This is Part 2 of an 8 Part Series. The full and unredacted article with all enclosures is available on Milsuite at https://www.milsuite.mil/book/groups/abct-training

Operationalized Multi-Echelon Training

Time is a finite resource and units cannot simply add requirements to training calendars that are already overloaded. Increasing lethality and the ability of ABCTs to synchronize all WfFs requires multi-echelon training with clearly defined objectives and outcomes. During a properly designed company live-fire certification, an infantry company—the primary training audience— will train on all of its assigned METs. Additionally, that training event provides an opportunity for the parent battalion to establish its own Main Command Post (CP), Tactical Command Post (TAC), Combat Trains Command Post (CTCP), and Field Trains Command Post (FTCP) while validating current operations functions at each node. The company has an opportunity to deploy its CP and company trains. By evaluating the infantry company on its performance while receiving a Logistics Package (LOGPAC) at a Logistics Release Point (LRP) during a service station resupply, the distribution platoon and Forward Support Company (FSC) for the battalion can demonstrate proper tactics and validate their SOPs. The brigade trains the Brigade Aviation Element (BAE) and Fire Support Element (FSE) on managing airspace and de-conflicting fires by incorporating lift aviation, attack aviation, artillery, mortars, Shadow Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), and Raven UAS into the company live fire. Sappers from the Brigade Engineer Battalion (BEB) participate and integrate into the company by conducting a combined arms breach. By executing all of these events at the same time, the ABCT builds readiness and lethality across multiple echelons in one training event.

Opportunities for multi-echelon training extend beyond the organic ABCT. Despite the robust capabilities housed within the ABCT, it depends on numerous enabling capabilities. All units in the brigade must efficiently integrate attachments and detach elements to other units. Battalions and companies need enabling capabilities, and they will only integrate them successfully through repetition and training. In a company live-fire, a Military Police (MP) company from the corps MP brigade can certify their squads and train several of their own METs. By attaching an MP squad to each Company and using a supporting CAB to add role players as Internally Displaced Persons, the MPs can train their squads on performing route regulation enforcement, conducting roadblocks and checkpoints, and performing civil disturbance control to enable the Infantry Company as it clears the objective. By adding detainees on the objective, that same MP squad can train on receiving detainees and conducting Detainee Collection Point (DCP) operations. This opens up opportunities to train the Brigade’s Military Intelligence Company on HUMINT operations at a Detainee Collection Point. Training objectives should be discussed early in the exercise design and through multiple iterations of commander dialogue during training meetings and between staff at MDMP. All available enabling capabilities, assets, and echelons should develop specific training objectives to enable them to orient on the tasks they are training.

The value of this example is that the training is operationalized for all units in a way that replicates how they actually fight. The MP squad links in with the rifle company while the company executes Troop Leading Procedures (TLPs). The infantry company exercises the enabler integration checklist in their TACSOP and assigns a leader to supervise that integration while preparing for the mission. The MP squad obtains the infantry company’s radio frequencies and loads their radios with the same COMSEC fill to communicate on the battlefield. To do this, the brigade COMSEC account must account for attachments and assign them frequencies on the Brigade Signal Operating Instructions (SOI). The infantry company includes the MP squad in their headcount to ensure they have adequate food. The infantry company Field Maintenance Team (FMT) identifies what unique equipment the MPs have that they do not have resources to repair or recover. The company XO ensures the parent battalion adds the MP’s equipment into Global Combat Support System-Army (GCSS-A). The battalion S4 includes the MP’s ammunition in their forecast and ensures the FSC distributes it. All of these seemingly small details require repetition and practice to get right. They are not trained with virtual or constructive training and if units do not execute these tasks routinely to standard, they will fail.

These generalized examples help frame the problem but do not provide unit commanders or staff with a starting place for building training plans that prepare them for combat. Ultimately, the training outlined in the CATS and TC 3-20.0, Integrated Weapons Training Strategy, is a necessary guideline, but not sufficient to ensure ABCTs prepare to fight and win during Large Scale Combat Operations (LSCO). During the course of an 18-month ABCT Training progression, there are multiple opportunities to conduct multi-echelon training and integrate external enablers during crew gunnery, Lethality Validation Exercises (LVEs), platoon LFXs, company LFXs / Combined Arms Live-Fire Exercises (CALFEXs), and brigade Field Training Exercises (FTXs). The following will help commanders visualize and enable staff to operationalize opportunities for building lethality.

Tough, Realistic Training

Seven years after returning to focus on LSCO, Army units have made significant strides in building and maintaining readiness and lethality at the individual trooper, crew, platoon, and company level. However, units struggle to bring all of the capabilities in their formations to bear. Tank platoons conduct satisfactory fire and maneuver of their platforms, but they struggle to conduct resupply operations to standard or synchronize fires with maneuver against the enemy in training. Battalions struggle to maintain Fully Mission Capable (FMC) combat platforms while deployed to the field. Against a threat with Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) detection and denial capabilities, companies do not understand their own electromagnetic signature, do not have adequate SOPs to mitigate the size of that signature, and do not know how to execute the battle drills in their SOPs. Battalions struggle to conduct the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) effectively or efficiently, and field grade leaders drown when they attempt to supervise simultaneous planning and current operations efforts. Across the ABCT, units struggle to establish effective CPs and sustainment nodes, appropriately position key leaders, route fire missions from scouts in Observation Posts (OPs) back to artillery over High Frequency (HF) or Frequency Modulation (FM) communications, and generally struggle to synchronize the capabilities resident in the ABCT at the pace that LSCO demands.

Below is an outline of an ABCT training template, including ways in which the IRONHORSE BCT incorporates divisional enablers, corps separate brigade capabilities, joint capabilities, and the interagency into training as a model to assist other ABCTs.  A suitable template assumes 12 months for an ABCT to prepare for a deployment to the National Training Center. However, this timeframe varies from eight to sixteen months and will be determined by external requirements.

Figure 3: The 1CD Brigade Training Template used as a DOCTEMP for a BCT’s Training Progression (Unredacted version available on MilSuite)

The 1CD Brigade Training template is effective as a DOCTEMP for training, but every BCT’s training progression must overlay on top of the circumstances of the BCT. Deployments, Combined Training Center (CTC) rotations, major taskings (CTC support, Cadet Summer Training (CST) / Deployment Readiness Exercises (DREs), etc), and budgetary constraints all impact the training progression. The transition of personnel under the Sustainable Readiness Model (SRM), combined with summer and winter move cycles, results in high levels of leader and Trooper turnover. Brigade and battalion leaders must analyze the impacts of these transitions on unit certifications as outlined in TC 3-20.0, Integrated Weapons Training Strategy, as they place training events in the calendar.

Before beginning the training plan, the commander and staff must forecast the impacts that taskings and personnel turnover have to their training plan and mitigate those impacts through coordination with the G3 and Division Commander. Transitions, taskings, and other timelines may result in a determination that a training progression that includes a brigade FTX prior to an NTC rotation is too ambitious. In such a case, the Brigade Commander should consider what echelon of training he should attain. Fewer, high-quality training events far exceed “check the block” training. Regardless of what level a brigade trains to, the following principles and best practices apply to all training design.

The 1CD Brigade Training Model offers an effective template for sequencing events to enable an ABCT to train to win in LSCO. By understanding and adapting this model to a brigade’s specific requirements, BCTs can frame, plan, and resource a training progression months in advance. This planning and resourcing include outreach to corps separate enabling brigades (especially engineer brigades, fires brigades, chemical brigades, air defense brigades, and military police brigades), the supporting Air Support Operations Squadron (ASOS), nearby fighter and bomber wings, Expeditionary Cyber Teams (ECTs), and others that may provide enabling capabilities to tactical formations. Frequently, those units are planning their own training that overlays in time with the ABCT, and by reaching out and discussing training objectives, all units leave better trained for roughly the same cost. The brigade must initiate this coordination at least six months before training events and set a series of IPRs for all units to agree to train objectives, resource requirements, and the design of the training event.

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Disclaimer

This series is a fusion of doctrine and regulations with the authors’ experience in training and warfighting. It does not constitute the official position of FORSCOM, TRADOC, the Army, or the Department of Defense.

COL Michael Schoenfeldt is the Commander of the IRONHORSE Brigade Combat Team (1ABCT, 1CD) with 23 years of experience as an Army Officer including Tank Platoon Leader, Tank Company Commander, Cavalry Squadron Executive Officer, Brigade Executive Officer, and Combined Arms Battalion Commander. He can be reached at michael.d.schoenfeldt.mil@mail.mil.

MAJ Patrick Stallings is currently the Cavalry Squadron Operations Trainer at the National Training Center and was the Brigade S3 for the IRONHORSE Brigade Combat Team (1ABCT, 1CD) with 15 years of experience as an Army Officer including Armored Reconnaissance Platoon Leader, Stryker Reconnaissance Troop Commander, and Cavalry Squadron Executive Officer. He can be reached at michael.p.stallings4.mil@mail.mil.

The full paper and files below are available at https://www.milsuite.mil/book/groups/abct-training

• Embedded Charts (includes full-page slides of each figure in this paper)
• IRONHORSE Playbook
• 1CD Brigade Training Model Information Paper.docx
• DA Big 12
• Crew Gunnery Administrative OPORD (IRONHORSE Smoothbore)

5A) Crew Gunnery Administrative OPORD Brief (IRONHORSE Smoothbore)

• Platoon LFX and CALFEX Administrative OPORD (IRONHORSE Fury)
• Wet Gap Crossing Tactical OPORD (IRONHORSE Fury Phase 0)
• CALFEX Tactical OPORD (IRONHORSE Fury Phase I – IV)
• CALFEX OC Packet Example
• FCX Tactical OPORD (IRONHORSE Fury 2.0)
• Brigade FTX Administrative OPORD