A worrisome report on the eroded combat skills of an Army Stryker regiment

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - 6:30 AM Share

The 2nd Cavalry Regiment (Stryker) is reamed out in an internal Army study for its performance last month at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center, a training ground in Germany. It is worrisome that this unit appears to have deteriorated so much, yet paradoxically reassuring that the Army is using its maneuvers identify shortcomings.

The conclusions are hair-raising. Everybody from the way senior leaders understand command to the way privates poop comes in for criticism. Here are some of the highlights:

--The report found "Commanders and command sergeant majors tethered to command posts, rarely visiting subordinate units. This results in a lack of mentoring and face-to-face interaction to judge understanding of the operational situation and intent and time to make on-the-spot corrections." And those corrections clearly were needed. 

--Commanders give lip service to "mission command" (basically, telling subordinate leaders what to do but not how to do it) but in reality micromanage by issuing a stream of "frago" orders that make minor changes in organizations and assigned tasks.  "Despite emphasis on Mission Command over the past year, most commanders still do not feel comfortable allowing subordinates to operate broadly under their intent."

--Commanders also do not get out enough.  "Many commanders are tethered to the command post, in essence becoming a chief of staff. Commanders need to execute battlefield circulation, visiting subordinate and supporting commanders in the field to ensure clear understanding of intent and orders."

--Units are so reliant on digital connectivity that when it was down, it resulted in a "total loss of  situational awareness of operations."

--Senior NCOs didn't understand their role in sustainment.  Logistics and medical evacuation of the wounded also stunk.

--Soldiers don't even know how to do basic field sanitation, and were "defecating randomly on top of the ground in unit positions."

"Hit the leather and ride, take it all in stride," indeed. 

I asked Col. Keith Barclay, commander of the regiment, what he thinks of the report. This is his response: 

--
 

Thank you for the note and interest in our rotation.  It was a fantastic training event that all our soldiers and multinational partners benefited from greatly as we developed our leaders and soldiers to operate in support of unified land operations.  As to the report you reference, I have not seen the written training center observations from our training center as of yet, but the after action reviews were very positive.

I would refer you to the 7th Joint Multinational Training Command, commanding officer for his comments regarding any other specific data; he was the deputy exercise director for this exercise and would be in a position to answer your specific questions."

--

Tom again. This is what Col. Lee Rudacille, the commander of the training center, had to say:

--
 

We appreciate your interest in our recent Decisive Action Training Environment rotation involving the 2nd Cavalry Regiment.  However, the document that you've obtained is not a comprehensive assessment of the Regiment's overall performance or capability.  I simply recommend waiting for additional material to be available before making comment on the unit's "overall" performance.

Please keep in mind that the purpose of the DATE is to give Army units a highly stressful, complex and challenging environment to evaluate current strengths and weaknesses.  We capture the results in order to sustain the positive, and to improve areas identified as requiring additional training.  As you know, in the last eleven years, the Army has focused almost exclusively on COIN operations.  In the last few years, we've done so in environments with established infrastructure and set logistics systems.  We have Soldiers in leadership positions who have only trained for and conducted COIN operations for the entirety of their careers. This is partly why the DATE was designed - to place us into something entirely different and to challenge us to incorporate a fundamentally different way of leading through Mission Command.  It involves a highly complex set of threats and it deliberately stimulates leaders to think about future battlefields.  The training environment is a safe place to learn hard lessons and prepare for future fights.  It is not unreasonable or remarkable that we found areas in which we must strive to improve.  The Army is a learning institution; we cannot be afraid to hold a mirror to ourselves and honestly see our need for improvement. 

As to the report itself, this particular document is one of several that are for our internal use and not a comprehensive assessment.  Many of the topics in the report were brought up by our evaluators and the 2CR Soldiers themselves during the AAR so that we can learn and improve.  These issues were not central to whether or not we were successful overall when you consider that the DATE required that we combine offense, defense, and stability operations within the context of Wide Area Security and Combined Arms Maneuver, often simultaneously.  They are simply areas that we will improve on.

Again, I am pleased our training in Europe has captured your attention, particularly so since the Army is increasing its focus on training and developing leaders and Soldiers for our future missions which I believe we do well. "

--

Tom again: I asked Col. Rudacille if he had read the CALL report, and he wrote back thusly:

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Yes, I've read the document.  Again, I remind you that it isn't an AAR - it isn't comprehensive, it only looks at select areas and it is not indicative of the unit's overall performance.  As the Exercise Director, I observed the unit enjoy many successes during the training, and I witnessed learning at all levels of the formation.  As written, the report reflects events temporal in nature during a single training event, the actions reflective of Soldiers who have operated in a COIN only environment over the past several years, and a training environment designed to challenge leaders at multiple levels.  It is only partly accurate in that it omits the review of the entirety of the DATE rotation containing only a small percentage of the total findings - findings which will reflect the tremendous learning which occurred when confronted with a difficult mission set."

EXPLORE:MILITARY, NATIONAL SECURITY
 

CDRINF

12:18 PM ET

November 22, 2012

Leadership and Experience

It is a singular strength of the U.S. Army that we have things like the Combat Training Center program to examine and identify our shortcomings, then devise and implement solutions. At several key points in our history, we have taken a hard look at ourselves and made adjustments. It happened after Vietnam, and it is starting to happen now. We will come out a better Army because of it.

We are simply out of practice in some areas. Running an effective battalion Logpac system, conducting a night refuel on the move, operating a multi-day patrol on mission type orders, or building an engagement area are acquired skills that take repeated practice. I have seen even the best units stumble and I have participated in my own share of all night cluster-fucks chasing down lost vehicles, or trying to figure out where the helicopters dropped my class IV bundles. As a brigade commander of mine once said, “If we knew what the hell we were doing, we wouldn’t call it training.”

Since officership and the what kind of training, education, and experience makes a good, thinking officer is often a topic of discussion on this blog, I looked up the bios of the Regiment’s leadership. I don’t know these guys from Adam and I don’t know what AAR comments applied to which squadrons. What I found in their bios was very interesting. Some of the squadron commanders were a Tom Rick’s wet dream: one an MPA from Harvard who was a USMA Sosh Department instructor for three years, then a State Department and White House Fellow, another who was a DoD Fellow with the State Department, a third was a SAMS graduate and a general’s aide. Three of the key leaders had served at Army HRC, one of them twice (This one is still a head scratcher for me. HRC assignments show up in a lot of brigade and battalion commander bios. I have never figured out why HRC is seen as a place we want to put our rising leaders). Only two had served as observer controllers at a CTC. None had served as a branch school or CGSC instructor. Some had multiple combat tours. One of them had only one.

So, what were some of these guys NOT doing while they were acquiring advanced degrees, working in the upper echelons of government, serving SAMS utilization tours, and serving in “broadening assignments”? They were not learning about training, in the mud, in the dark of night. They were not counseling junior officers; they were not talking to soldiers. I am sure all are smart, talented officers who want to do well. Some of them simply may lack the long term service and training background in tactical units to instinctively know what right looks like. When I was an observer/controller at one of the CTCs, we often observed that the type of officer who did poorly in the rotational unit was the type who had been away from the nuts and bolts of his profession for too long. These types had been off doing other things and felt they could make it on their intellect alone. A rare few could, many could not.

The larger question is how to achieve balance in our Army officers. We need a balance of COIN and conventional skills, and a balance of tactical and strategic thinking. I often see in this blog those who decry an overly tactically focused officer corps. Funny that some of the same arm chair generals now choose to pick apart a lack of basic tactical skills. An officer’s career is only so long and only allows for a finite amount of experiences. Serving almost exclusively at either extreme is not good for the total health of our officer corps. I don’t yet know the answer of how best achieve this balance, but it clearly must be done.

 

A SERVING OFFICER

4:57 PM ET

November 24, 2012

When I was an OC...

CDRINF,
Very good comments in general. Your old BDE CDR's point is well made. I frequently was told, in many units, to "Fix three things each day" AT MY LEVEL while going through a CTC rotation. CTCs are very useful/world class for preparing units and commanders, stafss, and individual troops to fight First Battle conventional scenarios and do some sophisticated large scale live fires, but I have often wondered about the real utility as a Mission Rehearsal Exercise for what would be an extended PKO or COIN deployment.

I also think the CTC experience has now been demystified compared to 1982-1997---back then it was held as a beacon of our Army, especially post-ODS, and getting a former OC as a BN S3 or BN CDR was almost like getting a DSC or Silver Star recipient. CTC rotations were the culminating tactical event of a typical garrison Army command tour (I can remember starting to get ready 12 months in advance)---now it is just one more wicket to knock down. I have never heard folks refer to how their CTC experience was a major formative event/decisive to their success in a long tour in combat today.

1) Your point about the tyranny of time to do many varied things and to derive the relevant experience base, so as to not be simply punching a ticket, is well made and problematic for the Army. I wonder if the pressure to be BZ and in position to be BZ next time exacerbates this as some guys lose almost two full years to build experience by the time they take the colors as BN CDRs.

2) Having said that, I am a bit more discomfitted by the lack of deployed combat experience in some of these guys at the FG sharp end (S3/XO/MiTT Team Chief)---one maneuver squadron guy does not even have a CAB/CIB. In 10 years, some only went downrange once? And yes, the cult of HRC/SLD on more and more senior leader resumes is an "interesting" phenomenon.

3) Based on my experiences at both CONUS dirt CTCs as a rotational guy (PL, Staff CPT, CO CDR, BN CDR), I always try/tried to maintain a small, but healthy dose of skepticism WRT the opinions of the Observer Controllers (or Trainer Mentors or whatever they are now at whichever CTC). Some of the comments in the attached report are troubling as they are not training deficiencies but basic discipline issues, but I have seen OCs get worked up/push their agenda and constantly redredge up a single shortfall from one unit from day one throughout a rotation---even after it was corrected/showing improvement. I would be curious as to if the surface shitting (for example) was a single small unit, day one incident or was systemic (across a squadron or even the regiment) and repeated (which indicates a broader discipline issue of failure to correct a noted disciplinary shortfall).

4) I am guessing based on small bio tidbits from some of your previous posts, that you are a late 80s/1990 YG guy and therefore probably served as an OC in the mid-late 1990s. If true, you know as well as I that OC Cadre back then was fairly elite (in the best sense of the term), much sought after, and selection was closely managed as a top manning priority for then-PERSCOM. They were really the Army repository of field/training/tactical experience, also, as the too often romanticized Army of the mid-late 1990s was very much garrison focused (I often jokingly called training a "tasking distractor") and an S3's success was more based on his ability to fill all Corps/Post Red Cycle taskers than skill during his one CTC rotation (so long as he wasn't a complete moron). Not so today in terms of experience. I cannot recall knowing or hearing of one BDE or BN CDR counseling his top guys to go be an OC in the past sevenor so years and I know very few (two to be exact) post-command CPTs who were seeking OC duty (especially after two-three deployments in seven years). Personnel wise, with the exception of the COGs and TF Seniors/07s, the OC cadre is undermanned and quality wise is a much more mixed bag (officer and NCO); many still good, but a lot more than a few weak swimmers compared to 10-15 years ago. Even among the 07s, some are not getting selected for SSC and O6 today (that is a Big Army problem, though), to say nothing of O6 level command.

 

BASSRICE

10:16 AM ET

November 27, 2012

Commentary

As a CPT planning for my career after my second Company Command, the thought of being an OC is almost repugnant to me (4 deployments in 7 years). But you never think of or hear the benifit it can bring. But I can say this: In the VERY few times that my first line leader has sat me down and counseled me, they have never mentioned or talked about trying to grab an assignment as an OC. It was always "Do this and that to get promoted BZ". I am not concerned about BZ promotion, as my experience tells me that I am always ready and trained to take the job I am just leaving, and am not developed enough to take the next job (though I do anyway). To be frank, I want to maximize my time as a CPT to wring every job opportunity and assignment out of it so that when I am a S-3 or XO, I am as prepared as possible.

 

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military for the Washington Post from 2000 through 2008.

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