Major combat ops to return in training - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Major combat ops to return in training

After seven years of war in a counterinsurgency environment, the Army will resume training next summer on major combat operations by using simulators in scenarios against a hypothetical uniformed force.

But the brigade-level exercise won’t look anything like exercises did before Sept. 11, 2001.

For the first time, commanders will incorporate stability operations in the same proportion as offensive and defensive combat, or full-spectrum operations.

It’s part of conducting the first test run with FM 7-0 — “Training for Full Spectrum Operations” — to be launched at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., on Dec. 16.

It is the first update to the Army’s global training manual since 2002.

The exercise will involve at least one brigade that is between war-zone rotations, said Brig. Gen. Robert “Abe” Abrams, deputy commander of training at the Combined Arms Center. The location hasn’t been determined.

“It will be amongst people and it will have urban terrain. The difference is that we’ll be fighting against, instead of insurgents … a uniformed threat with combat vehicles, dismounted capabilities, anti-armor, unmanned aerial vehicles, armed aerial vehicles ... we’ve never fought against those,” Abrams said.

He described the return of major combat operations training as a “re-kindling of skill sets that we have to perform differently in major combat operations versus an irregular war environment.”

Units headed to the war zones will continue to train for those specific missions as long as operations are taking place. But, Abrams said, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey has directed a return to full-spectrum operations training scenarios at the Army’s Combat Training Centers as soon as units have a minimum of 18 months’ dwell time.

Abrams projected that the earliest time frame for that to occur would be sometime in fiscal 2010.

The rollout of FM 7-0 comes several months after the re-introduction of FM 3-0, which placed stability operations on par with combat operations for the first time in the Army’s history, and following the introduction of FM 3-07, a complete manual dedicated to the performance of stability operations.

The manuals represent a tectonic shift in the way soldiers prepare for missions. Even the way the manuals were written is a departure from the past.

FM 3-07 was published by the Army in October and includes input from federal agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other civilian organizations that would potentially become partners in a post-conflict environment.

Similarly, the development of FM 7-0 was a collaborative endeavor with internal input from soldiers within the Training and Doctrine Command school houses in ranks as junior as captain and sergeant.

“This is really the first time that we’ve gotten grass-roots input and buy-in from the change of direction we’re going to take in terms of training full-spectrum operations,” Abrams said. “Our troops today are conducting full spectrum operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in an irregular warfare environment. So we’re perfectly capable, we’re training to do it, but this codifies what we’ve been doing and puts it in doctrine. This is a change in mind-set.”

Another first is the adoption of standardized core mission essential task lists, or CMETL, at the brigade level and above.

Abrams used the example of heavy brigades to explain that each one used to have a different METL according to what commanders thought they needed.

Now, when commanders get a directed mission, he said, they can develop a directed METL, or DMETL.

“Below brigade level, they still have to go through the METL development process as always, but the difference is that every brigade will have the same BCT METL and that will influence what the battalions are training on,” Abrams said.

Additionally, the quarterly training briefs, in which there was “always an expectation that we would have to train everything,” Abrams said, will mandate commanders to assume some risk in what they realistically think they have time to train for.

The manual directs commanders to meet one on one so the higher commander can tell the lower commander what he wants to train on.

Training support packages for FM 7-0 have been sent to TRADOC schools and the programs of instruction have been changed.

To help guide instructor cadre, Abrams said, a “road show” team is traveling to give presentations to point out what’s new and different.

See the manual at the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center Web site.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FM7 HANDBOOK

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