[OT] Adventures in Planning...

[Eddie]

For those of you with US Army Mechanized Infantry and/or Armor experience...

Table XII Gunnery for Tanks and Brads (and precursor Tables of VII, VIII, IX, X, and XI).

Fourteen working days to plan.

No big bullets forecasted.

Tanks in Annual Services.

Bradleys in OPNET.

Deployment to Afghanistan in less than a year.

No guidance or orders in any format other than a couple verbals from the BDE S3 to the BN S3. All of which ended with, "What can I do to facilitate your plan?" We did however, get a full-fledged, five-paragraph OPORD on our Brigade Ball next month...

Our sister CAB blatantly says, "Whatever you come up with, we're going to copy."

BN Tank Master Gunner in the hospital with bona fide brain damage following a motorcycle accident.

One Major, one Career Course-graduate Captain, one SF-selectee Captain, one zero Mechanized-experience-promoted-three-months-ago Captain and a Bradley Master Gunner to plan these shenanigans.

Go!

For the record, we're executing on Monday. And I'm not getting divorced.

Yet...

[Legbreaker]

So, you've got until Monday...
Plenty of time! Who's bringing the beer?

[Webstral]

Never having worked on the heavy side as a trigger puller (my mech time was as a combat engineer), I haven’t experienced the fun of planning a range for the big machines. One can only imagine the joys.

[pmulcahy11b]

Well you know the old saying, "No plan survives first contact." Or implementation, I guess.

[ArmySGT.]

Damn.

There isn't one you can plagiarize from AKO net?

I have an OPORD for a MK 19 range buried in this hard drive somewhere.

I would go to range control and get from them what they want, then to Bn S3, BDE S3, and finally G3 for their inputs especially the Staff SGM who may have it for you. Remember your friends!

Then break it down into sections and each work on a piece.

The 0 experienced Captain gets the Situation paragraph. At a minimum bubba can write that. Mission the Major can probably mumble that in his sleep, the Execution and the Command & Signals paragraphs are combining the other captains and the master gunner. Their the ones who will really execute it.

[ArmySGT.]

go
go
GO!

[Eddie]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

Damn.

There isn't one you can plagiarize from AKO net?

Nope, we were all over ATN, CALL, S3-XO Net...you name it.

I have an OPORD for a MK 19 range buried in this hard drive somewhere.

No worries. We execute tomorrow. The plan is built.

I would go to range control and get from them what they want, then to Bn S3, BDE S3, and finally G3 for their inputs especially the Staff SGM who may have it for you. Remember your friends!

That was my point above. We are the BN S3. We did go to all of the other sources, to include DIV, BDE, and our sister BDE. And we kept getting the "whatever you guys come up with we'll help you as best we can." It got a bit tiresome. But like I also said, Brigade did give us a full OPORD for our formal ball on 10 FEB.

The problem is that the range we're using is brand new. We're the first unit to fire on it other than a demonstration for a Chinese Army delegation that visited last year. So we're building the historical concepts for Range Control to show to other units.

The 0 experienced Captain gets the Situation paragraph. At a minimum bubba can write that. Mission the Major can probably mumble that in his sleep, the Execution and the Command & Signals paragraphs are combining the other captains and the master gunner. Their the ones who will really execute it.

I didn't actually make my original post for advice (your heart's in the right place, though), more to point out the idiocy of MG Abrams's directive to do in 14 working days what the book says takes six months in the face of turning the tanks and Brads in in March to shift mission to Afghanistan train up. Of which deployment is occurring within the year and this will have taken from 15-ish January to 10-ish March of our available training time.

And the fact that we had to burn a few bridges with some of our units to our left and right to get all of the land and ammo that we need for this training.

Don't get me wrong, in the face of a conventional fight against Iran, all of this is good experience. But our assigned mission is Village Stability Operations. This is 6 weeks of time that we won't be able to give back to our soldiers to prepare them to do something that is brand new to 99% of them.

I'm using this more as a venting/whining/am-I-the-only-one-who-sees-this-as-ridiculous tool, I guess; since I can't really do it with the people I work with. As one of the guys who will be a maneuver company commander of these soldiers, I'd rather them train on something they'll need to keep them alive, not something to broaden the lieutenants and expose them to a full on mechanized/armor gunnery.

Regardless, like I said, the plan is built. Initial movement began with range occupation and set-up yesterday. Lane proofing is tomorrow. Dry fires begin Monday.