[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!

[Panther Al]

*blinks*

Wow.


Well, those who are about to die - we salute you!

And as others has said, time to hit the networking talents and try to scare up some prior plans you can base yours off of - if only by copy and paste.

[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.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Eddie

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.

Like I said, plenty of time.
Did you work out who was bringing the beer?

[Eddie]

That task falls on me. Competing demands and requirements are keeping me out of the field this first week. So I get to have the pizza and beer waiting on Friday.

[Legbreaker]

A terrible sacrifice, but somebody has to do it...

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Eddie

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.

Oh. You need a Military Police S3 shop. We were in those villages in 2003 and 2004. All those medical missions, civil affairs missions, civil engineering missions, the Red Cross / Red Crescent / World Health / Oxfam / Save the Children protection missions, the "I want a EYEs on tour by three, four star, congressman, and senators mission.

That was the Military Police. Rear Area defence, convoy escort, and Police / Counter criminal intelligence are their full time missions.

19-4 is the Manual some of the older manuals are written by Viet Nam vets, the 90's manuals are speculative and full of buzzwords, the later manuals after 2004 are again being written by people with experience.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Eddie

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.

Madness. Any idea why you ended up with so little lead time? If you're the first unit to use the new range, surely someone higher up must have realised that the first full-blown range shoot was going to take a bit more planning than a weekend and a bit?

I never was an officer and only ever saw MBTs at a distance. I really have no idea what would be involved in planning range ops for mech or armor. Seems to me you've pulled it together in amazing time though.

[Eddie]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

You need a Military Police S3 shop...

Actually, we need an SF S3 shop. We've got the SOF augmentation mission. It's going to be an interesting experience.

One of our base documents for coming up with our training plan is this. A fairly good read. But absolutely nothing to do with mechanized warfare.

[Eddie]

Originally Posted by Targan

Any idea why you ended up with so little lead time? If you're the first unit to use the new range, surely someone higher up must have realised that the first full-blown range shoot was going to take a bit more planning than a weekend and a bit?

Because the son of GEN Creighton Abrams isn't used to being told anything other than what he wants to hear? I know my BN S3 had me type up the official request for relief from the tasking and it came back within six hours of my submittal with a big denial. So I really don't have an answer other than unprofessional, bitter responses.

I never was an officer and only ever saw MBTs at a distance. I really have no idea what would be involved in planning range ops for mech or armor. Seems to me you've pulled it together in amazing time though.

In all honesty, planning the range itself wasn't that hard. We borrowed the two company-level tank master gunners from our tank companies, and the three of us captains sat down for about two and a half working days and hammered that stuff out. They were long days, but that's why we get paid more than junior enlisted soldiers. The conventional US Army has a lot of abitrary, self-induced minimum-notification/action times though. And Fort Stewart and 3 ID seems to be one of the worst in my 14 years in the Army.

The problems came in with ammo forecasting, land, coordinations with supporting units, food and life support systems for the range personnel. All of the "stuff" behind having four tanks/Bradleys run down a lane and shoot a bunch of targets. And of course, making all of this happen safely.

Ammo of any type needs to be "forecasted" at least 90 days out. It's a request to have the civilians that run the ammo point on Fort Stewart move ammo from somewhere else that is a big depot (like Redstone Arsenal or some such) by plane/train/automobile to our storage depot. Then coordinate all of the logistics of moving it to where we actually need it, blah, blah, blah. You can get it in that 90 days, but the request draws a lot of attention from MG Abrams boss. Mainly for the overtime that the civilians will get paid.

Then we also had a bunch of other units get burned to make everything happen. We had a CAV Squadron on the range we needed that we had to have Division kick off of the range so we could take it. They were getting ready to shoot their M3s (unfortunately their concept for M3s didn't work for tanks or our M2s). We took another unit's ammo for the tanks.

Then there is the coordination with other units. Table XII requires artillery support (who also didn't have the bullets forecasted) and our brigade commander added on aviation integration (who also didn't have their ammo forecasted...see the snowball effect?). All great training, no doubt. Which is why we played nice and made everything happen. But not only did it destroy our training plan for the next six months, it screwed our artillery battalion's training plan, the UAV platoon's training plan, the combat aviation brigade's training plan (who are also deploying sooner than us), and any other units that were counting on the land and ammo we took from them.

Then you have all of the civilian agencies, such as Range Control and the Ammo Point, who don't like their schedules getting messed with. When we went to set up the range on Friday, they wouldn't let us on the range because it wasn't in their schedule. My soldiers waited almost four hours before they could even start setting up the site. Coincidentally, at whatever post Abrams was at prior to this, he changed the name from Range Control to Range Support to reinforce their position in the chain. (We're hoping he does the same thing here.)

Bottom line, yes, we are making it happen. Yes, I'm continuing to whine about it and need to stop and be a good staff officer and support my chain of command. Yes, we have salvaged our training plan for our deployed mission. No, none of this really makes me feel any better about it. Nor does being stuck in the BN headquarters this week. (In 14 years, this is the closest I've ever been to a tank and was kind of looking forward to seeing them shoot a main gun round. It'd be something new, at least.)

[Legbreaker]

It's every soldiers right, nay DUTY, to bitch and moan!
Officer though have to try and keep it under their hats...

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by Eddie

We had a CAV Squadron on the range we needed that we had to have Division kick off of the range so we could take it. They were getting ready to shoot their M3s (unfortunately their concept for M3s didn't work for tanks or our M2s).

What was the issue with the M3 material not transferring to the M2? Aren't they the same vehicle in terms of weapon capabilities?

- C.

[Eddie]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

What was the issue with the M3 material not transferring to the M2? Aren't they the same vehicle in terms of weapon capabilities?

- C.

No issues with the ammo. The range concept is what we couldn't use. Their planned scenario is different for a Cav Scout than an Infantryman. And we're shooting M1A2 SEPs this week, not the Brads.

[Cdnwolf]

I am so glad my job is to taste test crayons to see which ones the kids eat first.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Eddie

Actually, we need an SF S3 shop. We've got the SOF augmentation mission. It's going to be an interesting experience.

One of our base documents for coming up with our training plan is this. A fairly good read. But absolutely nothing to do with mechanized warfare.

Looks like good material. However you know that Big Army is going to reject it out of hand. There is SF and then there is Big Army. When you send it up atleast the MP material is in a format they know, and is described in terms they will understand. The SF style is fluid, dynamic, and driven by events on the ground. A complete anathema to any Brigade S shop product.

Spare yourself the pain of six thousand revisions.

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by Eddie

Yes, I'm continuing to whine about it and need to stop and be a good staff officer and support my chain of command.

That's what we're here for. You can vent all you need, and we won't tell a soul who influences your OER.