Posted on Dec 15, 2015
Should the Army increase the amount of Drill Days (MUTA's) for NG Units?
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I'm not a "huge" fan of Army Times but a friend of mine from OCS sent me this article and it certainly sparked a discussion :
WASHINGTON — The US Army chief of staff is looking at how the service might quickly regenerate the force when needed at a time when it is rapidly reducing its size.
The Army has already shrunk the force by 180,000 troops since withdrawing from Iraq in 2011, and it plans to further reduce its end strength in the coming years. The service is scheduled to reach an end strength of 450,000 troops by the end of fiscal 2017. If the Army continues to get hit with budget cuts, it could see a deeper cut down to 420,000.
On Monday at a Center for a New American Security conference in Washington, Gen. Mark Milley took pains to dispel the myth that it’s easy to regenerate an Army.
“So there are a lot of myths out there about the size of the force, training the force, that you can bring an Army down very, very small and then in a time of crisis, add water, circle the wagons there, and stir it up and we’ll have an Army,” Milley said. “It’s not quite that simple.”
For instance, units can take three to four years to reach the standard level of combat readiness, according to Milley.
The chief said he’d prefer to keep as many troops as possible for as long as he is able, but reductions are moving forward. Therefore, he’s left to think about how the Army might be able to more effectively build up the force if necessary.
To do that, Milley said: “I’m going to lean heavily on the [US Army National Guard].”
The Army, he said, is the only service with 50 percent of its capabilities in the reserve component, “so what I need to do is not only maintain the readiness in the regular Army ... but I’ve got to increase the readiness of the National Guard.”
If the active force is a certain size, according to Milley, it will most likely get consumed “pretty quickly” in any larger contingencies. “So we have to lean on the Guard,” he said, “but that means I have to get the readiness levels up to a level that is combat capable.”
It takes 100 to 120 days to mobilize a Guard unit, he noted.
The service has kept its policy of requiring 39 annual days of training for guardsmen since 1915, Milley said.
“It’s a century old and I sit there and I go, ‘What is so magic about 39 days?’ Maybe we need to look at changing that,” he said.
One of the options Milley is examining is increasing the number of training days for some — not all — guardsmen to 60 or even 100 days a year “so it reduces the response time on the back end.”
Quick mobilization is becoming more and more critical given the speed of communication and the technology available today, Milley said.
“I suspect that any future conflict will unfold more rapidly than it has in the past,” he said.
The US Army National Guard director said last month that he planned to deliver in the coming weeks recommendations to Milley on maintaining Guard readiness and training that better fits with a 21st century Army force.
DEFENSE NEWS
Army Guard Director To Send Readiness, Training Recs to Chief
The Army is also exploring a concept to round out brigades using National Guard troops, which worked well in the past, but Milley is considering taking that a step further where active troops would round out a Guard unit.
“I don’t foresee any problem with an active unit — battalion or brigade — say, being a part of the 28th Division Pennsylvania Guard and they wear that patch,” he said.
Milley said the Army continues to examine the effective partnership programs with the Guard and foreign countries along with a wide variety of other initiatives.
The partnership program is proving vital for the US Army as it looks to strengthen its support to countries in Eastern Europe that are nervous about Russia's aggression in the region. The National Guard Bureau chief and the US Army Europe commander have both said the Guard could play an important role in Eastern Europe in the coming years and are looking at how to grow that role.
DEFENSE NEWS
Bureau Chief Looks To Greater National Guard Role In Europe
Milley's laser focus to ensure the Guard's readiness and capability is maintained in equal measure is likely seen as encouraging to those in the National Guard who have been fighting some decisions the Army has made in recent years to reduce the Guard's end strength and take away some of its equipment.
At the center of the skirmish is the tug of war over the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. The Army decided to take all of the Guard's Apaches and move them into the active component to fill a gap left open upon the retirement of the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior. A commission tasked to study the Army's future force structure is expected to make recommendations on the way ahead at the beginning of February.
Also under consideration is maintaining a high number of leaders on active duty, Milley said. One concept is to build train-and-advise units for overseas deployment that consist of just brigade or battalion leadership.
The Army already uses train-and-advise units, but that involves ripping the leadership out of a unit to use them overseas in that capacity, which “destroys the force structure of those units,” Milley said. This time the service would look at building train-and-advise teams that consist solely of unit leaders and then in times of emergency, soldiers could fill in to complete the unit, Milley explained.
While the service is looking at a wide variety of options to rapidly rebuild a force, “a regeneration of the force significant enough to fight a war is not that easy,” Milley said. “There is no magic bullet out there.”
*Personally I would support an increase in drill days for a number of reasons:
1. An extra drill day would be extremely helpful for leadership to have a whole day dedicated to planning & administrative work.
2. More training days = well...more training! I can't believe that there would be one unit out there that wouldn't want do have more days that allows them to train doing there job...especially in the field. More importantly, my soldiers are happy when they are doing there jobs...not sitting around in the drill hall with one hand in the pockets and the other playing clash of clans.
Those are the big ones I can think. What're your thoughts? Good / bad?
WASHINGTON — The US Army chief of staff is looking at how the service might quickly regenerate the force when needed at a time when it is rapidly reducing its size.
The Army has already shrunk the force by 180,000 troops since withdrawing from Iraq in 2011, and it plans to further reduce its end strength in the coming years. The service is scheduled to reach an end strength of 450,000 troops by the end of fiscal 2017. If the Army continues to get hit with budget cuts, it could see a deeper cut down to 420,000.
On Monday at a Center for a New American Security conference in Washington, Gen. Mark Milley took pains to dispel the myth that it’s easy to regenerate an Army.
“So there are a lot of myths out there about the size of the force, training the force, that you can bring an Army down very, very small and then in a time of crisis, add water, circle the wagons there, and stir it up and we’ll have an Army,” Milley said. “It’s not quite that simple.”
For instance, units can take three to four years to reach the standard level of combat readiness, according to Milley.
The chief said he’d prefer to keep as many troops as possible for as long as he is able, but reductions are moving forward. Therefore, he’s left to think about how the Army might be able to more effectively build up the force if necessary.
To do that, Milley said: “I’m going to lean heavily on the [US Army National Guard].”
The Army, he said, is the only service with 50 percent of its capabilities in the reserve component, “so what I need to do is not only maintain the readiness in the regular Army ... but I’ve got to increase the readiness of the National Guard.”
If the active force is a certain size, according to Milley, it will most likely get consumed “pretty quickly” in any larger contingencies. “So we have to lean on the Guard,” he said, “but that means I have to get the readiness levels up to a level that is combat capable.”
It takes 100 to 120 days to mobilize a Guard unit, he noted.
The service has kept its policy of requiring 39 annual days of training for guardsmen since 1915, Milley said.
“It’s a century old and I sit there and I go, ‘What is so magic about 39 days?’ Maybe we need to look at changing that,” he said.
One of the options Milley is examining is increasing the number of training days for some — not all — guardsmen to 60 or even 100 days a year “so it reduces the response time on the back end.”
Quick mobilization is becoming more and more critical given the speed of communication and the technology available today, Milley said.
“I suspect that any future conflict will unfold more rapidly than it has in the past,” he said.
The US Army National Guard director said last month that he planned to deliver in the coming weeks recommendations to Milley on maintaining Guard readiness and training that better fits with a 21st century Army force.
DEFENSE NEWS
Army Guard Director To Send Readiness, Training Recs to Chief
The Army is also exploring a concept to round out brigades using National Guard troops, which worked well in the past, but Milley is considering taking that a step further where active troops would round out a Guard unit.
“I don’t foresee any problem with an active unit — battalion or brigade — say, being a part of the 28th Division Pennsylvania Guard and they wear that patch,” he said.
Milley said the Army continues to examine the effective partnership programs with the Guard and foreign countries along with a wide variety of other initiatives.
The partnership program is proving vital for the US Army as it looks to strengthen its support to countries in Eastern Europe that are nervous about Russia's aggression in the region. The National Guard Bureau chief and the US Army Europe commander have both said the Guard could play an important role in Eastern Europe in the coming years and are looking at how to grow that role.
DEFENSE NEWS
Bureau Chief Looks To Greater National Guard Role In Europe
Milley's laser focus to ensure the Guard's readiness and capability is maintained in equal measure is likely seen as encouraging to those in the National Guard who have been fighting some decisions the Army has made in recent years to reduce the Guard's end strength and take away some of its equipment.
At the center of the skirmish is the tug of war over the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. The Army decided to take all of the Guard's Apaches and move them into the active component to fill a gap left open upon the retirement of the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior. A commission tasked to study the Army's future force structure is expected to make recommendations on the way ahead at the beginning of February.
Also under consideration is maintaining a high number of leaders on active duty, Milley said. One concept is to build train-and-advise units for overseas deployment that consist of just brigade or battalion leadership.
The Army already uses train-and-advise units, but that involves ripping the leadership out of a unit to use them overseas in that capacity, which “destroys the force structure of those units,” Milley said. This time the service would look at building train-and-advise teams that consist solely of unit leaders and then in times of emergency, soldiers could fill in to complete the unit, Milley explained.
While the service is looking at a wide variety of options to rapidly rebuild a force, “a regeneration of the force significant enough to fight a war is not that easy,” Milley said. “There is no magic bullet out there.”
*Personally I would support an increase in drill days for a number of reasons:
1. An extra drill day would be extremely helpful for leadership to have a whole day dedicated to planning & administrative work.
2. More training days = well...more training! I can't believe that there would be one unit out there that wouldn't want do have more days that allows them to train doing there job...especially in the field. More importantly, my soldiers are happy when they are doing there jobs...not sitting around in the drill hall with one hand in the pockets and the other playing clash of clans.
Those are the big ones I can think. What're your thoughts? Good / bad?
Army National Guard
Drill
Training
Posted 9 y ago
Responses: 14
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I think smart money would be to spend more time during BA actually training and less time on "mandatory" class like SHARP, ASAP, resilience, etc. I swear we spend at least half of BA sitting through mandatory crap briefings.
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1LT (Join to see)
100% agree with you Sir, we do spend a lot of our precious training time sitting in a classroom watching PP.
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CPT (Join to see)
I thought that problem was unique to the NG and reserve, but now that I'm active I see it's the same way. The extra time gets filled with more mandatory training. What we all need is 350-1 to get revised with a chainsaw.
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SPC Bobby Coble
I've been out since long before the AKO thing came into existence, but I have an idea that might while potentially controversial, would help squash the time taken up during drill weekends for those mandatory classes. Put them in an module online, let the Soldiers take those online classes when they want to. Set up the system where the Soldier gets notice that the time frame has come to complete the session. They can watch it on their own time, and must bass a brief quiz to get credit for the class. I feel that would be far better than sitting en mass in a large room listening to an officer or NCO regurgitate words off a screen. With the quiz requirement, you can also show that they paid at least some attention to the class, something you can't so for an in person class session. Just my two cents. *Disclaimer* I have "VERY" limited knowledge of the AKO system, so, if this is not something feasible with that, just realize that, and don't write me no nasty letters. lol
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LTC (Join to see)
put all those "mandatory" classes in a module online and then give NG/reserve Soldiers a retirement point or two for completing them. 1 point for every 8 hours of mandatory classes completed.
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Im on the fence with this. IF they want to do something like this make our AT's longer, and leave drill weekends alone. I could see the standard 48 UTA's for drill and maybe a 3-4 week AT. AT is where we get the most "bang for the buck" everyone is away from homestation and can focus on training. With what we currently try to get into a 2 week AT is rough. By the time you get equipment drawn set up and moved out to the field, spend 5-7 days in feiled then have to move back in for recovery your time is shot.
Thats why a majority of AT's are scheduled during the summer months. Any Soldier that is in college is usually out on summer break. Down side to that is school age kids are out on summer break and thats when families take summer vacations.
Additional MUTA 6's are really starting to take a toll on the motivation of the Soldiers that have good jobs, and are in college. Plus the fact that deployments for the Guard are waning not much light at the end of the tunnel for the younger Soldiers. Def a leadership challenge keeping Soldiers focused towards keeping proficiency for the "what if".
Thats why a majority of AT's are scheduled during the summer months. Any Soldier that is in college is usually out on summer break. Down side to that is school age kids are out on summer break and thats when families take summer vacations.
Additional MUTA 6's are really starting to take a toll on the motivation of the Soldiers that have good jobs, and are in college. Plus the fact that deployments for the Guard are waning not much light at the end of the tunnel for the younger Soldiers. Def a leadership challenge keeping Soldiers focused towards keeping proficiency for the "what if".
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1LT (Join to see)
I'd like to add that if some of the changes are implemented in the article that hopefully more NG units will get the opportunity to participate in more missions & deployments down the road by pairing us with key AD units.
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SFC (Join to see)
Very true 1LT (Join to see) Only getting a NTC or JRTC rotation every 6-7 years doesnt help. Actually i think we are scheduled for NTC in 2018. Last time we went was 2004, and that was part of MOB for deployment.
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SFC (Join to see)
SFC (Join to see)
The only problem is it would make guardsmen and reservists less employable. Now on top of earned vacation time the employer knows he’ll lose that employ for an additional month each year. I have 4 weeks of vacation a year. That and a 4 week AT and the employ has lost two months of productivity.
Recruiting and retention will suffer greatly. We should leave everything as is.
The only problem is it would make guardsmen and reservists less employable. Now on top of earned vacation time the employer knows he’ll lose that employ for an additional month each year. I have 4 weeks of vacation a year. That and a 4 week AT and the employ has lost two months of productivity.
Recruiting and retention will suffer greatly. We should leave everything as is.
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I feel like the solution is in the article. You are at 490,000 and need to get to 450,000 without affecting readiness. You have 50,000 non-deployable Soldiers in your formation. Kick out 80% of them and you will hit your number. Plan to activate NG/RC Soldiers as needed to fill in on rear-D. I bet you could meet your needs on an almost fully voluntary basis. I know that there would not be a 1-to-1 match on MOSs, but I think you could come close.
Many Reserve Soldiers cannot support even a 20% increase in training days (7-8 additional days). I can't. I am maxed out. I have a full-time job that needs full-time attention and it represents 80% of my income. I am a mom and my kids need and deserve my time and attention. Some of my fellow officers have both of these obligations, plus school, plus family members with medical conditions, plus a social life they need to maintain for their own mental health, and on and on.
There are things I would agree could work for additional drilling time. We do waste too much drill time on mandatory training and clerical tasks. If all of the mandatory training was put online and you got MUTA pay for however many hours of it you complete, it would get done and we wouldn’t have to deal with it during drill. Same should be true for schooling that has online components. There could be an additional MUTA (which is ½ a day) preceding drill where Soldiers could come in on a rotational basis to complete company/battalion tasks. I could even see the argument someone else made for putting leadership meetings into that time frame too.
Many Reserve Soldiers cannot support even a 20% increase in training days (7-8 additional days). I can't. I am maxed out. I have a full-time job that needs full-time attention and it represents 80% of my income. I am a mom and my kids need and deserve my time and attention. Some of my fellow officers have both of these obligations, plus school, plus family members with medical conditions, plus a social life they need to maintain for their own mental health, and on and on.
There are things I would agree could work for additional drilling time. We do waste too much drill time on mandatory training and clerical tasks. If all of the mandatory training was put online and you got MUTA pay for however many hours of it you complete, it would get done and we wouldn’t have to deal with it during drill. Same should be true for schooling that has online components. There could be an additional MUTA (which is ½ a day) preceding drill where Soldiers could come in on a rotational basis to complete company/battalion tasks. I could even see the argument someone else made for putting leadership meetings into that time frame too.
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1LT (Join to see)
All great points Ma'am, I certainly understand the challenge of balancing NG, School, Work, & a social life....it can get busy quickly! I also wish there was a better solution to the droves of mandatory training we have to go through. The BSB here in NH gets all the companies together in the Battalion in October for a 3 day drill to hammer out most of the mandatory training for the year but there's more then one way to skin that cat.
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LTC (Join to see)
Excellent observations. I think any attempt to increase the amount of training days needs to include flexibility that enables commanders to bring in Soldiers during the week, to accomplish some of these individual annual requirements, admin/supply tasks, etc. If we could get 4 days a year to cover these things we might be able to use our regularly assigned 39 days for training!
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CPT (Join to see)
1LT (Join to see) - When I was in the 36th CAB in TX, we did a huge cram session for DEC drill and then had the holiday party. While convenient, I think it misses the intent. Mental retention of the information would be close to zero.
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CPT (Join to see)
LTC (Join to see) - Agreed, sir. If the added training days were flexible, where there were an additional 2-4 MUTAs each month and you just have to pick up 6 MUTAs at some point in the year, or if we got MUTA credit for online work, I would give adding time a thumbs up. More inflexible added time, big thumbs down.
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