Alan, as an OC/T I see commanders face a lot of the same challenges I did when I commanded my troop in a DATE at the same CTC, so I’ll answer your questions:

1. My legal responsibility was to train my troop and  if we had to fight, I could not say that my Soldiers were fully ready to survive a complex ambush – after 22 months in command and ranges and operational exercises. That’s why the focus is on “ready to fight tonight”. Solution – no more on-line training after in-processing which should last 1 month and allow SM to fully settle his family. I did this in my troop, to yield a fully available Soldier. Get after deploy-ability, have a good 1SG who can talk with HRC to never be surprised by NCOES unavailability. Second part – do all 350-1 at in-processing and once a year spent no more than few hours or 1 payday activity. Dedicate rest of time on training in field.

2. As CO first time I occupied a site, I realized how clumsy I was, and how many things I forgot to do, nor anyone in my formation thought of to bring up. Luckily, we jumped 5 or 6 times and the second place we went to, I provided a sector sketch to my guys, and we began developing all those steps: black & gold plan, op/lp, sectors of fire, range card, concealment, final fighting positions, rally points, ways in and out if compromised et al. Solution – you learn by doing, the more you train the better. Train individual and collective tasks concurrently to buy time for quality intense DATE-like training. goal should be, ideally once a quarter, that means that in 3 months you need SQD STX, PLT validation and CO FTX and then repetition for muscle memory. It takes 10,000 rounds to build muscle memory, meanwhile most Log Soldiers fire 48 a year from a comfortable position.

3. Every unit that comes through, no matter the nationality, we see the same trends, and they follow generally a similar path to improve themselves. They all leave better than when they came. For US units, maybe we need to prioritize, stick to that, and man on the ground fight for time vs. newest good idea. Leaders have to focus the training and units’ efforts on quality over quantity. You have overworked leaders while not actually decisively engaged in war but we have the power to make choices and also state a case to the boss. I am optimistic that as we get after “ready to fight tonight”, we will realize that the only way to be good at it, is to train and limit training detractors. I did it in command and had a daily real-world mission. If we look at where our time goes, revisit priorities and cut away the things that just brief well, then we can do the meaningful things well.