • Mental agility – In the midst of uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity soldiers must adapt as situations unfold and change. In today’s IET training environment the conditions for the tasks that are trained are kept simple and do not change during the new soldier’s IET cycle. Soldiers are rarely, if ever, presented with situations in training for which they are not prepared or which change in the middle of the training event. Simple, unchanging conditions do not provide opportunities for soldiers to develop mental agility, nor do they represent the objective reality of combat.

  • Initiative – Soldiers must “see” what must be done and then execute; if necessary taking charge of the situation and leading others if a formal chain of command is not present or functioning (such as when ad hoc teams are formed in the midst of battle). Such initiative includes soldiers demonstrating intuitive decision making, rather than waiting to be told what to do. Today’s large formation approach to training and focus on standardization of performance offers little opportunity to develop initiative. Moreover, young privates through specialists have to make tough ROE judgments and we are not arming them with the necessary skills, let alone even familiarizing them with ROE given the current IET POIs.

  • Physically fit and mentally tough – Personal courage flows from the confidence that accompanies physical fitness and mental toughness. Additionally, the Army is engaged in campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans that will likely last for years, with current policies requiring deployments of a year in duration. Physical fitness and mental toughness are required to produce the endurance necessary for soldiers to maintain effectiveness over time. One of the strengths of today’s IET programs and cadre is the emphasis on physical fitness. Currently emphasis however is on passing the three Physical Readiness Test events of push-ups, sit-ups and 2-mile run vice physical fitness training that focuses on developing soldiers fitness to execute combat tasks and build endurance for future campaigns.

  • Tactical and technical competence – The Army is engaged in deadly combat against able foes in both Afghanistan and Iraq. One of the strengths of our Army is the technical and tactical competence of our soldiers, NCOs and officers. Modern combat, however, means constantly emerging tactics, techniques and procedures, along with the rapid fielding of new technologies and equipment. Soldiers need to leave IET with tactical and technical competence in the critical tasks of their MOS and with a working knowledge of the equipment and technologies currently being used within the force.

  • Teamwork – Another enduring strength of the American character is teamwork. That said, modern combat requires soldiers to form or join small teams of 4 or 5 soldiers, often in an ad hoc fashion, to defend a position, clear a building, conduct a patrol or execute any of the myriad of tasks found in combat in the COE. All soldiers, regardless of MOS or rank, must know how to conduct basic infantry small unit tactics as part of a fire team or its equivalent.

  • Sense and report – In the COE HUMINT is a critical complement to electro-optical collection capabilities. Seeing and understanding the enemy first is critical to survival and mission success. Every soldier must be able to “see” his or her surroundings, understand what they are looking at that is of significance and report that observation to the appropriate leader.


Limitations of current BCT, OSUT and AIT models
The second conclusion is that today’s soldiers who graduate from OSUT and AIT must be prepared to go to war. Absent a significant drawdown of the Army’s force posture in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans, for the foreseeable future significant numbers of IET graduates will be in combat within 30 days of graduation. Gone are the days when a new soldier would join a unit and have months or years to mature and learn his or her MOS within a garrison and Combat Training Center training program. Instead, soldiers graduate OSUT or AIT, take a few short weeks of leave, PCS to their new unit, go through ten days to two weeks of Soldier Readiness Processing (SRP) and deploy. Upon arrival in Iraq, Afghanistan or the Balkans they join a squad, crew, team or section executing combat operations. Their first movement from the APOD to their unit is a combat patrol in which they can be engaged or killed by their enemy (as is every movement for the remainder of their deployment). Their Non-Commissioned Officers are decisively committed to preparing their element for the next mission and simply don’t have the time or opportunity they would normally have in garrison to focus their attention on training their new soldier to standard on individual tasks and introducing that soldier to collective tasks and battle drills. IET’s focus on “soldierization,” while training a limited percentage of common and MOS-specific individual Skill Level One tasks, with virtually no training in collective tasks, crew drills or battle drills may be a model that is no longer relevant.
Current IET POIs simply don’t provide sufficient field training for soldiers about to deploy to combat in austere theaters. Soldiers need to arrive in theater knowing how to fight and live in the field. They must be able to execute the full range of tasks required by their MOS in a COE environment, including variations of weather and terrain (open/rolling, wooded/jungle, mountain and urban); amidst the surreal sound, light and obscuration that accompanies battle; against a variety of conventional and paramilitary forces; and in major combat, stability or support operations. This requires soldiers to have significant experience executing their duties in the field under realistic combat conditions (not in pristine school buildings or idyllic pastoral bivouac areas and ranges). Soldiers must also have experience simply living under field conditions and maintaining personal and collective field hygiene. Current IET POIs provide for a maximum of 72-120 hours of field time, totally inadequate to the purposes outlined above. In contrast our Army’s World War II Basic Combat Training concluded with a two week long FTX that focused on live fire execution of small unit operations (squad and platoon) under realistic combat conditions in all types of terrain. That FTX included not only overhead machine gun fire but also the experience of receiving artillery fire. The first time a soldier of any MOS hears and then feels an incoming mortar or artillery round should not be in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Today’s IET model graduates soldiers who are not familiar with, much less qualified on, the weapons they are likely to employ in combat shortly after they graduate. Virtually every vehicular movement in Iraq or Afghanistan, and every unit regardless of branch or function, includes .50 caliber machine guns, Mark 19 grenade launchers, M240 7.62 mm machine guns and Squad Automatic Weapons. Yet, our soldiers leave IET familiarized only with the SAW and even then only with a few rounds. Our current IET model has transferred responsibility for critical training on these weapon systems to the NCO leadership of units already in contact. Similarly, IET soldiers are unfamiliar with employing the laser pointers and mounted night sights currently found on most of the M4 carbines in both Afghanistan and Iraq (and these are not just the infantrymen). Our Army owns the night and conducts a significant portion of our combat operations at night, but our new soldiers have only fired their weapons once at night and then without the marksmanship aids they’ll employ in combat.
Options for making IET relevant to the COE
There are three broad approaches that must be taken in parallel in order to increase the relevancy of the IET experience for soldiers about to join units in combat. First is to make now those modifications that can be accomplished within existing POIs and resources to increase the combat realism and field training of IET. Second is to adjust existing POIs; adding, modifying, or deleting tasks and training events as required. The third and most significant effort must be a comprehensive examination of the entire IET program. Such an examination must be freed from current culture, POI and methodologies; and take innovative approaches that are relatively resource unconstrained (to include longer course lengths). A short discussion of each approach follows.
Adapting within existing POIs
In terms of modifications within existing POIs, there is considerable room for adjusting the conditions under which many of the tasks our young soldiers are taught, while maintaining the current high standards. For example, today’s soldier is taught the challenge and password task in a garrison environment at sling arms. Our soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans and elsewhere execute that task often, but in the context of a checkpoint. Changing the conditions under which this task is trained is relatively simple, but yields great dividends in enabling soldiers to understand and contribute to their unit immediately upon arrival in combat.
Another example is our road marches and bivouacs. An Army at war in the COE does nothing “admin” … nothing! We execute patrols and tactical movements, every one of which has 360o security, communications, crew-served weapons, indirect fire support available, medical support (at least Combat Lifesavers designated), etc. Few tactical moves in Iraq or Afghanistan are conducted without reacting to contact, whether direct fire, or an IED. And soldiers almost never conduct drill and ceremony anywhere in combat. There is the occasional platoon movement inside a base camp, often at route step; but never a counter-column or flanking move. Instead, they execute traveling, traveling over watch, or bounding over watch, and transition to fire and maneuver as required. Within existing POIs, IET can adjust the balance between drill and ceremony and tactical movement, primarily by changing the emphasis on the use of Drill Sergeant’s time. Current road marches can be taken off the roads and conducted cross-country and along trails. This has multiple effects. Moving off roads reinforces force protection (every combat vet knows that ambushes happen along the easy avenues of approach) as well as increasing safety by reducing the possibility of soldiers being struck by traffic along roads. Cross country moves avoid the shin splints and stress fractures that accompany the pounding of hours of walking on pavement and strengthen ankles and legs through the variety of terrain. And cross country movement is more physically demanding than simple road marches, building endurance for the long haul. Soldiers grow accustomed to moving in the field, woods and variations of terrain, and to the sights and sounds of the field environment. Cross-country moves can then have task reinforcement embedded into halts (such as coming upon an ambush site and having to treat casualties, establish security, send a SALUTE report, etc) rather than stopping only to rest and check feet (not that we don’t continue to do that also). Nor does going cross-country mean a lowering of risk management standards. Road Guards become forward and rear security elements, still wearing their vests and carrying cone flashlights for when the unit must traverse a road (cross a danger area for task reinforcement), which invariably they will at some point. These are simple, cheap adjustments that also allow wide latitude of innovation by Drill Sergeants and cadre, which increases their morale, effectiveness and pride in preparing soldiers for combat.
The Army also doesn’t bivouac in combat. It occupies patrol bases, assembly areas, base camps, etc. all of which are defended, tactical, have Quick Reaction Forces (QRF), security, etc. Soldiers of every MOS live on the ground, around their vehicles, in partially destroyed buildings, or occasionally in tents or palaces. But the key is that all soldiers have to live, secure themselves and work tactically all the time. Soldiers go for months not only without plumbing, but also without plastic porta-potties or wooden latrines. Soldiers use “piss tubes” and “burn shit,” and it’s the young privates who generally get those duties. Soldiers cleanse themselves out of plastic or metal basins with a few quarts of water for months at a time and do it thoroughly or risk disease. Existing policies and practices throughout the IET garrisons must adjust to being an Army at war, instead of an Army at peace, so that soldiers can learn to live under tactical field conditions. Innovative approaches such as this can be accomplished within environmental regulations and policies, but it requires a change in mindset.
Within the existing IET methodology, soldiers must be given more opportunities throughout the POI to practice and demonstrate self-discipline and initiative. Today’s TRADOC 350-6 provides for decreased control and increased personal responsibility as the soldier progresses through IET and that is a positive approach. However, today’s combat and security operations require that junior soldiers not even yet NCOs take charge of small groups, identify what must be done, make intuitive decisions and lead others. While our Drill Sergeants are very comfortable with positive control and understand its importance in the soldierization process, they must consciously seek opportunities to lesson control earlier in the POI and encourage soldiers to demonstrate self-discipline and initiative within the leader’s intent. Each training event should be thoroughly examined to find opportunities to have soldiers lead, instruct and make decisions.
IET testing is generally conducted in a sterile environment, under simplistic and unchanging conditions, almost always in garrison. This must change. Soldiers must be tested in their required tasks in as near to the conditions they will execute those tasks in combat as possible. That means moving phase testing to the field as much as possible. It means that number of “first-time gos” is not the measure of success, but rather soldier confidence and demonstration they can execute the task under combat conditions. Phase testing can be combined with tactical movements or land navigation to enhance realism and give soldiers confidence they can execute their tasks in combination rather than in isolation. Additionally, the conditions of phase testing should be more challenging than the conditions under which the initial task training was conducted. This includes the soldier not having a structured test event in which a tester provides an overview of the task and then grades performance. Instead, soldiers may be tested on medical tasks by seeing an American casualty while moving along a land navigation course and then having to deduce for themselves the task to be executed.
Changing current POIs
Changing or adjusting existing POIs to add, delete or significantly modify tasks almost always becomes a resourcing decision. For an Army at peace IET has become an economy of force arena in which soldiers are given too little ammunition to train with, too few days of field training, too few OPTEMPO miles for vehicle training, and train on outdated equipment. This paragraph assumes that the senior civilian and military leadership increases the priority of IET consistent with an Army at war and provides sufficient resources to adequately train initial entry soldiers for combat. While resources are never unconstrained (not even in World War II when the nation was totally mobilized) this paragraph assumes that extending BCT and OSUT by several weeks, providing modern equipment, and sufficient ammunition and OPTEMPO miles can be resourced through GWOT funding in the near term and POM increases in the long term.
In terms of adjusting existing POIs, the single most positive change would be the addition of more opportunities to fire personal weapons and qualify on crew-served weapons. Following Basic Rifle Marksmanship (BRM) training and qualification in BCT, under current POIs most AIT soldiers will not fire their individual weapon again until they are at their first unit (and perhaps in combat). Depending on the MOS, soldiers could join their new unit in combat not having fired their weapon for several months. To fight and survive in modern combat all soldiers deserve training in Advanced Rifle Marksmanship and reflexive firing. Soldiers also require experience firing at night employing the night sights they’ll use in combat. Conditions under which soldiers fire their weapons must be more realistic than the level, obstacle and foliage free ranges on which BCT and OSUT units currently conduct BRM. Conditions should approximate to the extent possible those of the combat they are about to enter, including: urban and wooded terrain, non-combatants and paramilitary on the battlefield, ROE in force, and battlefield sights and sounds while firing. Soldiers must also fire in the context of a tactical mission, instead of only the pure ranges of BRM. Spacing ARM, reflexive firing and firing under challenging conditions throughout OSUT and AIT will ensure that soldiers maintain proficiency and arrive at their first unit having recently fired their personal weapon. And of course the central thread running through more and improved weapons training is that of increasing emphasis on the Warrior Ethos.
Parallel to increasing individual weapons training in the IET POIs must provide increased crew-served weapons training. At a minimum, soldiers must graduate from IET qualified on the crew-served weapons that are found in virtually all Army units and MOS specialties. Those include the M2 .50 caliber Machine Gun, the M19 Automatic Grenade Launcher, M240 7.62 mm Machine Gun and the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. These weapons are not simply those of the combat arms; but rather the weapons that every soldier, every patrol, every convoy, every base and every mission employ to defeat the enemy and protect our soldiers lives. Soldiers, regardless of MOS, can be expected to employ these weapons in combat within days or even hours of deployment. Currently neither CONUS Replacement Centers (CRC) nor unit Soldier Readiness Programs (SRP) provide this training. Needless to say, additional training days and resources (ranges, weapons and ammunition) are required to make this improvement to IET, including adapting the Drill Sergeant Schools.
The second priority for adjusting POIs must be increasing field training opportunities. Current POIs spend too much time in garrison and the barracks to adequately prepare soldiers for life in combat and the field. Increasing field training means significantly reducing drill and ceremony instruction in order to provide opportunities for field exercises. Field exercises must be long enough not only to train more tactical tasks, but also long enough to produce soldiers confident and capable of living and executing their mission in the field. Several multi-day FTXs must be incorporated into updated POIs. These FTXs must be 24 hour a day continuous operations that incorporate both live fire and force-on-force training in which soldiers execute their common skills and MOS-related combat tasks in a tough, challenging environment.
The third priority is to incorporate the Rapid Fielding Initiative for IET units. The Army is doing the right thing by providing deploying soldiers the weapons, equipment and gear that soldiers need to fight, survive and win in combat. Unfortunately, as the Army moves forward with RFI the IET program, already far behind TOE units, falls further and further behind. The result will be the transfer of training with the weapons and equipment the Army uses in the 21st Century to NCOs in combat, rather than the institutional training base. TOE units will rightly observe that they must train their soldiers virtually from scratch after they arrive in combat areas following IET. Soldiers in deployed units in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, the Horn of Africa and elsewhere around the world wear body armor every day, employ the M4 carbine with its add-on technologies, use PVS-14 and other night sights every night, wear Gortex in cold/wet weather (no one fights in ponchos anymore), and wear MOLLE. In contrast, IET soldiers have no body armor, qualify on M16s that soon less than half the TOE force will carry, rarely if ever train with night vision goggles and night sights and even then with outdated versions, wear ponchos and field jackets in inclement weather and wear LBE vice the LBV and MOLLE that have proliferated throughout the Army. To effectively train initial entry soldiers and send them to deployed or deploying units confident they can survive in combat and contribute to their unit immediately upon arrival, IET POIs and resourcing must include the same equipment being provided to the TOE army. For example, as units upgrade their body armor the IET base could receive the older versions, so that soldiers can train to execute their tactical tasks to standard while bearing the additional weight and constraints of modern individual protective equipment.
Revamping the IET model entirely
The third approach, a comprehensive relook of the entire IET program is the most critical for the long term, but must be accomplished quickly and can not be allowed to drag on for years (as most “innovations” in a bureaucracy as large as the Army are wont to do). If we are objectively honest with ourselves, two things are abundantly clear about the existing IET program: The first is that the current IET program was designed for an Army that no longer exists and a strategic/mission set that no longer exists. Our current IET system is virtually indistinguishable from that of the Basic and Advanced Individual Training of the 1960s; designed for a draftee Army that was primarily the CAT IV cast-offs of society – poorly educated, poorly motivated, unprincipled, drug addicted and unable to avoid government service. Today’s soldiers are volunteers, all with high school diplomas and many with college, motivated to succeed in life and a career, virtually drug-free, and with strong core values the Army easily builds upon. Yet, in BCT, OSUT and AIT we treat and teach today’s volunteers the same way we did yesterday’s draftees. The second conclusion is that in its current form the institutional Army bureaucracy is too slow in changing to adapt as quickly as the strategic/mission set is changing. In the 21st Century, changes in the requirements of IET in terms of soldier knowledge, skills and attributes is happening monthly in combat throughout the world, while the simplest of changes to POIs is measured in years to affect.
Army Accessions Command should immediately initiate a comprehensive review of the entire IET program. The review should develop the requirements of IET, i.e., what knowledge, skills and attributes must each graduate have. The review should integrate the Objective Force Soldier, Warrior Ethos TF, and Army Training and Leader Development Panel (ATLDP) work with the soldier requirements generated by ongoing combat operations. The review task force should start with a blank sheet and not be bound by any existing POIs or TRADOC Reg 350-6. The task force must include representation from the field (and in fact should be led by a brigadier general with OEF or OIF combat experience and no IET experience), institutional Army, and civilian sector in a balanced fashion given that those serving in IET commands today will have trouble divorcing themselves from existing methodologies. The task force must examine not only objective areas such as POIs, organizations, training resources, but also subjective areas such as IET culture, instructional methodologies, and assessments. The task force should be required to report to the CSA NLT 31 December 2003 with a comprehensive IET methodology that includes not only broad outlines of POIs, but also changes to the institutional “system” that enables responsive, timely and effective changes to POIs. This new methodology should be accepted, rejected or modified NLT 31 January 2004. The CSA should then direct that all IET POIs, organizations and training be adapted NLT 31 July 2004 and provide the resources to do so in the near term using GWOT monies and in the long term through formal POM processes. If training using new and relevant methodologies is initiated by 1 August 2004, then the soldiers deploying to OIF 3 and OEF 7A will be better trained and prepared for the combat they are about to enter than what can be accomplished using today’s organizations, POIs, approaches and methodologies. Is this an unbelievably tight timeline? You bet, but it is a timeline similar to that which a much less organized, experienced and well-led met in changing Army training while at war in 1943. We can not let bureaucracy and indecision prevent us from adequately preparing our soldiers for combat.
Leadership will make the difference

Regardless of which course of action is selected, rapid and meaningful change to IET can not be affected without immediately inducing IET with experienced combat veterans and changing the Drill Sergeant School POI. Command and Drill Sergeant selection boards must provide IET with the combat-experienced officers and NCOs—those who have smelled, tasted, and felt the grim reality of war—in order to effectively replicate those conditions in a training environment. Company commanders in IET should have already commanded successfully, preferably in combat. We can and must make this investment if we are to raise the bar on realistic combat training and be confident that we have sent soldiers into combat trained in the necessary skills, instilled with the Warrior Ethos, and conditioned to face the horrors of war. Finally, the Drill Sergeant School POI must adequately train Drill Sergeants in the fundamentals of warfighting and using the contemporary, experiential learning model versus its current focus on drill and ceremonies and out-dated, largely ineffective platform instruction. No matter how we change IET, the leaders we have will fundamentally make the difference in producing the soldier who is prepared to fight when he or she arrives at their unit.


Conclusion

We are an Army at War and the soldiers we graduate from AIT and OSUT will be in lethal combat, regardless of MOS, much earlier in their careers than those of any generation since the Vietnam era. The institutional Army owes those young Americans the best possible chance to deploy to combat, execute their tasks and missions in the lethal and challenging environment that is the COE, and survive. That must be the main effort of all IET and everything else must be subordinated to and supporting that main effort. We must start adapting all IET (BCT, OSUT and AIT) today to provide the soldiers the knowledge, skills and attributes required by soldiers joining teams that are already in combat. That means bringing in experienced, combat-tested leaders and revamping the Drill Sergeant School POI. That means changing within existing POIs right now to make training more combat realistic and relevant, driving the bureaucracy to make required changes to current POIs in a timely manner, and adapting the overall IET methodology from a Cold War, draft-era focused program to a 21st Century, COE-based, full spectrum program that places the Warrior Ethos on par with Army Values and enables each Drill Sergeant to look his OSUT or AIT soldiers in the eye on graduation day and tell them – you are ready.





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