ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 When the U.S. Army first needed to figure out how to make its AirLand Battle concept operational to focus more on the central plains of Europe and the threat from the Soviet Union after the Vietnam War, it used training to drive the combined-arms maneuver concept into the service, according to Gen. David Perkins, the commander of the Army\u2019s Training and Doctrine Command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And now the Army is poised to use training again to bring its new Multi-Domain battle concept to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the service\u2019s approach, Perkins said at the Interservice\/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference on Tuesday, must be different from what it did post-Vietnam when the Army stood up exquisite combat training centers, beginning first with the National Training Center in California, which used top-of-the line equipment and instrumentation and duplicated a world-class opposing force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Combat Training Center rotations are expensive and have high overhead, Perkins said, and training at such a level only occurred every two years for a brigade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While setting up the CTCs was a training revolution, Perkins said, the next training revolution \u201cis not necessarily more of just one sort of golden, gilded training event, but it is taking a level of fidelity and experience of training it and bringing it back to an everyday home station training.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a result of CTC training, \u201cwe sort of tried to replicate that sometimes at home stations, and it would be what I call \u2026 the tyranny of training because the overhead of training became so large,\u201d Perkins said. \u201cUnless you could do it to that scale, you wouldn\u2019t do any of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perkins stressed such training wouldn\u2019t replace large-scale training events \u201cbecause there are things that can only happen out there,\u201d but training more at home station using live, virtual, constructive training and synthetic training as well as 10,000 hours of repetition at a \u201cmuch lower level\u201d get soldiers ready for larger events at a \u201cmuch higher level.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Army is also going to have to embark on a new training strategy that takes into account the complexity of the world and the future battlefield, which is driving the Army\u2019s Multi-Domain Battle concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are saying you can\u2019t just train in one domain and, actually, even just two domains is not adequate \u2015 we have to bring together all of the domains,\u201d Perkins said. \u201cSo now you have to have a training environment that brings together space, cyber, maritime, land and air, and it\u2019s got to be done again at a level of repetition that would build muscle memory over experience and experience and experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Training has occasionally been broken down into silos and centers of excellence, Perkins noted, \u201cso you\u2019d have to synchronize federated training capability, so you are spending a lot of time synchronizing training that occurred in a federated manner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Training across all domains has to be brought together early on, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For instance, the Army shouldn\u2019t just train cyber warriors how to operate from the cyber domain, Perkins said. The service should also \u201csimultaneously train maneuver folks, infantry, armor or in the air domain and maritime domain that they need to take into account the effects that occur in cyber.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Training also needs to be seen \u201cas a tool, not a task,\u201d Perkins said. Citing his own experience, he said too many training aids, simulations and devices were put into training strategies even if they weren\u2019t all that effective. Soldiers had to use the tools because it was part of the requirements laid out in the strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perkins said he wants commanders to look at training tools and wants to use them because they actually solve training problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Training tools also can\u2019t just exist for training\u2019s sake, he added. \u201cIt\u2019s a tool I can use to train for a specific mission, mission rehearsal exercises. \u2026 I look immediately at what training capability I have to get ready for that mission. It\u2019s not a task, it\u2019s a tool that I use to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Addressing I\/ITSEC participants, Perkins said the Army and joint forces have brought forth \u201cabout as challenging an environment that we could present you with because of the complexity, because of the lethality, because of the changing nature of it, because of the ambiguity of it, because of the scale of it, but it\u2019s also one where your efforts produce great results and they actually save lives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like in AirLand Battle, the Army is poised to use training yet again to bring its new Multidomain Battle concept to life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":114672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":90,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"5":{"categories":["your-army","news","daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"your-army"}}},"categories":[160,29,162,90,14,36,164],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3330],"class_list":["post-55190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-digital-show-dailies","category-digital-show-daily","category-itsec","category-land","category-newsletters","category-training-simulation-report"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"76KOWI5UU5DTPFPWH5F5NNNU7A","arc_canonical_url":"\/newsletters\/training-simulation-report\/2017\/11\/28\/tradoc-chief-army-needs-to-break-free-from-tyranny-of-training\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n