Can you give some more clarity on what this person is not meeting the standard on? What did you have to counsel this person on? I’d recommend some tactical patience as you both figure your relationship out. But, if this is a concern for you, you need to go to the OPS SGM. Talk to him/her, get their feedback. Take that advice and try for a while.…[Read more]

3 comments and a question.

1. Additional duties, in my opinion, take away from your time doing your job, what you are there to do in the organization. Its not that I don’t think we should have them, but I do not think there is any service member that enjoys having do something else besides their main MOS. This is especially true when you put the…[Read more]

Have you ever felt that you both drink too much, yet also too little? Thats BOLC in a nutshell.

In all seriousness, don’t stress about it. You’ll have time to acclimate. That week between when you report and when ‘class starts’ is the perfect time to get comfortable on post. If that date is really what I remember it meaning, thats the official…[Read more]

A few things, feel free to take all with a grain of salt.

1. I think its awesome you make your guys brief in OPORD. I am not a fan of CONOPS either.

2. In my opinion, I would consolidate all the Completed Training, slides 5-10 on to one. I don’t see the point in having one for each platoon all for only one week. That way you can compare the…[Read more]

I am afraid I disagree. I do not think the Army, Branch or your unit will overly care about your BOLC eval.

At least as far as I have seen across the Army, as long as you were not a recycle, no one else in the Army is going to care about your eval. Your passing means you should know how to be whatever MOS you are and to ready to serve as an LT on…[Read more]

I wish I had known not to worry so much about it. It is just an azimuth leveler for all 1LTs/CPTs in your branch to make sure they have all the same general knowledge. Do well, but do not stress about it. No one is going to look back and ask you how well you did at CCC, just know your job and relax with your family to get ready for that terrible…[Read more]

I don’t mean to imply that on day two of command you start saying things. That was not my intent at all, so apologies. I have seen that side of… eagerness and you’re right, it can be killer to morale. Especially if that leader just destroys everything you have done for the past 6,12,24 months.

However, I think that you can effect change from…[Read more]

Could not agree more. Leaders (all of us) come in with our ideas and our assumptions but sometimes struggle to make that clear in our in-briefs and then issues occur when the first friction points begin to appear and both sides are frustrated over how the other either is not communicating well with them or not doing what they want them to do.…[Read more]

I think that a lot of what is missing here is a realistic look at how young officers are treated as they come into a unit, especially when they have to deal with toxic leadership and the lack of talent management, and maybe the realistic view of their roll in the unit. You can tell all these young LT’s the nice platitudes of what books to read and…[Read more]

The FM 3-0 update is sort of important, because if you combine that with the new Multi Domain Battle draft put out, we can see where we are trying to go. Plus, doctrine is always years behind where we all think it needs to be, so we should constantly review ourselves and try to improve our doctrine, which is supposed to be the basis for…[Read more]

Cale, while you are right that NCO’s “need an identity” I think that you need to take into account that in a FSC, those NCO’s are literally the guys you have turning wrenches. They aren’t just in charge of a section, they also are liable to work for the battery’s and platoons within the BN. The section/platoon NCOs, the Maintenance Control…[Read more]

Having been in an FA FSC I was about to respond, but wanted to get some more clarification. Do you have some examples of where officers are having to lead instead of NCO’s? What has the 1SG said about what your predecessor said? Honestly, from my point of view, an FSC is and must be a very officer driven org because the NCO’s are either turning…[Read more]

Eli,

I am sure someone will be along shortly to give much better recommendations but until then I will just give you three that I can think of. I’m not quite sure what you are looking for as it sounds like you want more primary sources of information, and I do not really have any of those, but maybe what I can recommend will assist y…[Read more]

While I think all the above is very nice and true, I think an assessment of if you are ready for the next war can be answered in one question.

Are you improving yourself, developing and learning? Its very easy to get lazy and just do your day to day job and be happy with that. It is nice and convenient and work can bog you down absolutely, we ha…[Read more]

I guess my follow up question would be, what to do to fix that? In a multi-domain fight, I would think that recon and intel is a major priority for your CDR. So if it were me, I would consolidate intel assets (be it cav scouts, UAS, SIGINT, etc) into a single intel org, be it an MI BN or above. Then you have 3x organic combat arms BNs that have…[Read more]

1. I would just stick with your CO, mainly cause that should be a quick assignment before school, so really just do what he tells you and then start to be a good JO and anticipate what your boss wants. Its about beginning to understand that CO-XO/PL dynamic that will help you prepare as a PL, seeing as being able to figure out what your boss w…[Read more]

1. I would just stick with your CO, mainly cause that should be a temporary assignment, so really just do what he tells you and then start to be a good JO and anticipate what your boss wants. Its about beginning to understand that CO-PL dynamic that will help you prepare as a PL, seeing as being able to figure out what your boss wants is probably…[Read more]

I’ve been looking at these articles the last few days and while I don’t think I am smart enough to come up with a whole other thread and conversation about these, I will say that I find it interesting that a number of different units, organizations, and MOS’s are responsible for the gathering of intelligence and conduct of various forms of…[Read more]

Depending on your branch, if you also utilize JKO, they have a lot of good online training

Another thing I really enjoy and highly recommend is “Military Review”. I think it provides a great variety of historical information, trends about the different warfighting functions, and doctrinal discussion gives you a variety of knowledge to think about.