“Time is our biggest enemy,” he says, and then harps on the “good ol’ days” as if boot polish, uniform starching, parade ground pageantry, and similar wastes of time can provide some sort of solution.
How about we take the idea of building NCOs by having them drill and then instruct useful skills to subordinates? Paying attention to detail demands learning which details are worth paying attention to. Identifying what skills are useful and then successfully training them provides the same benefit to learning how to pay attention to detail while actually helping with readiness.
Operation Cold Steel was the Army Reserve unwittingly admitting that units on their own were largely incapable of successfully training crew-served weapons and that “any NCO with the FM” does not work. Parade ground nonsense doesn’t help, either.
Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben and his “blue book” are cited by CSM Copeland. Upon Washington’s recommendation, Congress appointed Steuben as a Major General and the Inspector General of the Continental Army. Steuben promptly formed a model company of soldiers and trained them to march, use the bayonet, and execute orders quickly on the battlefield.
Critical point: Baron von Steuben’s drills in his “blue book” had nothing to do with current D&C. His approach used to be a relevant, useful, real-world skillset ideal for then-current equipment and tactics. It was not a self-serving exercise in discipline for its own sake or to look good. Unfortunately, D&C has since devolved into parade ground foolishness.
Effective drill emphasizes individual precision of movement and a manual of arms based on useful skill. See Appendix D (Drills) in all current small arms Training Circulars, starting with TC 3-23.9. You’ll note CSM Copeland never mentioned this in his interview that was recorded years after this manual was released. For precision of movement in small teams, do the same thing with Crew Drills for crew-served weapons. Couple this with an understanding of gunnery and basic ballistics. Perhaps if Soldiers were already doing this regularly, Operation Cold Steel could have been avoided.
Drill should also emphasize group teamwork and moving in tandem. Use the formations listed in Chapter 2 of ATP 3-21.8 (Infantry Platoon and Squad) and the drills in Chapter 8 in TC 3-21.76 (Ranger Handbook) as examples.
Modern D&C is NOT found in TC 3-21.5 and that manual should be discarded as the useless fluff that it is.
The Army continues to perpetuate a culture of illiteracy and fails to implement the notion of Disciplined Disobedience our former Chief of Staff of the Army prescribed. Sadly, CSM Copeland’s podcast reveals that our current leadership seems to have no interest or insight in how to fix this.
From Ash Hess: The U.S. Army Squad Designated Marksman program is a source of much debate. Many are angry that this rifle fielded with a 1-6 optic. What those people fail to acknowledge is where the SDM really is in both doctrine and real world application.
The SDM is a Rifleman with an additional tasking of being the DM. He is employed by the Fire Team leader or Squad leader(ATP-3.21.8) This means he/she remains part of that fire team and must be capable of doing anything the Squad is tasked with doing, from trenches, enter and clear, to assault.
Thus, at the beginning of the SDMR, the optic choice was heavily debated. The result is an optic that allows the DM to engage targets from 0-600 meters with relative ease.
That’s part of the debate. Sniper trained SDMs are different from normal trained SDMs, and neither one want to meet the doctrinal concept. The “program” should be a real course 2-3 weeks, immediately following OUSIT required for privates who are assigned to Light, Airborne or Stryker units.
Training the trainer does not work with SDM. You trained NCO’s, I trained NCO’s, MMTC is training NCOs and nothing has improved. By training the private, and all the privates that follow him, by the time that first private is a Squad leader, the entire squad would by SDM trained, improving the entire unit. As it is now, those NCO’s retain 60% of what they are taught, pass on 30% of that, and the private gets none of it. Then they task someone else with the role and handicap what they should be doing.
From Dan Shea: The Dragunov. It was the doctrinal difference from US to Soviet thinking. The US, well, we want to hit a fly’s eye at 1000 meters with highly trained snipers we’ve invested heavily in. The Soviet theory was to take marginally trained people with reasonable skills and have them hit chest size at 600 meters. And as a bonus, a Dragunov in the hands of someone with natural skill honed in a better training environment, can shoot really, really well. Nothing like one of the Knight rifles of course…. but a Dragunov has a place well above an AK on a battlefield.
That bit, “…. theory was to take marginally trained people with reasonable skills and have them hit chest size at 600 meters” is telling.
This was the intent of U.S. Army doctrine. The old (around 2003) SDM qual as originally directed by the now-redacted FM 3-22.9 was supposed to be shot with a rack-grade M16A2 and M855 by personnel given a bit of additional training (which a fully-trained Rifleman arguably should already know…)
Table 2 of that SDM course allowed optics only if the Soldier’s unit had them available. If not, Table 2 was supposed to be shot with a base BZO (no wind 300 meter zero) and use hold overs and hold offs as needed.
Then everyone wanted to church it up and re-envision SDM into “sniper lite”… The quality of training behind it is has been all over the map. As Ash Hess wisely points out, to be fully useful this needs a formal course (possibly an Additional Skill Identifier) taught by vetted instructors rather than the Army norm of “telephone game“*** training, euphemistically known as “train the trainer”, which is too common with all small arms skill. The myth that “any NCO with the FM” (TC now, but most NCOs are still unaware of this, hence the problem) can teach small arms skill is one of the most detrimental training lies infesting the U.S. Army.
*** “The game has no winner: the entertainment comes from comparing the original and final messages. Intermediate messages may also be compared; some messages will become unrecognizable after only a few steps.” It would be funny if it weren’t such a tragic waste of taxpayer money and Soldier ability.
Spoiler: It’s also the opposite of every drill sergeant stereotype and other incompetent leaders in the military.
Google’s research is in line with the Disciplined Disobedience approach that the Army is supposed to be following but few personnel actually do.
1. Be a good coach.
You either care about your employees or you don’t. There’s no gray zone. If you care, then you’ll invest time and energy to help your employees become better versions of themselves. That’s the first 50 percent of being a good coach.
The other half is knowing you’re a facilitator, not a fixer. Ask good questions, don’t just give the answers. Expand your coachees’ point of view versus giving it to them.
2. Empower teams and don’t micromanage.
Absolutely no one likes to be micromanaged. Research indicates empowered employees have higher job satisfaction and organizational commitment, which reduces turnover and increases performance and motivation. Also, supervisors who empower are seen as more influential and inspiring by their subordinates.
Everyone wins when you learn to let go.
3. Create an inclusive team environment, showing concern for success and well-being.
Individual fulfillment is often a joint effort. People derive tremendous joy from being part of a winning team. The best managers facilitate esprit de corps and interdependence.
And employees respond to managers who are concerned about winning, and winning well (in a way that supports their well-being).
4. Be productive and results oriented.
Take productivity of your employees seriously and give them the tools to be productive, keeping the number of processes to a minimum.
5. Be a good communicator — listen and share information.
The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place. It often doesn’t happen because of a lack of effort from both the transmitting and the receiving parties. Invest in communication, and care enough to listen.
Former CEO of Procter & Gamble A.G. Lafley once told me his job was 90 percent communication–communicating the next point especially.
6. Have a clear vision/strategy for the team.
With no North Star, employees sail into the rocks. Enroll employees in building that vision/strategy, don’t just foist it on them. The former nets commitment, the latter compliance. And be prepared to communicate it more often than you ever thought you could.
7. Support career development and discuss performance.
The best managers care about their people’s careers and development as much as they care about their own. People crave feedback. And you owe it to them.
People don’t work to achieve a 20 percent return on assets or any other numerical goal. They work to bring meaning into their lives, and meaning comes from personal growth and development.
8. Have the expertise to advise the team.
Google wants its managers to have key technical skills (like coding, etc.) so they can share the “been there, done that” experience. So be there and do that to build up your core expertise, whatever that might be. Stay current on industry trends and read everything you can.
9. Collaborate.
In a global and remote business world, collaboration skills are essential. Collaboration happens when each team member feels accountability and interdependence with teammates. Nothing is more destructive for a team than a leader who is unwilling to collaborate. It creates a “it’s up to only us” vibe that kills culture, productivity, and results.
10. Be a strong decision maker.
The alternative is indecision, which paralyzes an organization, creates doubt, uncertainty, lack of focus, and even resentment. Strong decisions come from a strong sense of self-confidence and belief that a decision, even if proved wrong, is better than none.
Military elements often retain a degree of tradition, sometimes to their detriment and well past any meaningful use. Examples include the foolish and ineffective approach that initial entry training (“basic”) continues to be conducted and long-obsolete and useless holdovers such as drill and ceremony. I’ll begrudge an exception to D&C for personnel formally directed to conduct a tattoo while also pointing out the general fraud, waste, and abuse of such pompous displays.
Things like this are continued under the false guise of instilling discipline and learning how to pay attention to detail despite no evidence that they accomplish either:
Kurt Lewin’s research on leadership and group dynamics indicates an over-bearing authoritative approach typified by the drill sergeant stereotype may be the worst way to lead people in many situations, especially if you want them to be capable of thinking and leading on their own one day. Test groups can revert to even worse undisciplined behavior than those put into laissez-faire control groups when the authority figure is removed. If you enforce babysitting measures upon personnel as the only means of enforcing discipline, then you’ll have to always and forever ensure a babysitter is present.
Kurt Lewin and colleagues did leadership decision experiments in 1939 and identified three different styles of leadership, in particular around decision-making.
Autocratic: In the autocratic style, the leader takes decisions without consulting with others. The decision is made without any form of consultation. In Lewin’s experiments, he found that this caused the most level of discontent. An autocratic style works when there is no need for input on the decision, where the decision would not change as a result of input, and where the motivation of people to carry out subsequent actions would not be affected whether they were or were not involved in the decision-making.
Democratic: In the democratic style, the leader involves the people in the decision-making, although the process for the final decision may vary from the leader having the final say to them facilitating consensus in the group. Participative Leadership can vary, see below. Democratic decision-making is usually appreciated by the people, especially if they have been used to autocratic decisions with which they disagreed. It can be problematic when there are a wide range of opinions and there is no clear way of reaching an equitable final decision.
Laissez-Faire: The laissez-faire style is to minimize the leader’s involvement in decision-making, and hence allowing people to make their own decisions, although they may still be responsible for the outcome. Laissez-faire works best when people are capable and motivated in making their own decisions, and where there is no requirement for a central coordination, for example in sharing resources across a range of different people and groups.
In Lewin et al’s experiments, he discovered that the most effective style was Democratic. Excessive Autocratic styles (drill sergeant) led to less effective results, particularly when the leader’s immediate supervision was removed, whilst under a Laissez-faire approach, people were not coherent in their work and did not put in the energy that they did when being actively led.
– Lewin, K., LIippit, R. and White, R.K. (1939). Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created social climates. Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 271-301
Participative Leadership: Involvement in decision-making improves the understanding of the issues involved by those who must carry out the decisions. People are more committed to actions where they are involved in the relevant decision-making and are less competitive and more collaborative when they are working on joint goals. When people make decisions together, the social commitment to one another is greater and thus increases their commitment to the decision. Several people deciding together make better decisions than one person alone.
A Participative Leader, rather than taking autocratic decisions, seeks to involve other people in the process, possibly including subordinates, peers, superiors and other stakeholders. Often, however, as it is within the managers’ whim to give or deny control to his or her subordinates, most participative activity is within the immediate team. The question of how much influence others are given thus may vary on the manager’s preferences and beliefs, and a whole spectrum of participation is possible.
< Not participative
Highly participative >
Autocratic decision by leader
Leader proposes decision, listens to feedback, then decides
Team proposes decision, leader has final decision
Joint decision with team as equals
Full delegation of decision to team
If your personnel are unskilled, unmotivated, untrustworthy, and unknowledgeable, then an Autocratic style may be necessary. If that describes your unit and think a drill sergeant approach is required, you’ve got much bigger problems – and are probably too stupid to realize it.
Forward-thinking leaders have commented on the need to break obsolete and detrimental traditions, even directing that future leaders must be able to function under disciplined disobedience.
Future warfare requires ‘disciplined disobedience,’ Army chief says
“I think we’re over-centralized, overly bureaucratic, and overly risk-averse,” Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley said while speaking at the Army and Navy Club in Washington, D.C., as part of the Atlantic Council Commanders Series.
Leaders on the battlefield could expect to be out of contact with their own leadership for significant periods of time. Those officers would still need to accomplish their commander’s objectives, even when the conditions on the battlefield change and they are unable to send word up the chain of command.
“We are going to have to empower [and] decentralize leadership to make decisions and achieve battlefield effects in a widely dispersed environment where subordinate leaders, junior leaders … may not be able to communicate to their higher headquarters, even if they wanted to,” Milley said.
In that environment, Milley said, the Army will need a cadre of trusted leaders on the battlefield who know when it’s time to disobey the original orders they were given and come up with a new plan to achieve the purpose of those orders.
“[A] subordinate needs to understand that they have the freedom and they are empowered to disobey a specific order, a specified task, in order to accomplish the purpose. It takes a lot of judgment.”
Such disobedience cannot be “willy-nilly.” Rather, it must be “disciplined disobedience to achieve a higher purpose,” Milley said. “If you do that, then you are the guy to get the pat on the back.”
Milley said that when orders are given, the purpose of those orders must also be provided so that officers know both what they are to accomplish and how they are expected to accomplish it.
Worst of all, despite having formal, studied, decades-old evidence that a self-discipline approach selects for and produces better outcomes than an overbearing, authoritative approach, there is NO formal evidence that the current model provides any benefit.
The topic of leadership has been extensively studied in a range of occupational settings. Findings indicate that employee ratings of leaders predict occupational outcomes such as job turnover, satisfaction, and performance in both military and civilian occupational settings.
Approximately 72,000 soldiers go through Army BCT in the United States each year (http://www.jackson.army.mil/sites/info/) … [A]lthough there are several possible leadership qualities that could be displayed by Drill Sergeants, from being harsh and demanding to mentoring and motivating, there have been NO studies that have systematically assessed Drill Sergeant characteristics. [emphasis added]
Trainee Perceptions of Drill Sergeant Qualities During Basic Combat Training was published in 2013. The Department of Army spends money to send 72,000 new recruits through initial entry “basic” training every year and has done so for many decades but has never bothered to study if the established approach is effective.
EVERY 0331 that goes through AMGC does high angle fire. Slow news day?
– Joe R Heft
A variety of gunnery skills are taught during USMC Advanced Machine Gunner Course but most Army personnel remain oblivious to gunnery with machine guns and are rarely competent with them beyond loading and minimal marksmanship on easy and well-defined point targets.
In fact, most Army personnel have been conducting machine gun qualification incorrectly and failing to achieve published standards. Consider this from the new small arms training manual:
TC 3-20.40
7-119
Table IV-B requires gunners to practice trigger control and requires the firer to fire one five to seven round burst at each specified point target or series of targets in the area target sequences. Gunners are authorized to fire only one five to seven round burst at each paster. [Emphasis added]
The authors explicitly spell this out due to recognizing most Army personnel have failed to perform at this standard but it is NOT a new/different standard. This is not a change to doctrine or a new qualification, this is the way the qual was always supposed to be run. Simple arithmetic of the number of rounds issued during qualification, the number of rounds per burst to be fired, and the number of target areas engaged confirms this. The explicit instruction was forced in due to a large number of Army personnel that don’t math good.
Lack of skill with this equipment is unfortunately common.
Operation Cold Steel has been less than stellar…
Such “expertise” is rampant:
Marines practice rarely trained machine gun tactic that could take out Russian vehicles
The Marine Corps is in Bulgaria practicing high-angle fire with a 40 mm grenade launching machine gun known as the Mk-19… The tactic could be beneficial in striking down infantry troops behind walls or protection, or taking out advancing Russian armor and light-skinned vehicles.
With seamless communications and competent forward observers, high-angle Mk-19 fire could also be used to rapidly and easily walk rounds onto an enemy target, according to several machine gunners.
It’s a skill set learned at the Marine Corps’ six-week Advanced Machine Gunner Course.
SFC Ash Hess (ret.) was one of the primary authors of the Army’s new Training Circulars. He was asked to speak before a recent graduating class at Marksmanship Master Trainer Course. Here’s a link to his original post and the transcript. Bold highlights were added to emphasize important points.
I want to start off by saying that I am honored and humbled to be here. When SFC Chain asked me to speak I checked to make sure he was messaging the right guy because honestly I never expected to receive that message. I immediately, upon that confirmation, jumped at the chance to speak to the graduates of the Master Marksmanship Trainer Course 03-18.
You see, the people in this room, guests, cadre and most importantly the graduates are the future of Army Marksmanship. One would be pretty naïve to assume that anyone could stand here and say that we don’t have issues in that realm. Five weeks ago, you may or may not have agreed that we are a couple of minutes of angle off across the Army.
During the course, you have learned better ways to shoot and train, things you never heard of, and things you learned in basic training and lost over the years. You slaughtered some sacred cows and destroyed perpetual myths centered on our service rifle. You are now part of a relatively small group of people in the Army that have attended an Army level class on marksmanship.
Until MMTC unveiled, the last formal, Army level marksmanship training was basic training. Think about the thousands of leaders and soldiers that have done nothing more than execute what their Drill Sergeants taught them over their careers with no chance of learning more.
If you were lucky, you had the privilege of attending one of the many Division Schools like I ran when I attended MMTC in 2015. While these schools were awesome training, they lacked one important element that MMTC does not. Army-wide recognition. We trained people and when they left the Division, that knowledge was often met with “that’s great, but here is how we do it. ”
When you walk out those doors you are not facing that challenge of trying to sell your skills. You have the backing of the Infantry School. You also have something else that is near and dear to my heart. That would be TC 3-22.9. By now you have been in that book and if you wondered who the good idea fairy was, well, that’s me.
That book was written under this simple guidance “write the book you needed while you were instructing” The course I ran for 10th Mountain graduated 1600 students under my watch. 1600 people learned and executed great things and went back to their units only to be hamstrung by an old book. My team and stakeholders from across the Army, active and reserve, set out to make a book that supported not only everything we have learned in the war but something that would support good marksmanship techniques and most importantly, teaching techniques.
We not only vetted the book within the Army, but we brought in several professional instructors from across the industry. Many of them have been teaching every weekend for 10+ years as their primary income. These pros helped us streamline the message and cleared up wording to make it teach more effectively. Believe that these guys are on your side and want nothing more than effective American Soldiers. Many times, business comes second and they gave the Army things that people would pay a lot of money to learn.
In our research, we found some things. Our weapons aren’t bad for what we are asking them to do. All of you fired issued weapons from five meters out to 600 meters. The ammunition is good enough for what we are asking it to do. You guys know this as you got hits. If the weapons and ammo aren’t the problem, what is?
Is it the caliber of Solider? If that were it, it wouldn’t cover 40 years of marginal performance
Is it the number of rounds we fire? Could be in some cases but if SFC Chain and the cadre had simply said, “here is 100,000 rounds; blast away” without any teaching would you guys have seen the improvement you made the past few weeks?
We decided that is was WHAT we were saying and how we were saying it. We relooked what we were providing to leaders and instructors to teach. Here at Fort Benning, you can’t present anything that isn’t in a book. No matter what we wanted to teach, the book was the book. I think we made big strides on fixing that.
So that leads to what you guys learned here in MMTC. For those in the room, you were successful. Some were not. The difference is the message that the cadre challenged and graded you on delivering. You had to group to higher standards than normal, get more precise zeros and get hits beyond what many of you were used to. You also had to teach back things that improved your own performance. You not only learned how to shoot better but learned how to make others shoot better, which is the big picture.
This is how we are improving Army Marksmanship. No more will you leave a school and not be able to use the information provided there because a leader asks one simple question, “What does the book say?” The knowledge passed on to you from the cadre cannot be undermined nor argued with by those who have always done it one way. When you go back to your units and later your next unit, that knowledge will still be relevant.
I close with a challenge. I challenge you, the MMTC graduates to transfer all the knowledge gained here to four people. You may get more than that but if you can get four people to the same level you are the result will be astounding. You and your subordinates need to get the message out to 1 million people as they fire 400 million rounds next year. You now know how to get all the rounds you and your Soldiers are allocated and the best ways to use them. Those rounds will be fired, we hope, but the question remains are they good rounds or are they fired the same way we always have done it.
I thank you for all you are doing and you have my support in your continued efforts.
One thing that stood out right away is that it says in two places that trigger finger placement should be natural, since people have different hand sizes. Now where have I heard that before? Oh right, SARG, Kyle Defoor, Pat Mcnamara… Glad to see it finally make it into the official literature!
Still skimming through it to see what else is changed in there.
– Patrick T.
Cutting edge shooting technique and ideas that will be adopted by top private trainers and special operations a few years from now can be found in competition circles today. Big Army will adopt in a few decades later. Any “new” material in TC 3-22.9 was widely understood and used in the competitive communities decades ago.
This has been the trend since the mid 1800s when the Industrial Revolution made it practical to issue rifled firearms to the masses.
Firearm User Network 