David Hackworth on Unit Training

How large organizations falter

As is the norm for this series, I will begin with a series of quotes from David Hackworth’s “About Face”. However, due to the nature of the subject at hand, in this article the quotes will be much shorter and pulled from different sections.

-Pg. 369-371, on taking command of an AD company stationed in Santa Monica.

“Initially (and naturally) my men hated me. Most were draftees, a number were Regular lazy-assed AD NCOs. All of them reminded me of the National Guardsmen in Company D/223d, and I pushed them just as hard as I had the heavy-weapons company boys, from the moment they stood reveille at 0600. The only people who hated me more were the Army wives (who’d gotten pretty comfortable with their husbands’ sixteen-hours-at-home, nonsoldiering soldier’s lives), the local community (which had to bear our singing and counting as we ran down the beach every morning), and my battalion CO, Liutenant Colonel George L. Theisen, a weak, unsure, ex-lawyer commander who knew precious little about soldiering and nothing at all about leadership. Swayed by the bellyaching of some of those shrewd career NCOs who’d figured AD was a good way to mark time until I’d come in and upset their Sunny California vacation, Theisen was constantly after me to cut out the training. Air defenders, said he, did not have to be paratroopers. My stock answer was that the 6th ARADOM CG, Major General W. G. McGaw, had put out a training memo calling for an hours PT every morning, and I was “just following orders sir”. In truth, I knew the sort of training I was putting these men through was unnecessary; in AD the odds of their needing the stamina or the infantry-like skills I insisted upon were slim to none. But at the same time, these were line soldiers. There was no excuse for their not being kept physically tough and ready to go, regardless of the cushy jobs they had going at the moment.”

Pg. 545-546 On “Swift Strike 3”, an annual exercise involving the 101st Airborne.

“At one stage, I watched several 101st rifle companies making their way toward a small hill that controlled a road and a wide valley below. The battlegroup commander accompanying this force spotted an “enemy” element moving toward the same objective, and suddenly the exercise became a contest of who could get there first. Before my eyes I saw the 101st’s units storming the top of that hill; there was no tactical formation, just a mob of four hundred paratroopers, waving their weapons, running like hell and screaming. They reached the top of the objective before the “enemy”, and were rewarded by an umpire who ruled that the 101st “had the combat power” on the hill, they’d won. I was amazed. No one—the umpire, the battlegroup commander, the company leaders, or the troopers themselves—seemed to realize that their shortcut to success would never have worked on a hot battlefield. “Men will do in battle what they have been in the habit of doing in training”, General Bruce Clarke, one of the U.S. Army’s greatest training generals, had written in his then recently published “Guidelines for the Leader and the Commander”: in this case, both leaders and their men had been patted on the back for doing it wrong, and I wondered how many were going to die when King of the Mountain was played for real.”

Pg. 187-188 On training and selecting for a specialized “raider” platoon in Korea.

“Training started the minute an individual was accepted. The first week as all basic individual stuff—how to scoot and shoot. My foundation was solid: Crispino, Costello, and Wells from George and McLain, Smalling, Ropele, Lipka, Sovereign, Bill Hearn and Jimmy Mayamura from Easy were all seasoned combat warriors. The Raider NCOs taught most of the classes—all hands-on, no classroom shit—and every hour of every twenty-four hour training day became a test in which someone was eliminated. The weak fell out, the strong made it, and by the end of the week we were down to sixty guys.

The second week was squad training. “Your Squad”, I’d say to an NCO, “train it”. The men practiced ambush and counter-ambush tactics until they could do them in their sleep. The volunteers progressed from the basics to the more specific skills needed when operating behind enemy lines: how to cut throats, use a garrote, and toss a razor-sharp hand ax with pinpoint accuracy. Attitude, motivation, discipline, intelligence and common sense, physical fitness and the ability to think under pressure were harshly measured: more men fell out and we were down to fifty.

The final week we trained as a unit, repeating, repeating, repeating until everything was second nature. Well-planned raids on U.S. and South Korean installations served as the final exam. I figured if novices could infiltrate friendly positions protected by armed and shaky clerks who’d shoot to kill, then operating behind enemy lines would be a piece of cake.”

Pg. 342-343 On training a National Guard rifle company on attacking in Korea.

“Fighter company was excellently trained in defensive matters by the time we hit reserve, not just from “being there” in the trench war, but through our leaders and NCOs’ constant drills on staying alert and staying alive. But in war, the purpose is to strike your enemy, not to sit back and wait from him to strike you. You defend only long enough to reach out, attack, and clobber your opponent. And you have to do it confidently, at a moment’s notice. Any soldier who lived through that first year of the Korean War knew this. Unfortunately, young leaders who tried out their wings since we’d dug in did not, which was why, I supposed, the Army had cooked up reserves like this one, which was for training in the offense…

…Fighter’s unit training had begun with the smallest and most important element—the squad. Eleven men would go on the attack with live ammunition, repeating the drill again and again, one squad at a time, until they were truly proficient. I made them train at night, too; one of the major shortcoming of Army training was its stupid dawn-to-dusk philosophy of fighting, despite the fact that our enemy, who had almost zero air power, was forced to operate at night.

Once the squads had their act together, we’d moved on to the Platoon in the Attack. When that became second nature, the training culminated in a Company in the Attack program, in which the whole unit jumped off with live fire—just like a full-steam-ahead Wolfhound assault, (except that no one was shooting back)— and attacked a series of hills in the training area. It was fun, exciting, and a great learning experience for me—the first time I’d commanded a company-sized attack versus being one of the cogs that made the thing happen….

…This final phase of the training had given Fighter a great sense of cohesiveness and confidence. It gave the men a chance to see for themselves what the maneuvering of infantry was all about: the employment of every possible bit of firepower brought down on an objective to pin the enemy down, and then the fire being lifted and shifted at the last moment, so the guys could come up from under it to close with the enemy to destroy them with rifles and bayonets. The men could see the mortars dropping in, watching their interplay with the recoilless rifles, then understand how the machine guns—and finally they themselves—fit into this great concerto. All support fire was free fire; in real offensive combat, mortar rounds would pop right in front of the men and machine-gun fire zing just inches over their heads, so the guys had to learn how to trust themselves and their buddies, to know the gunners weren’t going to hit them with poorly aimed fire. Safety was stressed, but not at the expense of overall, realistic training value.”

Finally, Pg. 1017-1018 On the Army’s training efficiency at the time of writing, (the 1980’s).

“A couple of years ago, I dropped in on a brigade commander whom I’d known when he was a young Lieutenant. The previous day, one of his troops had been killed during a Chemical-Biological-Radiological (CBR) training exercise, and this stud Colonel was scared. It wasn’t so much that his career was involved; it was that word had immediately come down from Division to put an end to all CBR training until further notice. This, he told me, was the routine response to training casualties on posts around the country. Yet that sort of reaction can hardly be in the Army’s best interest. Training for war must be realistic at all costs. We can’t just discontinue a curriculum when something bad happens, provided that something is not the result of misconduct on the parts of sadistic or unqualified instructors, (and then the instructors, not the curriculum, should be dealt with, as in the recent case of Naval petty officer Michael Combe, who was tried and sentenced for the negligent homicide of a recruit whose head had been forced under water in a training pool after the recruit panicked). Training casualties, tragic as they may be, must be accepted as an occupational hazard in the tough and dangerous business of soldiering. The emphasis on safety at the expense of realism may keep Congress and Mrs. Lump Lump at bay, (on one post I visited I learned that the ratio of safety personnel to actual participants in live-fire training exercises was almost 1:1), but it sets up the soldiers it presumably is protecting for failure by stunting their growth and inhibiting their confidence in themselves and their supporting weapons. It’s like a fledgling football team learning blocking and tackling by sitting in a room watching video tapes. It is unimaginable that these men would be sent into their first game against seasoned competitors with such training, which could only have them feeling alien and removed from the basics that must be second nature in order to survive, much less to win. And because “Wars are not fought in grassy meadows on sunny afternoons”, as Wellington correctly said, today’s training must be scheduled to last extended periods of time in conditions as close to the battlefield as possible. Training exercises must not be controlled, but instead be completely free play with platoons aggressing against platoons, companies against companies, and battalions against battalions in a simulated combat environment in which soldiers can discover for themselves that war is not a series of canned problems with a limited range of responses, but a human encounter in which the unexpected always happens and flexibility is the key.”

Lessons to take from this 1: Dynamism and risk-reduction

The issues plaguing the army’s unit training are very similar to the issues which affect nearly all large organizations in modern life. Complete centralization and aversion to risk are human nature to a large extent, it is a very simply choice. When it comes to most organizations, the risks in question aren’t nearly the same of course; most major corporations risk low-level management decisions that will temporarily cut profits, not losing soldiers lives to short mortar rounds. However, the solutions taken are very similar: removing low-level agency and reducing possibilities of human error.

The effects of these actions are twofold. First, it reduces the dynamism of an organization to remove what I will call “frontline” decision-making. To continue using the military example, removing a company commander’s ability to demote or promote soldiers without approval from several echelons higher ensures that poor leaders remain in squads and platoons far longer than they should. Requiring a mandatory “pattern of misconduct” to chapter a bad soldier, (and there are bad soldiers), out of the military altogether allows companies to have large numbers of personnel who must be constantly supervised, removing time and energy from leaders which could be spent training soldiers most efficiently.

Now, those in the know may raise problems here. “I know X company commander or platoon leader who had no business as an officer, why would I ever want him to have that level of authority over his unit?” This brings me to the second effect of risk-reduction, the ability to place incompetent people in dangerously powerful positions without great concern. At the lowest level I can think of, within a 60mm mortar squad it is not uncommon for a Specialist, (average age of around 19-21), to be entrusted with calculating the trajectory of rounds which will land only just out of blast range of friendly troops. Now, one would obviously hope for this individual to be both intelligent and cool under pressure, because if he isn’t someone can very easily die. However, the army has a different solution to the issue of competence in this area: give the mortars a different impact area than the area in which infantrymen maneuver. The mortar rounds are simulated to land in the same training area, but in reality the mortars are often aiming at a different area altogether. Even if this is no the case, the mortar rounds are fired so far away from infantry maneuvers that a real enemy would receive little to no suppression at all.

As with the company commander, those of you who know your local mortarmen are likely thankful for these safety measures. I, for one, do not trust the vast majority of them to file their own taxes, let alone calculate smoothly under pressure, (at least not analog— I say all of this while knowing several who are complete geniuses). Because of these risk-reduction measures, there isn’t much concern for whether or not a mortar squad leader can do fire support computation efficiently. It isn’t even something most company commanders concern themselves with. Therefore, most of them can’t. I personally knew a mortar SECTION SERGEANT who did not know how to turn the LHMBC, (mortar calculation device) on, let alone use it, and I discovered this fact during an NTC rotation. I met another who had no clue how to use an M2 compass, a device necessary for effective use of a light mortar system. But both of these individuals were very proficient in the military counseling system, which is deemed of equal importance because no one ever saw these individuals doing their actual jobs incorrectly or cared to look because there was simply no risk. These issues are also present in the regular infantry, I simply find the mortar example easier to use.

The same is sorts of issues are present in commanders. Platoon leaders have little-to-no idea how to conduct basic shift/lift fires, and don’t even bother learning how to use the fire support systems they are allotted. But no one notices this except the Platoon Sergeant right by his side, and nothing will be done about it because, as a PL, he isn’t actually expected to know his job yet. Were he actually in control of real rounds that fell dangerously close to his men often, an incompetent PL would be treated as a serious issue, but instead it’s just the standard. This PL will eventually be a company commander, controlling three or more rifle platoons simultaneously.

Perhaps the most common inside joke of the infantry…

(As I understand it, some of the issues I just detailed are less prevalent within the Marine Corps, but not to a large enough degree.)

To tie this back in to my point on large-scale civilian organizations, at a company I once worked for, to fire an employee permission was necessary from a regional manager. This was most likely to avoid employment/termination-related lawsuits, but the effect was apparent. One of my coworkers was tasked with placing tags on items, or even putting said items of the shelf— a simple task. When she could not locate one, she would simply throw it in the trash. She was employed for months after being confronted on this, and eventually left on her own terms; it was simply deemed more effort than it was worth to get her fired and hire a replacement. Another effect of this insane system of management was that the quality of management itself dropped tremendously. The manager who was working when I was first hired would simply assign employees tasks at random, completely unaware and uncaring of the relative work-load that they had nor the effects these taskings had on the quality of customer service.

Once I applied for a commission-based salesman position. When I went to the interview, I noticed that the building was somewhat hidden and lacked advertisement. During the interview, I was asked how I would increase store profits, and I said that I would put some more advertisement out front so that those driving by would at least know the location of the store— since it was the only store of its kind nearby this would easily increase profits. The interviewer responded that in order to advertise, she would need written permission from the district manager, a process which would take several weeks. Since this was a commission-based position, I was obviously a little bit miffed about that. I didn’t end up working there, there was just no way I would be allowed to shape policy in a store in which I was the primary salesman, so there was little point in taking a job which paid by sale. I can only assume that the purpose behind this was either to reduce store expenditures or avoid any sort of offensive advertisement.

To summarize this section, removal of any risk of human error removes dynamism from an organization. It does this by taking away agency from frontline managers/leaders. Removing agency also removes responsibility, enabling the blame to be passed upward rather than laid on firmly. This, in turn, produces incompetent leaders; leaders who will likely move upwards and poorly manage at higher and higher levels. Many of my fellow writers on this app refer to a “competency crisis”, this is where it originates.

2: Government Priorities

On a much less general level, the reduction of risk in military training demonstrates very clear priority given to name and face over efficiency. This is common across the board with the United States government, but with regard to its military the issue has much higher severity. Lessons learned incorrectly in training can be directly linked to deaths in real conflicts. One of the most common killers of U.S. troops during the opening stages of the invasion of Iraq was fratricide, often by aviation assets. There was a pretty commonly viewed video from the war in Afghanistan of a National Guard or Reservist supply unit lighting up infantrymen who were pinned down in a wadi, and they could not be reached because they were on the incorrect frequency. When IEDs are not accounted for, U.S. soldiers were almost as dangerous to one-another as the insurgents were during GWOT, and IED deaths themselves could very easily be linked to poor training and understanding of how to counter them by commanders.

This is not to insult the professionalism of soldiers or marines in our military, there are many who are dedicated to their craft one-hundred percent of the time. However, there are also quite a few who are not, and far too many of them occupy positions in which the consequences of their actions are life and death. Even those who are dedicated to their job will act on habits that they learned in training, and the most dedicated soldiers can still be taught incorrectly.

For myself and almost all of my veteran friends to be able to see all of this clearly means that it should be obvious to senior leaders of the military, even if they are now civilians. However, it seems to be of little concern. Much more concern, (and money), has been dedicated to shaping the military’s image to be anti-racist, LGBTQ friendly, etc.. This isn’t to make a statement on a lack of importance for any of these issues, (although I have strong opinions on the subject), but it is to highlight the priority given to them over real-world deaths. Perhaps we should realign ourselves…

3: Organizations are made up of individuals

I have had many people tell me that different units within the army vary greatly in professionalism, and that “their” unit is the best among the conventional units. I know this to be true. Every unit within the military has its own strengths and weaknesses, and some are outright better. However, the army regularly moves NCOs and officers between units, ensuring that there is distribution of skillsets and cultures across the board. Therefore, in theory, all units should be able to be held to a rough sort of standard. In fact, some of the army’s “best units” have the same issues visible in its “worst units”, (I’m going just off of reputations not my own opinions), so to simply play it off as though systemic issues only plague “bad” units is a non-answer.

Organizations are made up of individuals. Individuals have individual character. Within any organization there are good ones, and there are bad ones. However, better incentive structures and selection/training processes enable the discovery and removal/remediation of bad individuals as well as the promotion of and utilization of good ones. Within the military, there are individuals who simply don’t know what they’re doing, (I wanted to include the pic of the female captain with her FLC on backwards, but had trouble finding it). There are also “stewards of the profession”, those who are truly dedicated to the art of war.

Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson

comes to mind, anyone who is still in should definitely read some of his work.

The simple truth is that the modern military, in its obsessive quest for more managerialism and risk-reduction has removed positive incentive structures. To use my previous example, even company commanders of good character are not incentivized properly to investigate the efficiency of their mortar sections, (a unit which responds directly to them). However, they are incentivized to good through their men’s counseling folders and ensure that counselings are being done properly, as there is much more direct career risk related to that than there is a poorly trained mortar section. This is an issue regardless of your view on the counseling process, which is not what I intend to address here. Priority must return to the effective use of assets and troops, and this is done by creating good structures.

My first real encounter with military incompetence came when I was a private. At the first shoot house I ever did, my squad leader checked all of our magazines to ensure we had no live rounds present. We had not been issued any ammunition yet, so I found this somewhat peculiar. However, when he got to our supply NCO, (who was attached to use for training), he found five live rounds at the bottom of her first magazine, which was about to be loaded into her rifle and pointed at our “enemy” squad. Now, this woman was an E5 in the modern military. How on Earth she was able to be so careless was beyond my understanding, even at 18. However, my squad leader at the time didn’t even raise the issue. As he said later, “that’s POGs for you”.

Now think about it. Had he raised the issue, what would have even happened. At most likely a mark on an NCOER. Now, let’s say that same supply NCO was responsible for a lost piece of equipment, something pricy that the commander had signed for. Oh buddy…

This is sort of a loose anecdote, but it captures what I mean by “bad incentive structure”. The only way to ensure that actual combat ability is taken seriously by units who aren’t actively deployed is to make actual combat ability matter. And the only way to do that is to allow for reasonable levels of risk in training.

On the subject of military training directly

To close this essay off I’m going to drop the analogies and comparisons and stay on the subject of military unit training itself for a moment. Simply put, on average it’s a joke. Live fire events with one, (1), hand grenade present, or just a singular AT-4, (which will be fired only by an E5 or above), and other similar events are a laughing-stock. All soldiers within every squad should be at least loosely familiar with the weapons systems that they carry. There should be no excuse as to why soldiers in a line company do not know how to use every weapon system assigned to that company save perhaps the 60mm mortar system in its conventional configuration. Yet this happens every day. I can remember practically begging to learn how to set up and use an ASIP for almost a year, then having to learn it live when I had troops of my own. Using an ASIP should be instilled in privates!

To step away from the individual level, think about how often training is done on the level of platoon and above in the short duration. Most battalion AOs are large enough to conduct company on company operations on MOUT in, and there isn’t much reason that comes to mind to explain why more company commanders wouldn’t want to plan such events. The simple truth of the matter is that they’re overly bogged down with bureaucratic nonsense most of the time. That’s not to say that bureaucracy isn’t somewhat of a necessary evil, but it’s greatly exaggerated by an obsession with constant data updates and metrics.

Lastly, training is just not designed realistically. Which of our rival nation-states do we outnumber in terms of infantrymen? None. So why do we believe that we will always be able to concentrate 3:1 odds in battle? This hasn’t even occurred in our most recent wars; often in both Iraq and Afghanistan America troops were outnumbered by the insurgents in many large battles, particularly during the invasion. Much of this results in a misunderstanding of where the 3:1 ratio originates. The idea is to shape firepower to give Americans as close to a 3:1 advantage as possible; this means destroying enemy weapon systems which are the most serious threat at all echelons. Yet we don’t require commanders to think like this, especially at platoon or below. When the Platoon in the Attack is drilled now it is virtually always done against a squad or less of enemy combatants, yet one of our most anticipated conflicts is against China, a country with a population of over 1.3 billion people. Do we not expect them to conduct a draft? Yet even in places who are dedicated to the issue such as

The Connecting File

, (whose efforts I respect greatly), scenarios are still drawn up which place our infantry at a 3:1 advantage in numbers before the battle even begins. Again, this isn’t to argue against attempting force concentration, but to state that, in fact, force concentration with respect to numbers was historically attempted just as often at the platoon level as it was at the division, using the second world war as my primary reference, (a good example of this is POW raids in both WW2 and Korea), or, if we use Korea, simply not even thought to be possible. The United States has very rarely enjoyed major advantages in numbers, often utilizing firepower to overcome this such as in Korea and Vietnam. Commanders must be forced to use the assets available to them in training, or they will forget how to do so in combat.

To end this essay, unit training is not poor as a result of an army staffed with bad people. It is poor because it is an army in which being a poor soldier or leader is tolerable behavior, and this incentivizes the lowest effort possible at all times. I know many great military men, (some even stayed in), who overcome this, but the vast majority will eventually succumb to simple laziness and apathy, particularly as retirement closes in. Managerialism, the death of the dynamic economy, cannot be allowed to become the death of a dynamic and responsive military, or our nation is in trouble.