The greener grass
Some of the soldiers serving in Afghanistan are - surprise, surprise - unimpressed with the training they've received to deal with such a difficult tactical situation.
I spent three uninterrupted years in constant military training from the age of eighteen to the age of twenty-one. At the time, I thought much of it was a waste of time. This was antiquated, and that was useless, and this other thing could be done much better. I was right, too: there were flaws in the CF training system then, just as I'm sure there are flaws today.
But moving over to the civilian world fifteen years ago now, I've discovered that compared to anything else I've experienced, military training is unrivalled. Most soldiers don't come into the CF with a whole pile of civilian job experience, so they've no real point of reference.
If quality of training is like a roll of the dice, Canadian military personnel have tossed a ten or eleven, but all they can see is the gaping chasm between that and a perfect twelve. And because the margin for error soldiering over in places like Afghanistan is almost nonexistent, because people die if you get it wrong, they're understandably not content with a ten or eleven. But they have no idea that the rest of the world stumbles along with a four.
They also rarely appreciate how responsive their training system really is, compared to every other organization you can name. The CF, in common with the militaries of most developed nations, is constantly experimenting, refining, adjusting, learning, and evolving:
Experiments like the one above aren't 'grunt-level', though. The knowledge and skills important to front-line rifle-carriers is being developed right now, on the ground in Kandahar. It's being shared among the soldiers, each learning from each other. And it will be passed along in due course as these soldiers get rotated home and into training slots. The soldiers complaining now have simply had the bad luck to be first through the pipeline, and the irony is that they will be the ones who fix the deficiencies they're griping about.
It's not a perfect system, to be sure. But taken all together, it's a whole lot better than just about any professional development regimen you can name.
"The teaching model is still based on the assumption that when we go to war, that war will be conventional, as in the Godless Russian hordes lined up in tanks coming at us from one direction," a veteran non-commissioned officer at Kandahar Airfield told the Toronto Star.
"It is not the fault of the instructors. That was the environment they came up in. But at the same time, that's not what war is anymore. The reality today is counter-insurgency. The top Canadian brass realize this and so do the front-of-line soldiers. But in between, there is a layer of the army locked in hidebound thinking, basically resistant to change.
"So a lot of us deployed in Afghanistan today have basically had to throw out the book and educate ourselves. It's really not that difficult, because so many armies around the world have been training in counter-insurgency techniques for so long now that there is a substantial library of knowledge available. And we're studying it on our own."
I spent three uninterrupted years in constant military training from the age of eighteen to the age of twenty-one. At the time, I thought much of it was a waste of time. This was antiquated, and that was useless, and this other thing could be done much better. I was right, too: there were flaws in the CF training system then, just as I'm sure there are flaws today.
But moving over to the civilian world fifteen years ago now, I've discovered that compared to anything else I've experienced, military training is unrivalled. Most soldiers don't come into the CF with a whole pile of civilian job experience, so they've no real point of reference.
If quality of training is like a roll of the dice, Canadian military personnel have tossed a ten or eleven, but all they can see is the gaping chasm between that and a perfect twelve. And because the margin for error soldiering over in places like Afghanistan is almost nonexistent, because people die if you get it wrong, they're understandably not content with a ten or eleven. But they have no idea that the rest of the world stumbles along with a four.
They also rarely appreciate how responsive their training system really is, compared to every other organization you can name. The CF, in common with the militaries of most developed nations, is constantly experimenting, refining, adjusting, learning, and evolving:
Multi-National Experiment 4 (MNE4), to be held from February 27 to March 17, 2006, is the latest in a series initiated in 2002 by U.S. Joint Forces Command to refine the conduct of multinational operations. Canada’s contribution to MNE4 is being conducted at the Canadian Forces Experimentation Centre (CFEC) at Shirley’s Bay, west of Ottawa.
MNE4 is designed to give diplomats, military personnel, and aid workers from both governmental and non-governmental agencies a clearer picture of the political structures, economy, military capabilities, infrastructure, culture, religions and information systems in a failed or failing state so the effects of military action in that state can be considered from a wholistic perspective. Full participants in the experiment are Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, the US and NATO. Finland and Sweden are limited participants.
In addition to helping to develop new processes, organizations and technologies for use at the operational level of command, the participants will examine multinational and interagency co-ordination, logistics and medical support.
Experiments like the one above aren't 'grunt-level', though. The knowledge and skills important to front-line rifle-carriers is being developed right now, on the ground in Kandahar. It's being shared among the soldiers, each learning from each other. And it will be passed along in due course as these soldiers get rotated home and into training slots. The soldiers complaining now have simply had the bad luck to be first through the pipeline, and the irony is that they will be the ones who fix the deficiencies they're griping about.
It's not a perfect system, to be sure. But taken all together, it's a whole lot better than just about any professional development regimen you can name.
posted by Babbling Brooks at 3:29 p.m.
2 Comments:
A useful site:
Canadian Army Lessons Learned Centre
http://armyapp.dnd.ca/allc/main.asp
There is also:
The Canadian Forces Centre of Excellence for Peace Support Operations Training
http://armyapp.dnd.ca/pstc-cfsp/main.asp?lng=Eng
Mark
Ottawa
Excellent post. I wholeheartedly agree with your premise. In today's world, as in wars past, every deployment is different and the skill set required is different.
"military training is unrivalled"
Without doubt. Thanks to my military training and experience I had the opportunity to work in management at General Motors, the first such person hired at that particular plant without a degree in over 20 years.
My analysis of situations, approaches to resolving them and willingness to learn and adapt were skills I was taught and honed in the military. With minor adjustments for working in a civilian setting the training I received allowed me to excel in business.
Since then I have attended numerous business training sessions, often at VERY expensive prices, to be taught the same things I learned in the forces. The buzzwords and catch-phrases may have been different, but the basic concepts remain fairly constant.
I wouldn't trade the training and experience I received in the forces for anything in the world.
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