Realistic Training: Are We Moving Forward or Backwards?

Sir, we are going backwards. We are not training for the potential asymmetric environment at all, and we are very short on working the manuever side of the house. Heck, we are barely maintaining proficiency in our MOSs.

With the current global political climate, we could face a force on force foe from many avenues that would return us to manuever warfare. However, we will not stop working in an asymmetric environment either. Africa will continue to be a hotbed. Iraq is heating up quickly and with their purported threat to extend into Saudi Arabia, we really may be facing something that borders between the two if we find it neccessary to return to Iraq.

I know we can not train for every contingency, but we need to learn from the past and train for the widest arrangement possible. We have the possibility to mix manuever with asymmetric just like some of the training completed at NTC and JRTC.

This is a good question and topic Capt Maurelli. I don't think there is a good substitute for real training in the realistic environments such as crawling in mud with drill sergeants shooting over your head. But for medic training we use a pretty realistic trauma mannequin that has amputations with spurting blood and pneumothorax. And the bleeding doesn't stop unless you put a tourniquet on it. I think the hardest challenge is to keep it as realistic as possible while reaching the training objectives. I think that it medical simulation needs to be reinforced with field training exercises that allow the trainees to utilize what they learned in simulation.