had a 22-month successful command and thought I still made a hundred mistakes, a year later worth of reflection, closer to a thousand mistakes…one thing I thought I would try to do better, was train my unit. simple discussion:

I would bring in ‘all’ of my leaders so they hear one message, one time up front and pull up the LRTC, identify what tasks our unit needs to train in, prioritize the most critical and identify the validation date/end-state; then start filling-in from there backwards to present all that needs to happen, and lock-in the dates/receive ideas and input from all leaders as I pin roses on donkeys/who does what when.

the goal of this mother of all meetings is shared understanding, predictability, and all the gates we must hit. for my troop I would prioritize two main tasks – defending ourselves while dismounted/stationary and while mounted on the move, from enemy near/far ambush, indirect, direct and non-lethal fires and collection. In these two overarching training priorities fit all the other important tasks – concealment, dispersion, supportive and individual training. my type of troop had a daily mission which trained all other METs but in weapons/tactics we didn’t get much time in the batting cages. it takes 10k rounds to build muscle memory, a “loggie” gets issued 58 rounds a year to ‘qualify’ which isn’t training but a test.

Once the to do list is discussed, agreed upon and laid on the LRTC, I would begin slashing all irrelevant ankle biters and training distractors. by the end of my command I was able to fairly well differentiate what was important and not, what wasted time and how to organize my unit to buy more time effectively. also, there are already preplanned opportunities to hit gates, CTC-rotations, FTXs, LFXs where you get after ‘what you must do to be trained’.

what are some thoughts? Will this achieve 80% of troop trained? still no, as NCOES even if you make calls and get predictability ahead, other losses, unavailables and personnel moves will keep you in a constant ebb/flow closer to 50% I think.