Training Lethal Crews

Training Lethal Crews by Sergeant First Class (P) Ernest Roth Throughout annored warfare's history, victory at the sma11 unit level has gone to me tank crews that were able to act and react faster than their opponenlS. Poorly trained and prepared crews were, and still are, nothing more than targets, casualties waiting to happen. Today, many tank crews are weak in the tactical skills that will allow them to survive while defeating the enemy. What follows are some observations on why many tank crews fail on the ban1efield. TIley are based on my experience as an observer/controller at the National Training Center. Often, crews lack "tactical sense." They cannot analyze and plan an upcoming opemtion at their level because they don't know how to visualize and anticipate the battlefield. Many crews do not have an awareness of their own situation, much less the enemy's technical capabilities, how the enemy operates tactically, or how the effects of terrain will impact on them all. Because crews cannot do these things, they can't lake advantage of the ebb and flow that make up every battle to best position themselves to kill and swvive. Situational awareness and tactical sense are directly related. Tank crews often display poor situational awareness, leading to confusion and slow response. Confusion and slow response times means poor actions on contact. Additionally, crews will not display much initiative at seizing opportunities or reacting to the unexpected, which is the bread and butter of all successful tactical operations. The result? One less Iartk and crew in the fight. Many tankers have a poor understanding of the technical aspects of their weapons systems. Obviously, if crewmen don't understand how to optimize the tank's fire control system, they will be at a great disadvantage on the battlefield. They might also be dead. The core of this problem is a lack of well thought-out, focused, and aggressively executed training at crew level. Training tends to be top-heavy, with little emphasis on individual or crew skills. Most units do a poor job of defining what really needs to be trained at the crew and platoon level. The frrst step in developing lethal crews is defining realistic collective tasks. Only tasks that are absolutely critical to mission success should be included in a collective task list. Critical collective tasks should be selected from tasks that are related to "shoot," "move," and "communicate." Collective task lists often include too many tasks, and are very generic, leaving crews to guess at what tasks they should train given the usual training constraints all units have to deal with. Of the five manuals that relate to tank company craining - FM 17- 15, FM 71-1, FM 71-1 MfP, ARTEP 17-237-10-MfP, and FM 17-12-1-2- only the last one discusses crew training, and then only in very broad tenns. As a result, training is often haphazard and broad in nature. Following is an example of a platoon collective task list focused on shooting, moving, and communicating:

• Perfonn tactical planning

• Produce a platoon fire plan

• Prepare for tactical operations

• Conduct rehearsals for a mission

• Perfonn platoon fire and movement

• Perfonn an attack by fire

• Assault an enemy position

• Occupy a platoon battle position

• Action drill

• Contact drill

• React to indirect fife drill

• Change fonnation drill Fundamentally. being a lethal crew is simple - kill the enemy and swvive. Using terrain, and acquiring and engaging the enemy must be second-nature and quick. A tank crew contributes to banlefield success by being at the right place at the right time and killing the enemy. To kill the enemy, a crew must first fmd them by searching constantly in a focused manner. Focus comes from the ability to anticipate enemy actions and locations, to recognize signatures, and to have a sense of how terrain af- 34

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fects both the crew and the enemy. Contributing to survival are movement routes and firing positions that give cover and concealment. proper speed, and early acquisition of the enemy as well as the skills to kill him quickly. Maintaining situational awareness en hances a crew's survival. While simple in concept, situational awareness re quires much practice and discipline to develop to a high degree. Communica tion is keeping the boss, other crews, and subordinates informed of what you and the enemy are doing, your status, any support that you may need, and any other important information. The two paragraphs above are functions of shooting, moving, and communicating; training must develop the self-discipline to perform these functions continuously, whatever the circumstances. Collective ta~k lists should include only those functions. After identifying the right collective tasks, crews can begin training using the crawl, walk, run technique. An ex cellent start is to play through historical small unit engagements using a terrain board with micro armor while the NCOs and officers in the company look on. Replaying historical engagements has several advantages. First, they rein force doctrine by showing what hap pened when units followed, or failed to follow, doctrine instead of just talking about it. Second, leaders can learn visually how every battle, however large or small, has periods of intense activity and lulls. The instructor can show how movement techniques, stand ard drills, communications, use of ter rain, killing, and the ability to "read" the battle are related, and when applied together result in lethal crews. Reading the battle is quickly analyzing the situ ation and understanding what you have to do to create a result in your favor. Finally. historical replays give today's soldiers a link to the past that reinforces a sense of continuity and stimulates thought and the will to emulate the past performances of others. Some good ex amples include: the battle of Singling. Hill 253 during the Battle of Kursk. 25th Panzer Regiment's attack against the French 3rd DLM. and II th Panzer Division's small unit actions along the Chir River in 1942. Accounts of Israeli armored actions during the 1973 war also provide good examples for use as historical vignettes. A bibliography at the end of this article lists sources where these and other vignettes can be obtained. Using the terrain board, lead ers can train soldiers to analyze situ ations quickly and teach techniques and methods of shooting. moving. and com municating, as individual crews and as part of a platoon. The instructor gives tactical problems to the leaders (tank commander and above) with a time limit to come up with a solution. One leader is selected to move to the terrain board and show his solution. Other leaders and the instructor ask questions about how the demonstrator arrived at his solution and point out its strengths and weaknesses. Then another leader is chosen and the process repeats itself. The advantage of this technique is that it allows everyone to learn that there is more than one way to solve a tactical problem. It also leads to a standard way of thinking within the unit about tactical situations; this is the first step in devel oping an effective SOP Tactical problems should be simple at first. Moving a tank from point A to point B is a good start. Leaders should be given a fair amount of time to work out a solution. As NCOs and officers gain experience and knowledge, the problem~ can become more complex and the time allotted for solutions short ened. Eventually a platoon will be given a problem and each leader will demon strate how his crew would contribute to the overall success of the platoon. Some things must happen for this type of training to be successful. First, the technique requires an instructor with both an excellent grasp of history and knowledge of the tactical thought nec essary to have success on the modern battlefield. Ideally, both the commander and the first sergeant should be able to do these things. If they are not able to act as instructors, another leader must step up. There are almost always one or two soldiers in every unit that meet the prerequisites. Second, this training must be scheduled at least one day every two weeks, preferably weekly. Third, leaders must train their soldiers on the things they learn in these classes. Sergeant's Time, UCOFT, PGT, and the SIMNET all provide a good training environment for junior leaders to train their soldiers on the things they have learned on the terrain board. Company leadership must hold subordinates accountable for pass ing on lessons learned. Finally, the training event must remain focused on crew level tasks that must be accom plished to be lethal on the battlefield. The walk phase of crew level training is an extension of the crawl phase using the same methods and techniques at a training area. Because it costs so much to operate tanks. the unit may have to substitute with IfM~1WVs. M1I3s. or simulations. It is time now for the entire crew to pelfoml the task instead of just the tank commander. The training should be built around a lane and fo cused on one crew task from the collec tive task list. As with the terrain board, initial situations should be simple to al low the crew to build competency, and the task should be repeated until the crew displays a high degree of profi ciency. Too often, units try to train too many tasks, allowing little or no time to repeat tasks _. much less repeat them until they become second nature. This is critically important, because so much of what a tank crew does in combat is based on drills. Drills only become such when the crews doing them can act al most without thinking. The same is true of SOPs. The company or troop leadership must be involved in evaluating the lane. The experience the commander and first sergeant bring to the lane is very important in teaching junior lead ers how to do something better. More importantly, their presence reinforces the importance of tactical proficiency. During crew training, two lanes will normally be used to teach separate tasks and maximize training time. The commander, first sergeant, executive officer, and a platoon leader or platoon sergeant can operate the lanes as ob server/controllers. When the com mander and XO are going through a lane as tank commanders, the other platoon leaders or platoon sergeants can act as observer/controllers. This al lows a company or troop to train two critical tasks per training period for every crew. While this may not sound like much, an entire average battle task list can be trained over a six month pe riod if the company trains two tasks per month. By keeping the tasks trained in anyone period to a minimum, crews can repeat a given task many times un til they are truly proficient - not just familiar - with that task. Lanes should be set up to reward those crews that do things right by al lowing them to kill and survive. A lane should also punish incorrect tactics and techniques by "killing" the crew, or the crew failing to "kill" the enemy. Obvi ously, the terrain and tactical problem should allow a crew to use cover and concealment and force it to correctly acquire and engage enemy forces. Us ing two O/Cs per lane allows the train ing to be viewed from two separate lo cations, giving a better overall picture of how a crew tackles a tactical prob lem. The company or troop leadership must know what the pace of each train ing event will be so that they can be at the right places in time to observe

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