Quote:
Originally Posted by Wiseman
Sir,
When the cadre member said better leadership, he was just talking about the basic battle drills such a 1A and he believes that knowing those is enough of a base for future learning. I should've explained this before. Is he wrong on that part or is he still right?
|
If trained and executed correctly, a battle drill requires zero leadership - it is a Pavlovian response to stimuli.
That being said, the training of a battle drill does require leadership, and it will be a necessary skill set for LDAC. So, there is some value to it.
I don't know enough about where your unit's training status is and what the events are for your semester, nor whether your MS classes will cover COIN (probably not), so I can't give a definitive answer based on my experience as to whether focusing on 1A is the right thing or not. Covering basics is usually never a bad idea, blocking and tackling if you will. I will state that the attitude of relegating COIN to an unnecessary topic is wrong, provided that his response was a general attitude and not solely a response to it in terms of the particular training event in question.
However, there is an opportunity to learn the art of leadership here.
Make this recommendation. Not sure how much you do PT, but it is possible to spend the last 10 minutes of PT doing a battle drills on an open field/area. It provides a great opportunity to do the drill and people aren't worried about getting sweaty/dirty because there already are going to have to take a shower. This will build the repetitive drill part on easy terrain, and you'll get some PT to boot out of it doing the IMT. You can then transition the drill during a STX or FTX onto some real terrain where it's not so easy to execute.
Send me a PM with your email and I can send you something that will provide some good ideas on how to train.