Patrolling As Leadership Training: QMN061
Patrolling As Leadership Training: QMN061
Martial Mental Models: The Quartermaster, Monday, 23 September
(Today’s report is a 9 minute read)
BLUF: Patrolling serves as the US Army’s test setting for leadership and performance under pressure, and for dealing with unexpected or uncertain circumstances. In the woods both day and night, soldiers are picked to plan and lead blank-fire raids and ambushes on timed schedules while being graded on performance. The stress can be high, and the enemy is as often confusion and chaos as it is adversary role-players waiting for a firefight. Nearly every Army leader begins their career in this leadership setting, and it forms them for life. Is there a way lessons here can be replicated in the civilian world?
Brady here. In US Army combat arms schools, there’s a common setting and subject for nearly all leadership and management training: patrolling. While teaching young leaders how to conduct operations on their own, it also serves as a testing ground for leadership and performance under pressure, for dealing with unexpected or uncertain circumstances, and in some cases for continuing the mission despite being tired, dirty and hungry. In many ways it’s a great leveler - nearly everyone gets the same treatment and gets tested in front of everyone else, and in other less examined ways I think it’s the basis for the US Army’s leadership culture in general. As a leadership and training model, though, it’s worth examining for its successes and failures.
Image source: Quora.com
The premise for patrolling in training is that a relatively small group of soldiers (in this case either a 9-soldier squad or a 40-soldier platoon) is being sent into either contested territory or behind enemy lines to carry out ambushes or raids on an enemy force - which means that remaining undetected is critical at all times. In training, patrols last generally from one to four days - and just about all patrolling training takes place in a wooded environment on foot. Trainees carry all the gear they’ll need either on their person or in a rucksack - this includes water, food, weapons and ammunition, and clothing. Raids and ambushes are carried out both night and day, and any rest is taken within the setup of a patrol base. In training events every soldier has a role, but the most important roles - Patrol Leader and Assistant Patrol Leader - are graded. Throughout the day and night, different soldiers rotate through these roles and are judged by graders on their planning and execution performance during a raid or ambush.
Image source: Special Handout 21-76, Ranger Handbook
Raids and ambushes require practice and planning - because their success relies on speed and surprise, they need to be executed almost like a choreographed dance. A raid is a surprise attack characterized by a quick entry into hostile territory to get information, confuse the enemy, or destroy fixed sites - and is always concluded with a planned withdrawal. Patrolling soldiers need to infiltrate and surprise the enemy without being detected, overwhelm the enemy with gunfire and fast-moving troops, and seal off their objective with well-synchronized direct and indirect fires - preventing the enemy from escaping. An ambush is a surprise attack from a concealed position on a moving or temporarily halted target - usually on a road or a trail. Ambushes are characterized by category (hasty or deliberate), type (point or area) and formation (linear or “L-shaped”).
Image source: Special Handout 21-76, Ranger Handbook
In training events such as the US Army Maneuver Center of Excellence’s Ranger School or US Army JFK Special Warfare Center’s Small Unit Tactics phase of the Special Forces Qualification Course, the Patrol Leader and Assistant Patrol Leader are picked out of the class in advance of every raid or ambush. They are given the location and basic details of a raid or ambush site and a time by which the raid or ambush must be completed, and then must quickly plan, brief the platoon or squad, move to the site of the raid or ambush, and successfully carry it out. Their performance is judged along five principles that govern every action during patrolling, (from the Ranger Handbook):
Planning. Quickly make a simple plan and effectively communicate it to the lowest level. A great plan that takes forever to complete and is poorly disseminated isn’t a great plan. Plan and prepare to a realistic standard and rehearse everything.
Reconnaissance. Your responsibility as a Ranger leader is to confirm what you think you know, and to learn that which you do not already know.
Security. Preserve your force as a whole. Every Ranger and every rifle counts; anyone could be the difference between victory and defeat.
Control. Clear understanding of the concept of the operation and commander’s intent, coupled with disciplined communications, to bring every man and weapon available to overwhelm the enemy at the decisive point.
Common Sense. Use all available information and good judgment to make sound, timely decisions.
Platoons and squads in patrolling exercises have real rifles and machine guns, but are adapted to fire blanks. Each objective has enemy role-players with the same, and once the raids and ambushes kick off there’s a lot of firing back and forth. Successful ambushes and raids see enemy forces pinned down and then quickly overwhelmed by force. Patrols very quickly and methodically search the area and then leave to a predetermined point a safe distance away in a speedy and orderly fashion. If a Patrol Leader and Assistant Patrol Leader successfully complete the raid or ambush, they generally have fulfilled their requirement and won’t have to lead another over that phase of the course. If they fail at some point, they may have another chance to be successful at some point or another during the phase.
Image source: Special Handout 21-76, Ranger Handbook
And there’s a lot that can, and does, go wrong. Patrols have to remain undetected up to the beginning of the raid or ambush, and being detected often means being subjected to an enemy artillery attack, which usually scatters and can confuse the patrol, and often leads to notionally dead and wounded troops that the patrol must carry (which is no fun when everyone’s already carrying well over 60lbs of gear on their backs already). If the carefully choreographed dance of the raid or ambush misses its timing or is badly executed, it’s easily noticeable and can lead to chaos and where order is key (there’s a cultural artifact in a Sounds of SWC song that illustrates this chaos). Graders take note and at the end of the patrol let the Patrol Leader and Assistant Patrol Leader know how they fared.
The interesting part about all of this is that this frame of patrolling is that it’s where a significant share of leaders in the US Army - nearly everyone in the organization - got their foundational leadership experiences, from sergeants to generals. When everyone’s basic leadership training experience focuses on small-unit action, there are benefits and drawbacks. The benefits are personal accountability, expert knowledge, and leadership by example - your entire class gets to have a front row seat to your success or failure at leading a patrol at some point or another, and will have the opportunity to prove themselves at some point as well. The drawbacks are a myopic focus on the small unit - which leads to an avoidance or ignorance of secondary support actions that make the larger force work properly. American small units of ground forces generally function pretty well due to this low-level leadership ethos, but they can struggle at making mid-level support functions - often the operational tissue that makes the larger organization work - effective in training and in combat. Leaders can lack support roles in their foundation and thus try to avoid them later in their careers if they can. I know I did.
Is there a civilian corollary? What setting and frame can businesses teach leadership and accountability today? Is there a microcosm of business that can provide an experiential foundation for leaders across the organization - where the new and inexperienced can understand fundamentals in a challenging and realistic environment? I think business schools attempt to provide a similar experience with business case studies - the case study competition model might be a good example - but it seems to focus more on expertise and analytical acumen than leadership and accountability. I think finding a way to train and test business leaders on planning, communication and execution in a small-group setting - and making it a measured and graded event - would reap businesses the same rewards it has for the Army. (BJM)
*****
YOU SAW IT HERE FIRST: BLUF: The Military Standard That Can Make Your Writing More Powerful (8 min) “When you’re used to writing for professors or parents or friends or anyone else who is obligated to read your writing, it’s easy to forget that in the real world you need to put in work for your reader’s attention. You put in work by including all necessary context, getting to the point, and revising until all evidence of your thought process is off the page. Among colleagues and customers, that attention to detail will be appreciated. Among your blog’s readers and potential customers, it’ll be reflected in more people sticking around and more people coming to read your content.” (BJM)
RAMP UP?: Pentagon Weighs Sending More Military Assets to Mideast (4 min) “Officials are considering sending additional Patriot antimissile batteries, which can be deployed relatively quickly to defend specific areas, as well as a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system, which can intercept ballistic missiles before impact and cover a much wider area. Neither system necessarily would have been able to defend against the kind of coordinated cruise-missile and drone attacks used last weekend, but would strengthen the region’s defenses, particularly against ballistic-missile threats. A squadron of high-end jet fighters, possibly F-22 Raptors also may be included in the new deployment, officials said. Those jet fighters were to be part of a deployment to Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia earlier this summer following the decision to move more hardware into the region after the U.S. identified what it said were potential Iranian threats in the spring.” (BJM)
THINKING ABOUT FOCUS: Being ‘Indistractable’ Will Be the Skill of the Future (9 min) “The opposite of “distraction” is “traction.” Traction is any action that moves us towards what we really want. Tractions are actions, done with intent. Any action, such as working on a big project, getting enough sleep or physical exercise, eating healthy food, taking time to meditate or pray, or spending time with loved ones, are all forms of traction if they are done intentionally. Traction is doing what you say you will do. What prompts us to traction or distraction? All human behavior is cued by either external or internal triggers. External triggers are cues from our environment that tell us what to do next. That can mean dings and pings that prompt us to check our email, answer a text, or look at a news alert. Competition for our attention can come from a person as well, such as an interruption from a coworker. Even an object can be an external trigger: your television set seems to urge you to turn it on by its mere presence.” (BJM)
IT’S HAPPENING: Artificial intelligence is changing every aspect of war (5 min) “AI is a broad and blurry term, covering a range of techniques from rule-following systems, pioneered in the 1950s, to modern probability-based machine learning, in which computers teach themselves to carry out tasks. Deep learning—a particularly fashionable and potent approach to machine learning, involving many layers of brain-inspired neural networks—has proved highly adept at tasks as diverse as translation, object recognition and game playing (see chart). Michael Horowitz of the University of Pennsylvania compares AI to the internal combustion engine or electricity—an enabling technology with myriad applications. He divides its military applications into three sorts. One is to allow machines to act without human supervision. Another is to process and interpret large volumes of data. A third is aiding, or even conducting, the command and control of war.” (BJM)
Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.
KS Anthony (KSA) & Brady Moore (BJM)