• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Only through high training requirements, rigidly enforced can low casualty rates be possible. Only well armed and equipped, adequately trained and efficiently led forces can expect victory in future combat.

General Matthew B. Ridgway

Although planning for training is relatively centralized to align training priorities at all levels of an organization, the execution of training is decentralized. Decentralization tailors training execution to available resources and promotes bottom-up communication of unique wartime mission-related strengths and weaknesses of each individual, leader, and unit.

Senior leaders must personally observe and evaluate the execution of training at all echelons. From their observations of training and other feedback, they provide guidance and direct changes that lead to increased warfighting capability.

By allotting quality time for personal visits to training, senior leaders communicate to the entire chain of command that training is the organization's top peacetime priority. While concerned with training performed by their headquarters and the immediately subordinate command echelons, senior leaders also observe and assess the quality of training at all echelons down to the lowest levels of the organization. They receive feedback from subordinate leaders and soldiers during training visits. Through feedback, senior leaders identify and resolve systemic problems in planning, leadership, management, support, and other functions.

The most beneficial senior leader and staff visits to training are unannounced or short notice. The leader observes normal training as experienced by the soldier and prevents excessive visitor preparation by subordinate organizations. This in itself can be a training detractor.

Senior leaders assign coordination of training support for subordinate units as a priority requirement for organization staffs. Training support and coordination of training resources are key to the successful execution of training. Senior leaders check the adequacy of external training support during every training visit and require prompt and effective corrective action to resolve support deficiencies.

All good training, regardless of the specific collective and individual tasks being executed, must comply with certain common requirements. These requirements are adequate preparation, effective presentation and practice, and thorough evaluation. (Evaluation is discussed in Chapter 5.) The criteria are applicable at all echelons, from a high-level staff participating in a joint training exercise to a first line supervisor's individual training of his team.

PREPARATION FOR TRAINING

As discussed in Chapter 3, formal planning for training culminates with the publication of the unit training schedule. Informal planning and detailed coordination, known as pre-execution checks, continue until the training is performed. Commanders and other trainers use training meetings to assign responsibility for pre-execution checks for all scheduled training.

Pre-execution checks cover the preparation of the individuals to be trained, the trainers who will execute and evaluate the training, and the training support required. Properly prepared individuals are trained on prerequisite tasks prior to training. Trainers are coached on how to train given time to prepare, and rehearsed so that training will be challenging and doctrinally correct. Commanders ensure that trainers and evaluators are not only tactically and technically competent on their training tasks, but also understand how the training relates to wartime missions. Properly prepared trainers and evaluators communicate confidence and enthusiasm to those being trained.

Preparing for training in RC organizations can require complex pre-execution checks. Reserve Component trainers must often conduct detailed coordination to obtain equipment, training devices, and ammunition from distant locations. In addition, RC pre-execution checks may be required to coordinate AC assistance from the numbered armies in the continental United States (CONUSAs), readiness groups, and directed training affiliations.

During preparation for training, battalion and company commanders identify and eliminate potential training distracters which develop within their own organizations. They stress personnel accountability to ensure maximum attendance at training.

PRESENTATION AND PRACTICE

Trainers use any combination of demonstrations, conferences, discussions, and practice activities to present training. At the outset of training, they inform individuals being trained of training objectives (tasks, conditions, and standards) and evaluation methods applicable to the upcoming training. They immediately follow presentation with practice to convert information into usable individual and collective skills. The amount of detail included in practice depends on experience levels. If individuals or organizations are receiving initial training on a mission essential task trainers emphasize the basic conditions. If those receiving the instruction are receiving sustainment training on a task trainers raise the level of detail and realism until the quality, speed, stress, and other conditions come as close as possible to wartime requirements. Those with considerable experience are required to perform multiple training tasks within a given training scenario.

Properly presented and practiced training is accurate, well structured, efficient, realistic, safe, and effective:

• Accurate training complies with current Army doctrine and is technically correct. Field manuals, mission training plans, battle drills, and other publications provide factual information to trainers to perform training, coach subordinate trainers, and evaluate training results.
• Well-structured training contains a mixture of initial and sustainment training. It also consists of a mix of individual and leader tasks that are integrated into METL collective tasks; soldiers and leaders increase proficiency in individual tasks while training on collective mission essential tasks.
• Efficient training ensures that training resources are expended properly. This includes the irreplaceable resource of 4-2 time--efficiently executed training makes full use of every participant's time. Commanders monitor physical and financial resource execution data through PBACs, range conferences, and similar forums. They use the feedback received during these forums to adjust resources within their commands to support the most important mission essential training. Constraints to training, such as environmental protection considerations and availability of training areas and ranges, frequently require the use of technology to hone warfighting skills. Training devices, simulators, and simulations (TADSS) not only provide a means for initial and sustainment training on war-fighting fundamentals but also provide relatively inexpensive preparation for resource-intensive training events. Although TADSS provide excellent training supplements, there is no substitute for the more robust training experiences of major maneuver events and live-fire gunnery periods.
• Realistic training requires organizations to train the way they will fight or support on the battlefield. Based on scenarios that pit Army doctrine against enemy doctrine, realistic training integrates all available elements of the combined arms and joint wartime task organization. It uses training devices and simulators to replicate the stresses, sounds, and conditions of combat.
• Safe training is a predictable result of performing to established tactical and technical standards. Leaders at all levels ensure that safety requirements are integral, and not add-on considerations, to all aspects of planning, executing, and evaluating training. Safe training results from the systematic management of inherently dangerous training risks.
• Effective training builds proficiency, teamwork, confidence, and cohesiveness. Effective training is competitive. Although individuals and organizations may sometimes compete against one another, they should always compete to achieve the prescribed standard. If they do not initially achieve standards, trainers take corrective action so that the proper performance level results. Following are other considerations for conducting effective training:

- Battle Rosters.

Battle rosters are maintained at battalion level and below to track key training information on selected weapons systems (for example, tanks, TOW, attack helicopters, and howitzers). They track such pertinent training data as crew stability and manning levels, and qualification status. A key aspect of battle rosters is the designation of qualified back-up crew members who are assigned in other positions in the organization. During the execution of training, battle-rostered crew members train with their designated crews at available opportunities.

- NCO Training Responsibilities.

Army training tradition and common sense have made the noncommissioned officer responsible for individual, and crew and team, training. Individual skill training is not presented to large numbers of soldiers by committee. Rather, the first line supervisor teaches individual tasks to soldiers in their organic squads, crews, or equivalent small units. The first line supervisor and his senior NCOs emphasize performance-oriented practice to ensure soldiers achieve soldier's manual standards. The first line supervisor conducts cross training to spread critical wartime skills within his unit. The CSMs, first sergeants, and other senior NCOs at every echelon coach junior NCOs to master a wide range of individual tasks. Commanders allot training time for NCOs to conduct individual training and require that individual tasks are included in all collective METL training. Noncommissioned officers are responsible for conducting individual 4-3 training to standard and must be able to explain how individual task training relates to collective mission essential tasks.

- Training and Evaluation Outlines (T&EOs).

Effective collective leader and individual training is guided by the use of training and evaluation outlines. The T&EOs provide summary information concerning collective training objectives as well as individual and leader training tasks which support the collective training objectives. They also provide information concerning resource requirements and evaluation standards applicable to a training situation.

The principal source documents for T&EOs are MTPs, soldier's manuals, drill books, and similar publications. Since the conditions in these publications are generic, trainers adjust and supplement T&EO conditions to conform to the METT-T of the organization's wartime plans.

- Staff Training.

Staff training develops and sustains planning, coordination, and other staff functions relating to wartime mission requirements. Staff training objectives are derived from staff METL. For effective training, staff elements must train together within the same headquarters as well as with staff elements from other echelons within the organization.

- Leader Training.

Leaders spend virtually all available training time supervising the training of subordinates; often they do not increase their own understanding of how to fight as combat or support leaders. Therefore, senior leaders view leader training as a continuous process that encompasses more than periodic officer or NCO professional development classes. Senior leaders establish positive and constructive training situations that cause subordinates to make fast and independent decisions based on broad guidance, mission orders, and a shared vision of the future battlefield.