Collective training in the Australian Army is undergoing a process of fundamental change. Over the next four years, the Army will introduce a live Combat Training Centre (CTC) in a revolutionary approach to readiness evaluation. The new initiative builds on the success of an Interim Combat Training Centre project and is aimed at preparing Australian soldiers for the new and diverse challenges of military operations in the 21st century. The new CTC is expected to use advanced exercises against a notional opposing force (OPFOR) in order to bring about the most modern approach to readiness evaluation and training. 1
In embarking on the creation of a fully fledged CTC, the Australian Army should carefully note the experience of other armies in modern combat training. As we create a CTC system, it is unnecessary to ‘reinvent the wheel’. On the contrary, we stand to benefit greatly from the various lessons and insights that other armies have employed around the concept of advanced CTCs. Of all these current centres, those in the US Army are the most worthy of close consideration. This article examines how the Australian Army can derive operating lessons for training by identifying the main changes in the US Army’s use of CTCs over the last thirty years. While the main focus of analysis is on the manoeuvre, or live combat training system, it should be noted that many of the observations in this essay apply to constructive, or virtual, CTCs.2
The Evolution of the US Army's System of Combat Training Centres
In the 1970s, following the Vietnam War, the US Army showed many of the symptoms of a defeated ground force. The American military returned from South-East Asia suffering from low morale, outmoded training regimes and poor readiness standards. In an attempt to renew its professional expertise and transform its capabilities, the US Army introduced a system of CTCs. The aim was to reshape the character of American land forces in order that the US Army would be capable of fighting a large-scale conventional air-land battle in central Europe against the powerful Soviet-led Warsaw Pact armies. Today, more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, the US Army possesses a network of combat training centres that focuses on manoeuvre warfare. These centres include the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana; the Combat Maneuver Training Center at Hohenfels, Germany; and the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California.3 While all of these CTCs share a similar training philosophy, each one has a different focus. For example, the Joint Readiness Training Center primarily trains light forces, including airborne, air-assault, light infantry and special operations forces. The National Training Center, on the other hand, specialises in the training of heavier armoured and mechanised units. Since the end of the Cold War, there has been considerable change in the development and character of US Army CTCs. These changes have occurred most notably in the realm of OPFORs, in the area of simulating realism; in the role of observers and controllers (O/Cs); and in the use of diversified training modes.4
A Changing OPFOR: Adapting to a more Diverse Threat Environment
A key change in the development of American CTCs has been in the realm of the OPFOR. US Army CTCs were originally designed to provide training to meet the relatively predictable, Soviet-based heavy conventional opponent of the 1970s and 1980s. By the beginning of the 21st century, however, notional enemies had been reshaped away from heavy conventional forces towards smaller, multidimensional and more agile opponents that more accurately reflected the reality of fragmented information-age conflict. Today, the typical opposing force in a training exercise is a flexible, combined arms antagonist, capable of operating across a spectrum of conflict. Such a spectrum includes mass infantry attack; assault by small, independent manoeuvre elements; and operations by unpredictable and asymmetric forces that are organised to exploit the weaknesses of an unwary friendly force, or Blue Force.5
The current American military CTC seeks to provide an OPFOR that reproduces, as far as possible, Clausewitz’s concepts of fog, friction and uncertainty in war. An acceptance of creative thinking within a notional enemy force is essential to produce an exercise environment in which commanders and their staffs can employ a manoeuvrist approach to operations. Unless exercises present a credible and dynamic notional enemy, the friendly or Blue Force commanders cannot gain useful operational experience.6
Observers and Controllers: More Mentoring, Less Instruction
A second major area of change in the workings of CTCs in the US Army can be found in the role of O/Cs. At the moment, the most important component of any CTC is the role that O/Cs play as facilitators of operational learning. In the 1970s, O/Cs tended to operate like aloof teachers, but by the end of the 1990s, they had gradually evolved into mentors rather than instructors.
Experience has shown that mentorship by O/Cs in the CTC system is best facilitated by the skilled use of after-action reviews. Indeed, the after-action review is the key method by which O/Cs can shape the conflict environment at individual CTCs. In US Army exercises, the days of ill-equipped umpires delivering subjective performance debriefs to Blue Force personnel have passed into history. Today, the after-action-review is used in order to provide accurate position data from, and to adjudicate the results of, force-on-force engagements that employ realistic simulation systems. Effective after-action reviews help facilitate a learning environment within the CTC system. Such a learning environment is vital if all participants are to recognise both the causes of their actions and the need to identify new strategies to improve specific performance.7
The role of the O/C is of critical importance in maximising the CTC system. The O/C who sees his role as that of an effective mentor will usually seek to create a combat training environment in which there is an atmosphere of mutual respect, confidence, and rapport. For this reason, it is also important that O/Cs be removed from the task of assessment in combat training. If O/Cs are allowed to assess individual participants, then there is a strong possibility that any mentoring bond between O/Cs and Blue Force officers will be damaged. Any deterioration in trust between mentors and the mentored results in a combat training system that has limited value as a military ‘learning organisation’. The responsibility for assessment of combat training results should ideally be confined to unit commanders. If superior commanders and their staffs are not deployed as players on a CTC rotation, they must nonetheless ensure strong and intimate involvement prior to, and during, any CTC activity.
Evidence from the US Army’s experience suggests that the quality of selected O/Cs is directly related to the effectiveness of combat training. Increasingly, the US Army appears to understand the significance of assigning the most capable officers and soldiers to CTCs in order to ensure that the experience gained approximates as far as possible to military reality. For instance, the US Army’s Warrior Program seeks to ensure that a combination of effective personnel and operational realism in the use of live CTCs is fully exploited for the benefit of the Army’s officer academies and non-commissioned officer branch schools. The US Army’s experience suggests that, in order to reap the greatest benefits possible from a CTC, the Australian Army needs to consider the use of high-quality personnel to manage the system.
The need for carefully selected personnel means that the career management of future O/Cs will become an important factor in the success of any Australian Army CTC scheme. With the benefit of knowledge drawn from the US Army, we must seek to select the best O/Cs possible for the key task of mentoring the tactical leaders of the future. It must be understood that the ideal O/C in a live CTC is a unique individual—at once a mentor, a confidant, and a role model—to our future commanders.
Achieving More Realism
Perhaps the most onerous task for armies engaged in training during peacetime conditions is that of creating a credible exercise environment while at the same time maintaining appropriate levels of safety and environmental responsibility. Over the past two decades, the US Army’s manoeuvre CTCs have sought to resolve these types of tensions through the integration of simulation-based technology, the expansion of exercise scenarios, and the increasing use of civilians and non-military organisations in exercises.
The use of digital communications, advanced laser systems and position-locating technologies has permitted combat simulation to reach a sophisticated level. Advanced simulation techniques now allow mounted and dismounted forces to conduct force-on-force engagements in a relatively safe and realistic environment. Moreover, as the range and fidelity of instrumentation and communication systems continue to improve, the role and actions of the O/Cs and other players in the operating environment are likely to become more sophisticated. In particular, the power of technology allows O/Cs to become increasingly precise and realistic in relation to using operational data.
Developing an enhanced sense of realism in combat training means that the commanders and staffs learn to operate in credible warfighting scenarios. Increasingly, part of an American Army unit’s manoeuvre CTC experience prior to deploying into the exercise area is spent conducting live-fire activities. Over time, this experience has reinforced the need for Blue Force troops to possess a sound understanding of weapon effects, and this knowledge assists simulation-based training. There is a natural preference in the US Army for units to arrive at CTCs with recent experience in combined arms, live-fire exercises. Often, however, such experience is rare. As a result, American CTCs have increased the range and complexity of their live-fire training.
Both operational realism and CTC outputs have also been increased by the use of civilians on the battlefield. In particular, the Joint Readiness Training Centre at Fort Polk has introduced civilian role-players in order to try to simulate the complexity of recent US operations in countries as diverse as Bosnia and Haiti. The US Army combat training system has also become adept at introducing the media into its training regimes. Media units attached to individual CTCs attempt to demonstrate the difficulty and tempo of operations that are accompanied, and sometimes shaped, by the reporting of local, national and international news outlets. Within the US Army, it is now accepted that those commanders that were exposed to CTC training involving the electronic media are far better prepared to conduct complex military operations in volatile areas such as the Balkans.
Creating the Right Infrastructure: Urban Operations and the Use of Contractors
Two recent and influential changes in the US Army’s CTC system relate to the use of multi-purpose urban operations sites and the increased profile of civilian contractors across the modern battlespace. Within the US Army context, CTCs have learnt to appreciate the crucial importance of integrating an urban environment into the military training experience. The days of Blue Force elements operating in a permissive environment such as a rural ‘free-fire zone’ have disappeared. The US Army’s experience of the support needs of CTCs in both the United States itself and in Germany has led to the employment of civilian contractors to conduct a growing range of functions. Today, contract personnel tend to have replaced service personnel in both the plans and operations branches of various CTCs. Contract personnel are also employed to conduct first-line maintenance and repair of simulation equipment in the field, and to carry out many logistic support functions required to support the field training infrastructure.
Exploiting the CTC Systems
An important function of the US Army’s CTCs takes place outside the lead organisations such as the Joint Readiness Training Center and the National Training Center in the continental United States and the Combat Maneuver Training Center in Germany. This function is the cross-fertilisation of ideas, lessons, trends and insights, and their dissemination across the US Army from within the CTC system. he US Army’s CTC system has earnt a good reputation as a source of valued advice on tactics, techniques and procedures. In this process, the expertise gained by the O/Cs at the CTCs across the US Army is an important factor.
Each CTC in the US Army often relies on short-term, or augmentee, O/Cs and OPFOR elements. Such augmented forces are necessary to ensure sufficient numbers of personnel within the operating forces. In nearly all cases, permanent CTC staff provide a short augmentee training session and subsequently act as mentors to the ‘short-timers’. The training received by each augmentee is of a very high standard, and invariably they return to their home stations as more competent and confident members of the US Army.
The Joint Readiness Training Center employs an ‘outreach’ program in which O/Cs are sent, rather like religious missionaries, to transmit their knowledge throughout the US Army. O/Cs help to influence Army instructors and doctrine writers, and help shape the subject matter discussed at the various US Army corps conferences.
In current conditions, the US Army requires its CTC system to undertake a growing and broader range of functions than that originally envisaged in the 1970s. For example, in recent years CTCs have been tasked to conduct mission rehearsal exercises (MREs) and advanced warfighting experiments (AWEs). MREs focus on the readiness of units to deploy on specific operations while AWEs serve as a means through which emerging concepts and technologies can be carefully studied and tested. Additionally, the Joint Readiness Training Center, the National Training Center and the Combat Maneuver Training Center all maintain close links with US Army Training and Doctrine Command. The various CTCs also have a reciprocal relationship with the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) at Fort Leavenworth and its cadre of doctrine writers. The CTCs and CALL share lessons learnt, operational advice and material on emerging military concepts.
For US Army personnel that have had the opportunity to perform the duties of an O/C at one of the manoeuvre CTCs, either in a permanent or augmented capacity, the experience is invariably of tremendous value. Moreover, the importance of the CTC experience is understood by many in senior ranks within the US Army, and this bodes well for the future of the CTC system.
Conclusion
Over the past thirty years, the US Army’s CTCs have evolved from Cold War centres designed for heavy conventional warfare into multifunctional organisations designed to train forces in a range of new and flexible missions across a widening spectrum of conflict. Based on the lessons of the American experience, the Australian Army stands to benefit greatly from possessing a CTC (Live). Despite the obvious differences in size and numbers between the US and Australian ground forces, the Australian Army should seek to extrapolate and adapt relevant lessons from the American experience to suit the Australian military context. If this learning and adaptation is successful, then we can look forward to revolutionary changes in our readiness evaluation and training regimes.
The ‘long poles in the tent’ of a CTC system involve getting the basic building blocks into place. These building blocks include creating a credible and flexible OPFOR, and employing competent and skilled O/Cs that are trained to focus on mentoring first, coaching second, and only as a last resort, instruction. There is also a need to create operational realism through a right balance between simulation, live fire and role playing. Each CTC must be capable of providing operating forces with an opportunity to employ their warfighting capabilities, but to do so in a realistic environment that reproduces the fog, friction and uncertainty of modern operations.
Exploiting the results of an efficient CTC system involves the cross-fertilisation of all intellectual capital derived from training. In this respect, efficient outreach programs are an important means through which a ‘knowledge edge’—one of the current fundamentals of both Army and ADF doctrine—can be sought by Army officers. Strong links between CTC personnel, doctrine developers, operational analysts and those Army officers involved in combat trend analysis must be systematically fostered.
In short, the CTC experience has the potential to provide the Australian Army with a powerful tool for ensuring that a manoeuvrist approach permeates our warfighting philosophy. We need, however, to pay close attention to the available lessons and insights offered by the US Army CTC system. Provided that the Australian Army is prepared to learn from the American experience, we have the opportunity to develop an Australian CTC system that is carefully tailored to meet our local needs. Ultimately, such an approach to combat training will have a dynamic and lasting impact on our future warfighting readiness.
Endnotes
1 For details see Defence Project Land 134 web-site: <http://www.defence.gov.au/dmo/lsd/land134/index.cfm>.
2 Live simulation reproduces a combat environment. Constructive simulation utilises a synthetic battlefield. Virtual simulation trains individuals in a ‘simulator’, requiring the operator to conduct the functions required by specific equipment.
3 The US Army CTC program also includes a Battle Command Training Program (BCTP). The BCTP is designed to train commanders and staff primarily at Division and Corps level, using computer-simulated exercises. The BCTP is not considered to be a manoeuvre CTC and is therefore not included in the analysis in this article. It should be noted, however, that the BCTP shares many of the characteristics of a manoeuvre CTC.
4 The Australian Army has adopted the title observer/training (O/T) rather than the US term observer/controller (O/C). As this article is focused on the US CTC experience, the term O/C is employed in the interests of consistency and clarity.
5 Boiselle, Lieutenant Colonel Jim and Colonel Mark Hertling, ‘Coming of Age in the Desert: the NTC at 20’, Military Review, September-October 2001, pp. 64-5.
6 I am grateful to Lieutenant Colonel Clay Sutton for this insight. Lieutenant Colonel Sutton served as an Australian Army company commander at the US Joint Readiness Training Command during 1996.
7 Researchers in the United States have identified that after-action reviews are most effective when an Adaptive Thinking Training Methodology (ATTM) is employed to support the participants memory and cognition processes. The ATTM emphasises the role of the mentor in preparing for, and delivering, after-action reviews in order to optimise learning outputs. There is a focus on ‘scaffolding’ that enables a ‘... novice to solve a problem, carry out a task, or achieve a goal which would be beyond his unassisted efforts’. See John E. Morrison and Larry L. Meliza, ‘Foundations of the After Action Review Process,’ Special Report 42, United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Alexandria, VA, July 1999.
