Platoon Assessment

[yellow oscar]

The P A s that you saw so many of were in fact only 6 IN TOTAL.

[coffee]

Does anyone know if Artillery get an assessment like this? Sounds fun!

most assesors stayed with the guns for 5 minutes then left, "they know what they are doing". someone on this board was mentioned for a lecture he gave by the arty school sgt major "impressive" was the term i believe.

[trellheim]

whoever that RDFTA BSM is he can tell jokes all right; I had to get up and leave I was laughing so hard in the Tac HQ

[hptmurphy]

Its called integration!!! (every PDF unit is supposed to have an RDF sub-unit and thats from the Implementation Plan 1998).

With an uptake of less than 300 persons out of a potential 6000 you could hardly call integration a sucess.

Yes they have sub units but an integertated element of 4 people to a Reserve troop does not make up a viable reserve element.

[trellheim]

Our line inf skills are coming around

But we need a hell of a lot of practice at the HQ Coy and Support Coy taskings

[Vickers]

It would help if the Pl Cdrs had a YOs course, and the Coy Cdrs & 2ICs had a Std Offr Cse done, as was recommended in the Admin O

I totally agree. Over a year ago I stated here:

In the RDF it is theoretically possible to go from recruit to Lt Col having only done two courses - PotNCO and Pot Officers. There are career courses linked to each promotion (eg Std NCO for promotion to Sgt; YO, Std Offr Cse and C & S (orientation) for Officer promotions). I believe that successfully completing the revelent cse should be a requirement for promotion. The reason given for not having this requirement is that there are not sufficient places available for the numbers involved. Yet (or perhaps as a result of this) not all places on all cses are taken up. Recently, the goalposts have moved with regard to promotion and Merit is the buzz word (see Admin Instr R5). Having successfully completed the linked career cse is a major plus for selection.

Recently, I have become somewhat disillusioned. Some recent offr promotions have, in my oppinion, been on seniority alone. Back to the bad old days. But thats for another thread.

[Docman]

The P A s that you saw so many of were in fact only 6 IN TOTAL.

Amazing...
In a drive from the Basecamps back to Coolmoney Camp, I counted 10. Must have transporter beams.....

It would help if the Pl Cdrs had a YOs course, and the Coy Cdrs & 2ICs had a Std Offr Cse done, as was recommended in the Admin O

Good one Kermit....

As if anyone ever got to see the Admin Order.

Don't you know, those things are locked up in a vault underneath the Curragh as soon as they are written to make sure that noone ever has more info than the guy who wrote it.

[Bravo20]

The problem is Kermit, the assessors were also supposed to have done a YOs or Standards course. So you can't be in two places at the one time.

[Muzzle]

Did Pln Cmds not have the YO's done?

[trellheim]

I was an assessor and I have done the YOs. there was a fair amount of skill on the assessment teams

One thing, having done a YOs in recent times does stand to you in a big way. If you're not practicing the stuff you get rusty fast [ ~2 years max ]

[SC Uilechumachtach]

Can we get back to the assessments shold they be improved for next year?

As you say yourself you reqularly make mistakes mark one up

[trellheim]

NO MORE tpt Posts here. Myself and Luchi have that battleground fairly well defined in the big driving thread ... let's take the mickey out of the next most paranoid corps ..... Artillery ! but in another thread.... let's take the assessments seriously for what they are

[California Tanker]

Why not use TEWTs?

The problem with a TEWT is that there is a sort of 'all-or-nothing' result out of it. "I set my base of fire here and engage the enemy on that hill." One of two things will happen, either it will be deemed 'successful' or it will not. When dealing with real troops, you are suddenly face with a whole number of independently thinking moving pieces, some of whom may completely misunderstand you, some of whom will ignore you and do something better, most of whom will do more or less what you want, and all level of results in between. It provides a level of chaos and unpredictability to the exercise and a requirement for clear communications, thus a challenge for the leader which a TEWT cannot provide. At Knox we had TEWTs, manned exercises with other Captains playing all ranks, and a proper command exercise with juniors filling the roles. Even with equal-ranking persons filling the slots, intelligent folk all supposedly ready for company command, we managed to get ourselves into situations which the TEWTs could not possibly have simulated.

When I said invisible forcefield, I was referring to the NCOs - most of whom ran around giving orders as if there was noone shooting at them....The Lts were not much better.

One of the reasons I very much like having a sniper in my unit. My previous unit had one, and it was very enlightening to have him speak to us about how he selects his targets. All those jokes about sniper checks and people saluting in the field is irrelevant: Leaders often will act in a manner which makes his own identification obvious, even when he shouldn't.

As for Coy Commanders being assessed only on their orders - Bull - they were assessed on every aspect of the Coy HQ, basecamp procedures. I watched as Assessors moved through Basecamps shaking their heads at the Christmas tree lightworks and total lack of discipline - noise & light, coy commanders lacking weapons & helmets etc. etc. It was all assessed.

I'm going to ask a basic question here, but are the resources given to companies to practise such things? Do they have enough helmets and weapons? When was the last time that they had sufficient manpower on the ground that they could set up a Coy CP? In my Guard units, even with the law saying 'you must show up to drill' I find myself giving HQ persons to the line platoons so that the line platoons get meaningful training out of a good number of people. If the CP operations assessment was the only time that the resources were ever given to carry them out, perhaps it is no wonder that they were so abysmal.

The proforma was set up to give marks for each part of the battle drills

That leads to another discussion I had at Knox. The concept of the Passing Fail or the Failing Pass. In order to pass something in the US Army, you generally need a rating of 70% or better. So, for something like the Troop Leading Procedures, you would be rated on each of the individual stages. "Did he correctly receive and analyse the mission?" "Did he issue a good warning order" and so on. Get 'Yes' on over 70% and you're a Go at this station.

The problem occurs when you are evaluating something which has a set number of steps, but of varying criticality. For example, you perform a function which has 10 steps, but if you fail at any single one of them, you will not complete the mission. You've scored 90%, so you're a pass... but you failed.

Conversely, if there's a ten-step process, you only do two of them but still achieve the mission, it becomes a failing pass.

The question then becomes 'What are you being assessed on?" If it is a "capability assessment", you arguably just want to look at the Final Answer. If the attack went most excellently, and everyone knew what they were supposed to do because everybody understood the orders, does it really matter that the officer did not use doctrinal radio procedure? It's a pass.

If it's a doctrine assessment, then the end result is pretty much irrelevant, and the results should be handed, in document format, to the unit reviewed explaining the failings. So if you want to judge the effectiveness of the assessment, given they had a checklist, there's your criteria. What happened their report cards? Were they submitted to higher and lost in the bureacratic morass, or were the evaluees given the raw data from which they could see their strengths and failings?

NTM

[Docman]

I'm going to ask a basic question here, but are the resources given to companies to practise such things? Do they have enough helmets and weapons? When was the last time that they had sufficient manpower on the ground that they could set up a Coy CP?

The resources are there for helmets & weapons.

Ok, The practice is not normally put in but some stuff that you learn as a recruit should never be forgotten. Light & noise discipline? - any 2 or 3* can tell you that stuff. Ok, screw up a coy deployment or formal orders - that is just lack of practice but start up a floodlight with a noisy generator in a forward base - any 3* can tell you what is wrong with that.

If it's a doctrine assessment, then the end result is pretty much irrelevant, and the results should be handed, in document format, to the unit reviewed explaining the failings. So if you want to judge the effectiveness of the assessment, given they had a checklist, there's your criteria. What happened their report cards? Were they submitted to higher and lost in the bureacratic morass, or were the evaluees given the raw data from which they could see their strengths and failings?
NTM

It was an assessment - not pass or fail. Basically they are probably looking for patterns - need for training in certain areas, lack of ability in others, stuff that worked well - as I said, the main pattern emerging (IMO) is the benefit of recent career courses.

The reports were submitted to the RDFTA staff who were there. They will probably disappear into the bureaucratic shambles that the Irish Army is. But most Pl Comds do get a copy of their assessment forms eventually.

[Come-quickly]

I have to question the effectiveness of harbouring up and then going non tactical for the night. Why bother with the pretence of going tactical in the first place?

If the objective was to practice patrol harbours and admin in the field fine, but since it was supposedly a pl attack assessment I fail to see what was to be gained from harbouring up just to go out of routine a few hours after the harbours were established.

Secondly if the intention is there to demonstrate that the sub units and their elements can live on the ground for a short period of time then why was time and effort wasted on putting exercise troops into the camp in the first place and having the usual admin flap on the departure day?

Why not concentrate all those resources into a field admin area and let the sub units carry on tactically from the outset and maintain a hard or soft routine for the duration. Instead of conditioning troops even those that were "fully" trained to get used to harbour routine just switching off when it gets tiresome.

If a harbour area is to be full tac - (chemical toilets aside....I hate you "safety") then it should be done in a fastidious manner which hammers home every detail and establishes the rhythm of life in the individual soldiers mind.
Sad but true, the Reserve is not at a stage where our three star soldiers are typically experienced in living on the ground for extended periods and increasingly the instinct of commanders and exercise staff seems to be to shut down harbours for the night and resume play the next day.

I saw a harbour with a poor track plan, inadequate shelters (two stretched horizontal ground sheets do not a bivouac make) and concealment measures, and I sincerely doubt any planned actions on for alternate entrances and exits or RV areas had been made.
Nor did NCOs seem to have considered collapsing bivvies that were not in use or having gear plans in the event of a bug out.
None of the units I saw were so good that they didn't need to treat their harbour routine as a learning experience.