Monday we start our real training for Iraq. The last two weeks we have been doing preparatory training, so I'm going to take a little time to talk about that.
When we arrived at Fort Riley, we were put up in barracks on Custer Hill, which is the part of Fort Riley where most units work, including the one responsible for preparing us for training. They are accustomed to having large groups come in to be trained, which means that their schedule was too expansive for our smaller class; there was a lot of open space on the schedule, which meant a lot of time where we didn't really have anything to do. There's not much the unit can do about that directly, but it would have helped had we known that going in so we could have done a little more work preparing opportunity training for our teams during dead space in the training.
One of the things that make this training much more challenging and I think useful is that we have a lot more responsibility for our training. Most Army schools involve a lot of being in receive mode: students all have roughly similar experiences, the program of instruction is very precise and the classes are designed to ensure that everyone comes out knowing what they need to know. But for the MiTT mission we are bringing together 10-15 soldiers from across the Army with varying degrees of experience. So the instruction can't be designed as one-size-fits all, because the types of soldiers being trained are too diverse to allow for a simple training solution. Instead the Army determines what people need to know as minimums, and it is the responsibility of the team commander to figure out where they need to focus in order to get to that point, plus to identify other areas where the team needs to train in order to be as successful as possible with the mission. It's a challenge, but that makes being a team commander a lot more fun because you are ultimately responsible for deciding how to train your team.
Having said that, it would have been helpful to know that going in so we could have set up some training for quiet moments so we could have taken advantage of the slack time in the training. It can be rightly argued that I should have figured that out on my own, but it would have been nice to have some one point that fact out to me anyhow, since even the best of us drop the ball from time to time.
Still, I was impressed with the efficiency of the process. We drew a lot of equipment for the trip: uniforms, boots, body armor, helmets, elbow and knee pads, eye protection, ear protection, gloves, weapons...three-plus duffel bags full of gear, to be precise. That could have been a very painful process, but the draw was laid out very intelligently and we were able to execute each draw about as quickly as anyone could expect. Having been through more than one equipment draw that was far more painful than necessary, this experience has been a pleasant surprise.
The one disappointment I have had has been the mandatory training. There are a number of classes that every soldier must take before going into theater, from Equal Opportunity/Prevention of Sexual Harassment (this may sound dumb, but this is particularly important going into a combat zone because when other restrictions are lifted, some people forget that others need to stay in place) to country briefings and lots of information on how to address the IED threats. The briefings were all conducted with a large number of soldiers in a theater environment using what we call 'Death by Power Point': one briefer standing at the front of the room reading slide after slide after slide. Most of the instructors were pretty good, but the amount of real learning that takes place in that environment is pretty low. The training would have been a lot better if we had simply been given the slides and a place where we could go through them as teams. This would have allowed us to conduct group discussions drawing on our experience and knowledge and would have resulted in a lot higher level of learning for all concerned. But it would also have required a lot more resources: rooms, computers to show the slides, etc., so it's not overly surprising they did the training the way they did.
Friday we moved from Custer Hill to Camp Funston. Camp Funston dates back to World War I. It's where American troops trained prior to heading to Europe to help the French and British win the First World War. Now it's also known as FOB (Forward Operating Base) Army Strong, and it's where all MiTT teams live and train prior to deploying to theater. It allows us to get some of the experience of living on a FOB in Iraq, and also provides a lot of space for training to be conducted. We'll be here for two months, and by the time we leave the team will be a lot better integrated and ready to deploy to Iraq. It promises to be an exciting ride, as we start out Monday with language training and cultural immersion training.