Blackadder1916 said:
Have they been told that because it's not a touchy-feely activity or because the timings would interfere with their day job?
I thought training to defeat the enemy was our day job? :stirpot:
It is primarily because of timings.
MJP said:
It generally isn't Bde units that are the issue.
This is accurate, however, I think the level of support is more divided along lines of which trade you belong to than by formation/Unit.
A certain infantry Battalion here generally fully supports letting soldiers train in combatives. However, within that Battalion, I know an EO Tech in that infantry Battalion who's having trouble being allowed to take part. His supervisors feel this is just PT, and it should be done at 0730 during PT timings. They want him to skip morning PT in order to take part, etc.
I know an FSA who has *no* supervised PT from Mon-Thurs, only Fridays. She wants to come in to work at 0730 (vice 0900) and then do this stuff. I still have not seen her out. Most of that cell doing "PT" from 0730 - 0900 simply aren't, and they aren't working all the way until 1600.
I know two people it the same branch, an officer and a MCpl, who wanted to participate. I'm 99% certain they don't have supevised PT either. Their branch head wouldn't even look at the program and gave a flat out no. They remarked how stupid it was to do this fromm 1430 - 1600, said it was "too much PT," and then when told it was training she compared it to skiing as winter warfare training.
The reason it is at 1430 - 1600 is because for one, *most* soldiers on this base are doing supervised PT from 0730 - 0900. Doing it during PT would mean taking away from platoon PT, or they simply wouldn't be allowed to go. The other reason is... *this is not PT* This is skills training. It is no different than gunnery, marksmanship, map & compass, urban ops, etc, and the fact that it is physically arduous is just a bonus. If there was a range running and someone wanted to hop on and do marksmanship training from 1430 - 1600, there would not be much adversity to it. As long as that person's presence at that time was not critical, they'd be allowed to attend. In a lot of the units, soldiers are often dismissed at 1500 anyway because there is simply no more floors left to sweep and they're not going to hold them until 1600 just because.
So for the reasons of the way the daily work routine works, and because of the trades, the Brigade units are generally more able to support. I understand that not all jobs work that way... for example, clothing stores who need to keep hours open for a certain time, the claims cells who need to keep hours open for a certain time, etc. However, my sense is some mid-level supervisors simply can't be arsed enough to be flexible, look at their manning / tasks, and say "Yes you can go today" or "you'll do the morning shifts so that you can attend this in the afternoon, etc" because our culture does not value fighting or warriorism.
This is where I normally insert the story of the 57th Maintenance Company who weren't supposed to the "fighters," they were all "non-combat" MOS's... until combat found them.
Lumber said:
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Turned out that the Brigade Cdr gave the whole team a 1 month CFTPO to do nothing but train for the tournament.
Kudos to them for taking it even a step further!
The Division Commander has blessed a plan to roll out across the Division, Army Reserve included. Edmonton was just the logical starting point to what is a 3 year plan that will be set to repeat on annual basis. It won't look the same everywhere as each geographic region looks different, with different resources and different constraints. But this is honestly the biggest step in the right direction I've seen in the way we approach training.
I'm actually not a fan of "immersion" training. The problem is, that's all the Army knows how to do... we've got a tournament coming up? Train train train for a month... win... and then they haven't actually trained since... so 95% of the training value is lost, but that is time we can never get back. However, I'm just happy that the support is there, it just requires some refinement in approach which is what we're hoping to do here. The tenets of this program are consistency, professional instruction, aliveness (sparring) and environment [allow the soldiers to practice it in a realistic environment (with kit on, etc... more to follow on that) so that they can determine what works best and what can be discarded].