Posted on 11/03/2021 6:00:52 AM PDT by LordOddsocks
And I am sure the Americans double checked the pronouns before surrendering. And that is all that will count at the Pentagon.
The old guys will have to step back in.Obama made the special forces a joke, calling out the Karen’s.
....and any of our officers graduated from our military academies.
One of the best things that ever happened to me was flunking my first ARTEP. It didn’t matter that I was assigned this platoon 5 minutes prior to it commencing, they should have tasked my original platoon. It didn’t matter that the 4 squad leaders were ROAD. It all came down on my head, and rightfully so: I was the platoon leader.
Man, I caught hell for several weeks. It forged in me an attitude of “ok, if my neck’s on the chopping block, then stay out of my way and let me do my job!”
Over the next 18 months, I took 3 more platoons through their ARTEPs with flying colors. I lived the Leaders Handbook, “Everything my unit does, or fails to do, is my responsibility.”
Excuses never cut it with me, either. Didn’t have time for “weak sauce,” there was too much to do. Being a platoon leader was about the most fun I had in Germany, though my time as Battalion S-4 (Supply Officer) was a close second. The “world” knew I had a Public Accounting degree, I.e. even as a 1st LT, I knew far more than they did. My Battalion Commander had one request: “keep me out of jail.” Lol, piece of cake.
They used The Joke.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWr1KtnRcI
Sounds like the upper echelon of the marines are no longer squared-away.
I wonder how “woke” the marines are now?
There is an old training video on utube by periscope films, “How to get killed” I guess someone slipped it into the training syllabus instead of “how to kill your enemy”.
Sleep tight comrade, your military is flaunting their diversity.
I heard that Gen. Milley Vanilli ordered the marines to stand down after the Royal marines refused to use gender neutral terms.
Can you expand on the doctrinal change? I think I’ve heard a bit but not too much.
For Phase II of the exercise, they should have brought in the Gurkhas, who would have taken on all comers—and won.
The big name they’re using is ‘Marine Corps Force Design 2030’
Here’s a good article with the basics - if I get the gist, it’s basically to stop trying to be the Army, and get back to the core mission of marines with emphasis on preparing to counter China.
This is supposed to be a general English language forum; not a place where jargon or acronyms from any particular area are used so heavily.
ARTEP = Army Training And Evaluation Program, I.e. tactical evaluation. During my 18 months as a platoon leader, I had both Chaparral platoons and one Vulcan platoon. Chaparral was a short range air defense missile system, while the Vulcans were gun systems.
ROAD = Retired on Active Duty
“Seeing no opportunity for victory, American combatants asked for the exercise to be ‘reset’ halfway through.”
Yikes? The reset enabled more effective training. E.g., plan a 5 day training exercise, discover deficiencies by day 2 (or whatever), reset and address deficiencies, continue to train.
Training is expensive, units do not have money to waste, resetting makes a lot of sense to get the best use out of the limited training dollars.
Good observation. We do learn more from making mistakes than from not making mistakes. Better in training than on the battlefield.
Thanks, interesting.
But, to be fair this was an elite Brit unit playing OPFOR, which usually has the advantage. The whole idea of these exercises is to give our guys a tough test they will hopefully learn from.
Very true. I’d rather get my ass handed to me in an exercise and learn from it than get my ass handed to me in actual combat and become a name on a stone wall somewhere.
I remember years ago there was an exercise similar to this at the NTC at Fort Erwin where an Australian infantry company found itself against a US Army battalion.
The Aussies took some losses as they hightailed it to a nice defensive bit of terrain to make what everybody thought would be a last stand.
At the end of it, the spot was nicknamed ‘The Aussie Ashtray’ as it was where you could find the smoking ruins of the battalion.
A lot was learnt on both sides and a lot of beer was drunk by both sides afterwards too.
By the time I made 1st LT, I had been through a number of ARTEPs...platoon/battery level tac evals. I knew how the game was played, I knew what the evaluators were looking for. In essence, you could look like crap the first two days, but as long as you were showing improvement on the last day, you'd pass.
This particular tac eval, I had to wear two hats: Maintenance Officer (my regular job), and XO, as our XO was away at a training class.
First day wasn't too bad, second day was a disaster. One of our platoons was 30 minutes late on their mission time. The platoon leader just looked befuddled when I ripped into him...30 minutes late on your morning mission? That was almost enough to flunk us.
I spent most of the afternoon with my maintenance section. When I returned to the CP, my First Sergeant was distraught...he had 3 tours in Nam as an Infantry First Sergeant, so I knew something was wrong. Boy, was it: my Battery Commander improperly encoded coordinates for a platoon's mission, and the Platoon Leader failed to call him on it. It was such an obvious error, any competent Air Defense Artillery Officer would know it.
From that point on, the BC went catatonic, seeing the end of his career. Me? I just got angry, and let the Platoon Leaders have it in our evening meeting. I took 15 minutes to explain what their platoons would do the next day, down to the driver of their vehicles. It was unreal, I had "ring knockers" (West Pointers) and Airborne Rangers as Platoon Leaders, and they were all in a fog, along with the Battery Commander.
Unbeknownst to me, the chief evaluator heard every word. As I left the CP, he pulled me aside, smiled and said, "that was beautiful, LT." We passed, and for my efforts, I received a lousy efficiency report. I knew before that I wasn't hanging around for 20, so it rolled off my back. I ended up doing 8 years, got out when I was 30.
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