Lessons learned conference shapes tomorrow's battlefield
Marine Corps News
Story Identification #: 2005526123722
Story by Sgt. Donald Bohanner
MAIRNE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va (May 27, 2005) -- The Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned held a three-day battalion commanders conference Monday through Wednesday at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory.
“This is the first conference of its kind,” said Col. Monte Dunard, director for MCCLL. “We brought back eight battalion commanders with recent experience in Iraq, so that they can pass their lessons and observations into some new training initiatives, (and) to ensure that new units that are going to deploy to Iraq are better trained and better prepared.”
The conference covered many different topics from cultural awareness to gear and predeployment training.
“Cultural awareness has been one of the big topics,” said Dunard. “Marines having the ability to work with the native people, understand their culture, understand every movement they make in a convoy or a combat patrol is a resource that can help out greatly in the future. For example, one of the more effective ways of defeating (improvised explosive devices) is working with the people, building trust and confidence with them, so you are alerted to what might be a hot spot.”
“There’s also a lot of discussion on what new gear the Marine Corps should be purchasing in the future,” said Dunard. “We are ensuring that the Marines don’t get over loaded with more weight than they can carry. Having the protection of the SAPI plates and helmets are important, however, we should strive to find lighter, better technology.”
Other discussions were on stress and usefulness of stress in a noncombatant environment.
“An important element that came up was stressing your staff in predeployment training,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Elliott, deputy director MCCLL. “By doing this, you can see your processes and procedures at work and identify any shortcoming you may have and give you the ability to adjust before you get in harms way.”
According to Elliott, training prior to deploying, regardless of where you are is key.
“You have to be prepared at all times,” explained Elliott. “You may be planning for a Marine expeditionary unit deployment, but end up going to Iraq, doing something different than what you planned for. When you are traveling from Twentynine Palms to Camp Pendleton, treat it like a combat patrol. That starts training your Marines to think about security at all times so when the time comes, it does seem foreign to them.”
“This conference is going to help get our current experience and knowledge up the line quickly in a useful form,” said Col. Pat Garrett, commanding officer, 2nd Marine Division, 6th Marine Regiment and in charge of pre-deployment training. “It’s not war stories over a beer. It’s a systematic review of the experiences category by category, issue by issue, people can go to for making future decisions.”
“The real benefit for (the battalion commanders) being here is so that our insight and experiences can be passed down and used as we continue to fight this war in Iraq,” said Lt. Col. Steve Dinauer, 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion commanding officer. “…
Particularly at the battalion level, because the battalion out in Iraq is the unit of action. This will additionally help train the battalion commanders who go out there, so when they have to put those young Marines in harm’s way, the best possible preparation and leadership is able to be applied.”
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