PRESENTATION BY MG GORMAN ARMOR OFFICER ADVANCED COURSE FORT KNOX, KENTUCKY 23 APRIL 1976

Transcription

1 PRESENTATION BY MG GORMAN ARMOR OFFICER ADVANCED COURSE FORT KNOX, KENTUCKY 23 APRIL 1976 to f I'm a pinch hitter for the speaker that was nable to join yo for one reason or another. Ot at Leavenworth the other day, they were agonizing over problems of readiness reporting in the U.S. Army and what that all adds p to, so I chose to impose on yo the ideas that I pt in front of the stdents at the Command and General Staff College. It trns ot what I choose to talk abot is really very appropriate for this grop becase I was drawing pon a corps of information that we have jst acqired concerning tank training and I hope that what I have to say might cast some light on yor professional ndertaking. Yo have to start off by asking yorself what is the problem, and there are any nmber of ways of characterizing the problem of the profes,sion in any era: I have elected to se as my start point the problem which is going to be pt before the high command of the Army next week. The Vice Chief of Staff of the Army will convene with all the senior officials in the department who are concerned with weapons systems acqisition to look at armor and antiarmor systems for the next 10 years,and they start ot with a con-. sideration of this as the problem. When yo boil down all the threat analyses that we have been working with over the past year or two, it gets down to this at the company level. Here's a tank company team on a hill in Germany confronting an attacking Soviet force. Yo can ct the bsiness any way yo want to, bt yo will find ot that from this hill to the next masking ~errain, it is. abot 1200 meters, which is average in the Federal Repblic of Germany, so, if the Reds are geninely interested

2 in pressing throgh this company--that is to say they are going to commit themselves to a breakthrogh attack--this company commander wold probably see something like 60 armored vehicles: 60 tanks or a mix of tanks, BMP's or whatever. There will be 60 armored vehicles ot there. Now, this intervisibi1ity distance, of corse, dictates a certain time gate depending pon the speed of advance and yo can rest assred yo know they are going to cross that interval jst as fast as they can. This will dictate a time gate, that is to say, this team down here will have jst a certain period of time, seven mintes or so, to "service" those 60 targets. If they don't do it qickly and well, they are going to be knee-deep in T62's sometime arond minte seven and one-half. What we mean by the word "service" is acqiring the target, going throgh the engagement seqence, and ptting steel on target. This is the friendly force in this consideration. I'll show yo some analyses later on how the battle came ot, bt I want to focs on this part of that company team, the 12 tanks, becase they are the vital element in the problem. They are the otfit that has the highest rate of fire, and the performance of the tanks will dictate the otcome of ~his battle. The battle otcome is far less sensitive to how the infantry does their thing, how the TOW crews perform or how the DRAGON gnners perform, the tanks drive the eqation. This is obviosly a matter of relativity. Up there are some other tankers and the otcome is also sensitive to how good they are. A word on Soviet tank crews. The Soviets, like s, pt a lot of emphasis on tank crew training. Unlike s, they have a draft Army, conscript spported, with a two year period of service, soldiers are broght in every six months. Soviet tank commanders, therefore, have a metered and predictable inpt. Every six or 12 months they will receive inpts for their crew which permits them to rn a fairly stable training program on a six or 12 months cycle. They train in their training n, I 2

3 ! I \.J base the man for the job which he will hold throghot his two year period of service. They select crew commanders in basic training. They pt a man throgh a tank commanders corse, he goes to the tank as a tank commander and he remains a tank commander the entire time he is in service. Same with gnners, they go to a gnners corse, they arrive as gnners, they remain gnners. Loaders, drivers, ditto. They do not spend any great amont of time trying to cross-train. They pt a lot of emphasis on training with infantry in particlar and it is fascinating to note that their tank gnnery is entirely practiced for offensive operation. Their tank ranges consist of parallel lanes of three or for, depending pon the organization of the tar~ platoon in the otfit, they fire by platoon, they fire advancing straight ahead at targets that are always within abot a 15 degree arc dead ahead. They spend a lot of time firing the main gn at infantry targets dead ahead. They stop occasionally to fire from the short halt, bt to a remarkable degree they are practicing on their tank ranges for exactly the drill that we saw on the previos slide: get across it in the shortest period of time with the maximm volme of fire. It becomes pretty clear from the way they practice that they're as interested in sppression as in accracy. In the Soviet Army, tankers are foreclosed from special dty, yo cannot se Soviet tankers.forpost detail. That is the province of, the motorized 'infantry. The tankers, wo~k,'rather on tank gnnery. They have l;eelt1y ' d~i11s that they mst complete, two or : t"lltee.:" tin;iis a month they fire sbcaliber,, ;~hey~: -ha.v:'e.!. :a.,.23lnm, sbca1iber'device which is ' verywe11 ' developed~ their target systems are electrically scored, once every six months they fire the ~in gn in a qalification exercise. Incidentally, the terminology grazing shot is what yo call battle sights. This is an Army that is practicing for perfection in the attack that we described at the otset. Now, what can we do 3

4 to assist that company commander of the U.S. force in meeting sch a threat? This is an actal slide from the presentation that the Vice Chief and the senior officers will consider. Obviosly, we can improve the capability of this force to acqire targets. We can increase the density of weapons in the team. We can increase the amont of time that the team commander has to work on those targets. For example, giving him a rocket system that cold carry mines ot there and lay them in the space directly to the front so that the Soviet force was held ot there in the area where his weapons were bearing. We can increase the capabilities of the weapons, develop a new mnition for the 105 gn, for example, which wold deliver higher velocities, greater probability of hit and greater concentration power. Or, we cold harden or weapons systems, harden' TOW, harden DRAGON, harden the infantry system, pt more protection on or tanks. Now, I am not going to take yo throgh ftre weapons systems. My argment concerns itself with wha~ cold yo do this year or next year with the tanks we have now. What cold that company team commander do in Germany this year or next year? It trns ot that there are a few things yo can do abot acqisition, and I will describe some of them. There's a good bit that yo can do abot weapons capabilities to improve yor probability of hit, yor rate of fire, that wold aid in servicing those targets that I jst described' and these actions will flow, I sbmit, from better training in the American, tank force. That training, I contend, is at the root of the answer to this qestion. We measre all sorts of nifty things in order to compte and report readiness and I don't have any qarrel with Army Reglation 220-1, I simply tell yo that what is reported thereon doesn't have mch to do with the ability of the team commander to handle the problem that I've jst otlined for WHAT IS tifal READINESS P 4

5 reasons that will become apparent as we go on. Let's examine who's really ot there in those 12 tanks. I am going to show yo some data taken from a jst completed srvey of the tanks of the U.S. Army. The data is drawn from two separate srveys, one extends across 15 battalions of the Army in USAREUR and in the continental United States. I shold add that that first srvey was taken at the time that the nits were on Table VIII or Range 80 at Grafenwohr at the peak of their gnnery cycle. The second srvey was taken when the nits were off season, it is sort of a come-as-yo-are srvey. Again, cross Army, both srveys toched better than 20 percent of serving tankers. The first thing that strikes yo when yo look at an armor otfit is that the hypothetical crew, the crew that is envisaged by the Enlisted Personnel Management System, isn't often there. This is the way the crew is spposed to look. A career progression is provided for in MOS lie from E3 throgh E6. Most of s had some notion that the Army's tanks were manned by leathery old sergeants with a lot of tanking nder their belts and that we were training progressively fellows for these more honoros dties. There's a lot of argment I know in the adience whether the driver oght to be an E3, bt the notion was that this was the skill most commonly held by entry level soldiers and that American tanks are pretty easy to drive anyway. The loader is an E4 becase he figres in the acqisition process. He is one of the fellows with his head ot of the tank and he can acqire targets. He's also a key member of the weapons system. He figres heavily in the rate of fire. I gess it was General Starry who remarked that loading one of these things with add-on stabilization is like ptting a sppository in a panther. The loader is probably worth at least an E4. The gnner, obviosly, is the man at the TANK CR1M 5

6 telescope who pts the gn on lay and he has to be terribly important to that weapons system. Bt the most important fellow, obviosly, is the tank commander. He's the one making the decision on acqisition, both detection and identification. He's the one giving the fire command, doing the ranging, etc. Here is some data from the crews that are ot there firing Table VIII. One ot of for of them is not a gradate of Fort Knox AlT. One ot of ten of them is not even an lie today. In some CONUS tank battalions, only abot 75 percent of the men even carry the MOS of tanker, the rest are cooks, bottle washers, cabinet makers, yo name it. The reason for the difference here, of corse, is that some fellows have recently been reclassified tankers or they came ot of AIT as infantrymen and some division commander redesignated and retrained them as tankers. And, of corse, for those of s who are in the advanced individal training bsiness, this statistic is always jst a little bit disappointing. For the past two years, Fort Knox has trained 120 percent of the Army's reqirements for lie. Where they all go I don't know, bt ot at Fort Leavenworth the commander from Berlin admitted that he was way overstrength in lie and there was another commander, same geographic area to the soth, who allowed as how he was way nderstrength, and I jst had to say yo oght to get together and straighten that ot. Yo have to draw a conclsion here that these battalions are representative of what we wold have if we went to war and I think it's fair to say that one ot of every for members of yor tank crew is an amater. When yo look at who is actally in charge ot there, yo will discover that 53 percent, abot half of the tank commanders, are E5 or nder. There's the sample that we looked at here, 268 tanks were examined. The gy who's sitting with his eyeball at the telescope in most of the tanks, seven ot of ten of or tanks, is a first termer. He's lcky,. E4 \~ E % ARE lle RANGE CONUS: 14.9% - 91'.7% USAREUR: 83.0% %, 74%" 'AH TRAINED l~ T<: :AND GUNNER SHORTAGIS ",t( / %~ / l E3 E4 E5 E6 GUNN~ ' : / --;;;.'. ),,24%. 69' 69%~ f~l l!::~t 113 ' '<.'

7 if he's had one gnnery season nder his belt. He too is a neophyte, an amater. What's worse, he probably jst got that job as gnner before he started the gnnery cycle. I'll show yo some data on that in a minte. The Army Reglation says that tankers shall have a Profile 1 in all of these categories, bt when yo look at or sample of tankers yo discover that a nmber of them have Profile 2 in their eyes. What does that mean? Profile 2 soldiers, gentlemen, are the Willie Weakeyes. Profile 2 soldiers have this kind of an eye condition or another. Soldiers will generally see with their best monoclar vision when it comes to target detection and identification. Bt, as I will show yo, yo pay a sbstantial price for permitting a man to get into the target detection acqisition chain if he happens to be in this grop. Understand, this is corrected vision, yo can get glasses on him and he can see p to 20/20, he's otside of the frame of this analysis. As far as we know, give him glasses that are not fogged p or spattered with md, and a man with glasses can see jst abot as well as the fellow with the naked eyeball. Here is the price that yo pay for impaired vision. That time, of corse, figres in the engagement seqence. It detracts from yor ability rapidly to engage, particlarly if yo're in a sitation where the,detection of the target is difficlt. As pertains to identification, this is the percentage of correct responses here; as yo can see, the fellow with normal vision is far more often right in identifying targets than is the fellow with impaired vision. We don't report gys with visal difficlties in or readiness report, bt I sbmit to yo if my problem posed at the otset of this presentation is on the mark that this is a consideration that all of s oght to bear in mind if we're going to operate tanks professionally. I think yo may have seen slides like this before. One of the phenomena with which the American Army has to live that the Soviet conterpart does not is the sbstantial amont of mobility within the force. It's referred to by a variety of 7 "'948m),' ) ;lo!ii';,;i'., O!. 941 '9" < : i i j, ,"' :,1','3 ' 'i l "':'1JI ~.1J 2Z8'1.. ~ : f '" '., 1,t. (;,:\ ~<94" \;,,t:,4 {.' CORREC1ABLE 20120,. < '~. ~ :.. c 2~ DISTANT VtSUAl' AP:UI1:Y',, :8i.iP",~\;.r:'.f.~I,; CQ6R'f!CT~_'~;dF'p ;i., ' ::,~; 8i\f 3. BEST EYF.,',.WORS! EVE. 20/40 ; ~ j; 20IZD.{(,.,- 20/30/., 20/100 '," ';,j; ~120;' "~~~o'l4:qit>"~' -<loa 800 J 2:GO RANGE (M) IDENTifY)" " RANGE {M)

8 names--trnover, trblence or whatever- bt we're talking abot changing jobs with alarming freqency. These crves compare job changes in anyone of these for positions. Yo will be a statistic on this comptation if there were anyone of the fellows in that crew who changed jobs in the period. As yo can see, abot 80 percent of the crews, whether in CONUS or in Erope, have sch a job change every three months. Think back a moment at all the stff on training management that yo read and remember that we love to talk abot annal gnnery or off season gnnery, meaning every six months, and yo jst have to admit that's not often enogh to cope with this phenomenon. If it is tre that the relationship among the crew members is important, yo can't keep changing them that freqently and have any kind of combat readiness. Now yo might say that the gnner and tank commander are more critical to the crew than the driver and loader, this is tre! Bt when yo look at them yo find they change jst as freqently. Every three months either the tank commander or the gnner or both change in or crews throghot the Army. Contemplated stability in Erope has jst not materialized. I postlate that this problem dictates a training problem that the traditional training management techniqes of the United States Army has yet to come to grips with. This is a compilation of who did the moving. There is a perception ot there that the Department of the Army is reac.hing down with levies into these nits and plcking people ot and that this is casing the mobility. Yes, that's going on. There is no dobt bt what this has a marked impact on the whole bsiness. Bt 22 percent of the reported changes occrred Simply by telling a tanker: "Yo were the loader last week, now yo're the tank commander, take over." Seventeen percent was movement to another crew, 11 percent was movement to another platoon within the same organization, 8 percent to ajlother company with.in the same organization. So 8

9 U YOU U add this p, less the ronding, 50 percent of the trblence was cased by personnel changes within the battalion. Yes, I appreciate this cascade effect, the over 40 percent cased by division or DA brings abot a sort of domino effect, yo move one fellow and yo've got to move a whole bnch of others. Bt do appreciate that a lot of this bsiness happens within the nits and ask yorself if it wold be feasible, as battalion 8-1 or as assistant 8-3 or as company commanders, to do anything to mitigate the impact of this personnel mobility becase everyone of those personnel changes brings with it a training problem of one kind or another. Try to measre the impact across the Army and yo get figres like this for varios tank systems. This is probably the most complicated tank system that we have ever pt in the United States Army. It takes a hell of a lot of training to get the most ot of it. It's a great tank, it has a lot in it that"' s admirable, bt it is hard to train and yet that's the system that is being sbjected to the greatest amont of instability. What this figre tells yo is that commanders allover the Army, as most of yo are well aware, stack their crews for periods jst before they go ot to fire their gnnery season. The nfortnate fact of the matter is that the Rssians aren't going to time the war to take yo on right at the end of Table VIII. The nfortnate part of the game is that most of s will fight sometime one month after we fire Table VIII when we've already disbanded the crews that we've jst completed training. Wold yo believe that in that company team that we were looking at there is a tank commander who never fired Table VIII, wold yo belive that there are gnners ot there that have never fired Table VIII, that half the loaders have never fired Table VIII? Again, we're an amaterish Army ot there. This is an attitdinal srvey. We went ~ ~ ',_ '. ~i:v~:'r~, '.'; ;i Of CREWS 16GHHER MORE ~ M551 THAN 3 MONTHS WI1HOUT 7q )!, CHANGE 1\ Of CRfWS THA 1 TRAINtD MORE THAN J MONTHS PRIOR!7 7J TO TABLE VIII \ Of CREWS THAT Rf,MAINEO 'WGETHF.R MORf THAN 1 MONTH 50 '~i, 56', AfTER firing TABLE VIII. ACTUAL PRODUCTS OF TURBULENCE PERCENT Of CREWMEN WHO HAVE NEVER fired TABLE VIII M60Al TANI( COMl\qANDfR 10" GUNNER U "f LOAOER 42"" 29% M60Al II 11', 36" M551 Average 24';, 41% 9

10 down and asked gys what they thoght abot being tankers and I don't know what yor feeling is abot it, bt it's somewhat alarming to me that for ot of ten sergeant tank commanders want to ~et ot of tanking. That is evident in the reenlistment statistics. Tankers reenlist at abot the same rate as other soldiers in the Army, one ot of three eligible will reenlist, bt often he will reenlist for another MOS. That acconts for some of the shortages of senior lie noncommissioned officers with which yo have to live ot there in the force. Why is it that we've got tank commanders who don't like their job? Yo know the answer better than I. Long hors, cold, dirt, md, snow, rain, sleet, mck, steady pressre on maintenance, their job extends on in the motor park long after the other participants in the exercise have gone home, it begins earlier in the morning with before operations maintenance, all of the hassling that.goes on in the name of being tankers. One of the answers to the problem I posed at the otset is simply to develop a corps of tankers far more competent, far more persaded that they are indeed in charge of the key weapon system of the United States Army, which is what we say in Field Manal We say the tank is the most important weapon system we own and yet we haven't persaded or enlisted men that they have important, vital and interesting jobs. What yo're looking at is the comparison of the actal performance of the crews of 15 battalions in actal firing against a moving T-62-type target in daylight. This is the problem that we're talking abot in servicing. This is what the weapons system oght to be capable of, this black crve, the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Agency prediction for the capability of the weapon. This is what the force fired and we're simply not getting ot of weapons systems what we oght to. We're not getting anywhere near the probability of hits that oght to be there. Some of yo might want to speclate why the accracy falls off JOB SATISFACTION 55 % LIKE CURRENT JOB BUT 43% OF ENLISTEO TC AND 65% 'OF OTHER CREWMEN INDICATE DESIRE TO CHANGE MOS 10

11 Umore rapidly at the closer ranges. In the firings that we tracked here over the last several months, we've kept carefl book on the differences between engagements sing the precision method verss engagements sing the battlesight method of engagement and we discovered that there was no difference in accracy between the two methods. That's a finding that Fort Knox had predicted, it had been established here long since, bt there are still commanders ot there who refse to believe that and persist in ptting considerable training emphasis on precision fire as opposed to firing with the battlesight. What's the difference? The difference is, of corse, in engagement time. It trns ot that battlesight engagement is abot twice as fast as precision fire both day and night. It is possible to shoot fast and hit. Yo'll hit as often as sing precision methods and yo can do it at night as well as daytime. So we oght to be spending a lot more time on battlesight engagement. Here. is data taken from actal firing of U' several battalions who went throgh an intensive gnnery cycle in the first qarter of calendar year 75. Again, we fired some crews here in qrder to establish this data point, fired some crews here in order to establish that one, fired some crews here, fired some crews there. And, of corse, what yo're looking at here on the ordinate is opening time. As yo can see, an intensive gnnery cycle will ct the time to engage by 100 percent. Yo can ct it from 20 seconds to 10 seconds with any kind of crew. The data shows that there is no correlation between who's in the crew, the intensive gnnery training will work. What Fort Knox has prescribed in the several tables will prodce the desired ~eslts, bt, of corse, when yo start breaking p those teams that have gone throgh that training, yo immediately dissipate that expertise. The point here is that when yo're going to war, and yo're o 1.0., Ph ~ ENGAGfMENT METHOD - ' PRECISION. _ BATTLESIGHT ~, ' IlOO FIRST ROUND MEAN HIT PROBABILITIES (I'h) OF CONUS TANK CREWS ON TABLE VIII A (DAY). fngagfm[nt MHHOO" POfCISION ANO 8ATTtHIC"'T fa.eet MOTION.' STAtlONARV AMMVNITtON MEAl OVERAlL FIRST ROUND MEAN FIRING TIMES itarget MOTION: STATIONARY: AMMO: HEATi ENGAGEMENT METHOD MEAN SOURCE PRECISION SA TTlESIGHT DIFFERENCE TABlE VillA (DAYf USAREUR CONUS TASlf villa (NISHT) USAREUR 1, CilNUS TANK GUNNERY PERFORMANCE OPENING TIME 10,,, IS INlENSIV( GUNNERY MAR 75 ~I; <,fl.~~ ' DEC 75 MAR 76 ~i1 ',wlllr. ; &1 \ 'IGitt.,, U 11

12 going to have 20 seconds, 30 seconds opening time to contend with as yo lay on sccessive targets, that's going to brn p those seven mintes of servicing time pretty fast. I watched a tank down at Fort Hood here recently engage three targets at ranges ot to 1600 meters and hit all three in 11 seconds. It can be done with a good crew, it takes a lot of drilling, bt it can be done. What we're going to look at is probability of hit (PH). This crve here depicts accracy. These crews at the end of intensive gnnery were shooting a PH somewhere on the average of 65 or so, that fell off abot 18 percent in this time' interval, which says that yo lose accracy far slower than yo lose time. Again, that wold make sense to yo, I think, becase time is a fnction of that crew interaction. It's a matter of the teamwork, how rapidly yo can get the whole seqence pt together and again yo will note that the intensive gnnery cycle does prodce marked reslts. These data sggest that improvements on the order of 30 percent in accracy can be achieved in an intensive gnnery cycle. It also tells yo that we are getting a little better. Looking at this peak verss this peak, yo see that we really are pshing the art of gnnery forward and in this particlar otfit that represents a lot more emphasis on gnnery and a far more cogent approach to teaching the gnnery bsiness dring this period. In any event, what those crves tell yo are two things--training does make a difference--and a big difference--in the capability of the weapons system. In fact, yo get more ot of training than we can by for yo in terms of a better tank or better ammnition or a nifty range finder or a compter onboard. Yo can get more ot of training p with yor existing eqipment than we can by bying yo some fancy 12

13 black boxes to make the gnnery problem easier. Not that I don't want to by yo black boxes, I do, bt there's a lot that can be gotten ot of doing the training job better. The other thing that's evident on this chart is that we mst address this area in here as a matter of rgency in the force, we've got to find ot how to come to grips with that problem. I know, of corse, that training developers here are doing some sperb work in this respect. We've got to get the work here translated into reality to the force and get operating on it in order to bring p or readiness ot there. We sed Table VIII as or measre of effectiveness in this little analysis. Fort Knox has prescribed additional and newer tables bt yo all appreciate, of corse, that most of the force is still firing Table VIII as it was some time ago. And all of this is tre abot Table VIII: we're still shooting at targets well delineated with barber poles and beaten areas, it is not hard to find the target on most of or Table VIII. There's no srprise ot there. Targets are by and large stationary, no pop-p featre, they're not scored electrically like the Rssian targets, and, therefore, what we're practicing on Table VIII and the previos tables doesn't really tell s whether we're p to the servicing problem that I started ot with. We're going to have to have a Table IX and a Table X as a matter of rgency in the Army. We're going to have to have electrically scored targets with pop-p featres, targets that permit s to change the target array from day to day. We need a probability scoring capability; we're going to have to significantly advance the art of tank gnnery if we're going to stretch the force toward the problem on hand. And, fortnately, there's a lot of movement in that direction and I have a great deal of optimism that we're going to get there. We're going to TABLE. VIII DEFICIENCIES TARGET ACQUISITION UNEXPECTED TARGETS MULTIPLE TARGETS TARGET MOVEMENT RANGE TO TARGETS,:;.;,;: AMMUNITION LIMITATIONS lack OF ;!OSTILE ENVIRONMENT CONCLUSION:,'t }ik"'?,~,..., fr);}~~.:',,"poor MEASURE O(EFF'ECTIVENESS" :r oo' 13

14 need the enthsiastic cooperation of every professional in the tanking bsiness. If yo go to the officers of the Armor and yo ask them how they evalate their sbordinates, yo get a response as shown. What is significant abot this table is the nanimity of opinion that tank gnnery or performance on tank gnnery is the measre of effectiveness of an lie. And, there is corresponding nanimity that the MOS test and the enlisted efficiency report link the measre of effectiveness that we oght to se. These are the measres that we se to promote those gys, to decide whether we'll send them to school, to determine their assignments, and to make decisions abot sbjecting them to what the personnel managers refer to as qalitative management program. As long as we are sing these measres of effectiveness in or centralized promotion system, I sbmit yo are going to have a corps of noncommissioned officers that wonder what it is that we are abot. Maybe that acconts for the disenlistment rate in lie. Hopeflly, of corse, the skill qalification tests, the Soldier's Manals and all the othe~ good things yo are working on here at Fort Knox are going to regress some of that, bt I tell yo yo've got a hge problem ot there. To remind yo again what we are talking abot here, that's the problem this fellow mst solve. I am certain that somebody has imposed on yo before this year the notion that the otcome of that battle will be a fnction not alone of the proficiency of those crews bt of the tactics that they are sing. Where he positions these troops, the commands that he gives them, the way that the whole battle is pt together in terms of interaction among the several weapons systems, his artillery and his other fire spport, there's a tactic involved in here. This is an analysis which was derived from gaming ot that battle that I jst showed yo sing the same kind of analytic tool that we sed to decide to by new weapons systems. The model to which I jst referred says OFFICER PERCEPTION OF THE USEFULNESS OF PROFICIENCY INDICATORS TANK GUNNERY 70.8% ORTT! ATT 31.9% DAlt Y JOB PERFORMANCE 29. 1% PRELIM GUNNER'S EXAM 27.8% CONDITION OF TANK 19.4% ABILITY (? ) 12.5% TANK CREW PROFICIENCY COURSE 6.9% MOS TEST 6.9% SUPERVISOR EVALUATION ;' THE PR08l[M., ' HOW TO SERVICE 60 faagfts WiIHINTIIt ):limli' 1 W81L UND R SUPPBfSSlU fires., ". I 14

15 that the effectiveness in battle is the fnction of the capability of the weapons system, the proficiency of the crew and the tactics of techniqes of the commander concerned. What yo're seeing her~ are losses on the attacking force and the defending force where P is at the fll capability of the weapons system, that black crve that I showed yo from the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Agency. When P or the crew proficiency is p to the capability of the weapon, RED loses 25 of the attacking 60 armored vehicles, BLUE loses seven ot of his 12 tanks. When yo degrade yor proficiency by 25 percent--which or data wold sggest is pretty representative of most crews in the United States Army--yo take ot only 18 of those attacking tanks and yo lose eight. If yo allow yor proficiency to be degraded by 40 percent--and again the data sggests that there are battalions that are down that mch--the attacker loses only 14 vehicles, the defender loses nine ot of 12 and, obviosly, at the end of minte seven, the bad gys swarm allover the defender. So yo pay a very significant price, these analyses wold sggest, for allowing yor proficiency to drop off. How do yo correct that? Greatly increased emphasis on gnnery, obviosly an attack on trblence, bt yo've also got to work on the T, the tactics area, as well. I wold like to show yo some hopefl statistics on improvement there. All of yo have been exposed to REALTRAIN, yo know how it works. What I want to do is show yo some data from the mobile training team headed p by the Armor School that went to Erope in November and came back the end of Febrary. To remind yo of what this REALTRAIN bsiness is all abot, this is an actal example of a REALTRAIN engagement at one of the training areas in Germany. This particlar case pitted a RED team, Team A, against a BLUE team, Team B. The RED team has been engaged in REALTRAIN for two and one-half weeks. This battle LOSSES RED 9. 15

16 occrred on the 18th of December. The RED team does not know where the BLUE team is or what its mission is, bt, as yo can see, the exercise was set p to precipitate a meeting engagement. Note that RED team is operating in two sb-elements, a light section of tanks, an artillery sqad and a TOW on the north and a comparable force on the soth. Note that BLUE has weighted his northern axis where he has a heavy section of tanks, two sqads of infantry and a TOW while a light section and a TOW are down on the soth. The RED team, the pros that have been doing this abot two and onehalf weeks, elected in this instance to lay back and let BLUE take the initiative. The BLUE commander directed that they seize this ridge and then be prepared for frther orders. Let's take a look at that terrain withot the corses on it, it will give yo a better impression of what it's like. Back here is BLUE, their commander told them to get p on that ridge and then wait for orders where to go from there. RED pt his weapons back here on these high gronds, ran an infantry sqad forward and set p an OP in this area, and ambshed BLUE. As BLUE leader came across the ridge, he was killed. Lacking any frther instrctions, the rest of BLUE contined to pile p onto the intermediate objective. Here is the opening engagement in the battle. They took ot three vehicles in the first whack. Here is the infantry OP, p here the APC. The battle, which I've got in some detail, took abot two and one-half hors. The finales look like this. As yo can see, the BLUE force creamed p here on the intermediate objective, the RED force infantry assalted to clean ot these remaining tanks down here. This simlation is so real that yo even see the infantry in a typical screw-p. This platoon leader called back to this APC and directed the driver to report to him p on the objective. The gy trned left instead of right and drove p here where he was knocked ot by his own artillery. That's so real it hrts. That's the end of the engagement, and, as yo know, yo call i n. 16

17 l ~verybody in and yqu have a critiqe in ~which everybody figres ot who shot who where and why. And I can assre yo that that yong lietenant commanding BLUE got a very vivid lesson in how to pt all of it together. It is very fascinating to note that dring for months' of reporting on these sort of engagements--where there's one or more a day throghot that period- that commnication within the experienced troops is mch more freqent and sbstantive than commnication within the inexperienced troops. The major difference between the two was that the RED team infantry talked to their tankers, identified targets for them, alerted them what was coming on, called for the TOW's, and sed their artillery; the tankers, in trn, talked the infantry into position. There was jst considerably more teamwork evident! It bilds teamwork, it bilds the tactics, it teaches how to cope with sitations like we portrayed at the otset. Yo've got a training techniqe here that really works. We trained 1500 soldiers of USAREUR with that mobile training team and they were ~sked how they felt abot the ability of their nits to execte its mission. And, as yo can see, there was a sbstantial sbjective gain in confidence reported after a week or more of REALTRAIN exercising than before. When we asked 400 or so officers and noncommissioned officers who were trained as controllers to compare REALTRAIN with live fire or conventional field exercises--and, incidentally, the majority of these controllers had participated in the recent REFORGER--we got these kinds of comparisons. Whatever else yo've got to say abot that training techniqe of yors, it is greatly more satisfying to the troops at the company officer and NCO level than the sal way of going ot there and stmbling arond while serving as a training aid for generals. Does it teach cover and concealment? Most of the participants said so. Does it teach yo to se artillery? Most of them felt that it was very effective, in fact, 90 percent of them. Does it teach yo to se all available ABOllt AS l.fhenvl,\$ I.I.S5 (f flclivr TIl AN 19', i9~ : 2', {I~r h ij"', 17

18 weapons? Yes, indeed. It goes, it seems to me, directly to the heart of the T proposition in that model we're talking abot. This is a sergeant by the name of Br len, his name tape read Briem, when I called him on that, he said well, they made a little mistake so I left it like that. He was a qintessential tanker. He looked like a pot bellied stove with a pistol belt on it. Bt, by god, he was a prod tanker. He had been ot in the training area at Friedberg when I talked with him in late Febrary for three weeks, day in, day ot, moved the tanks ot, left them there, plled all his maintenance ot there, and Febrary in Friedberg is mddy, foggy, cold with snow on the grond. Jst a miserable place to be. The day I got there the tankers were waiting for the infantry to show p, fog on the road had preclded the infantry from leaving the kaserne on time an~in a sitation like that, the soldiers normally sit arond and bitch. Not these people. They were ot adjsting track tension, checking radios, working with the Hoffman devices, the weapons systems signatre simlators, and otherwise honing that otfit for the pcoming engagement. They had been doing this for three weeks and there was a fantastic kind of enthsiasm evidenced in these troops, an enormos pride evidenced in that sergeant. I met a yong lad who the day before had captred a BLUE tank. He was a loader, he had been dismonted to go forward to the edge of a woods to reconnoiter and one of the BLUE tanks had came barrelling past him into the edge of the woods and stopped, wherepon he climbed p on the back deck and dropped a hand grenade down the hatch killing the crew. The controller told him it was his, so he climbed in and drove the tank back to his own force. The only problem was, as he told me, he didn't know how to se the radio, he didn't have an SOl in his pocket and wasn't able to notify his nit he was coming back. The reslt was that he got 18

19 ... blown away when he came home. I asked him what he did abot that and he said: "I got p this morning at 4:30 and picked p an SOl and received instrction on how to se it and now I know what to do if it ever happens again. I learned how to se the radio this morning while we were waiting, and today I'm going to get me my own tank." This otfit had been ptting a lot of mileage on these tanks over cross contry; they had really ponded them. Every tank in that platoon was rnning, everyone of them. Sergeant BrIen told me that's becase these gys want to win! That, gentlemen, may tell s something abot it. I saw the same kind of enthsiasm in the infantry. Friedberg is a very small local training area, not a lot of area in there is open, permitting long intervisibi1ity. Most of the fighting took place in these exercises in fog, where a shot mch longer than 100 meters was a rarity. So infantry weapons really dominated these little combats at Friedberg in this weather condition. Bt it is interesting that the entire for months that the mobile training team from TRADOC was over there, they missed only one day of training and that was becase the infantry were nable to get to the training area becase of the fog. Yo can rn this training in all conditions of weather. Unfortnately, we haven't figred yet how to do it at night, bt in any kind of daylight condition, when yo've got any kind of visibility at all, yo can do it. What happens, of corse, is that in open terrain, in good visibility, the tanks and the TOW's dominated the combat when otherwise the infantry dominates combat, and that is pretty realistic. Again, we can't expect the Rssians to show p on a bright snshiny day. They are going to come in the morning when the fogs are in those valleys and we will have to fight in a lot of cases mch like this slide depicts. What do we do abot all of this? I gess 19

20 TANK CREWS yo worry abot it a lot, and maybe we need to think more abot how yo pt together these tank crews. I am going to show yo a soltion that some members of my staff are working on and I do it with hazard becase if certain armor generals were here they wold probably disapprove. This is jst staff chit-chat, gentlemen, bt I'll throw it ot becase some of yo might want to stand in for yor generals. There may be a better way of ptting together tank crews than we've been doing it in the past as illstrated on this flip. Spposing we were to organize and train or tank crews the way the Israelis do. Yo know, when they come in the Army they split the intake to the tank corps into what they call a hll grop which they train as mechanics, and a trret grop which they train as gnners, loaders and tank commanders. Frther, they select the better gys to be gnners and the best to be tank commanders. This diagram sggests that maybe we cold laterally insert at least some of these fellows, and we wold have a kind of sliding grade featre in the plan that wold permit a man who is a good driver to remain a good driver throgh the grade of E5. If we fond a good man for tank commander with good eyesight and mental agility and the rest of it, we wold make him a tank connander even as low as E4. We wold give this fellow down here in the hll a mechanics MOS and train him to handle atomotive mechanics skills. That wold lead s to a pattern like this--and let me again warn yo that this is all jst speclation--where we bring in gys to one station nit training here at Fort Knox and give them either an MOS of 63 or 11E at skill level 1. Then we pt them ot in the force where they can grow from E3 to E5 in either of these MOS and they cold be awarded the second skill level. We bring them along to their re-p decision and then permit them to either remain at skill level 2 in those MOS or branch to MOS 63 where they wold pick p the primary technical corse here at the Armor School to become a first I 0 E 3 ALL SAME MOS (lie) VERTICAL PROGRESSION TC E 6 G E 5 L E 4 1 J,;' l_,~ l {t ~fii ' ''m a~;::- G E 5 1 l 4 o E 3 All SAME MOS (11E) VERTICAL PROGRESSION.' ~ " :; "'.... _,']:,-. 'i ~~'.",... :i,~~:~i~.. ',:;:;..'.~ r \;.~<- ii:~,\. -::J >,. -,.,.-;~;~. ;f~t~" ; "J\JMU.~."~ t:t1 Q$fOI,I,J. "5> ",' ;~~\:'~\;:_~i.." ~<'~ 'l, :/~f: ~;~K~~t'.:.w.~~!;.~;:c~,! \~ '~ ~::; " - "r}~ ~;f;;j r 3 YR EMUS!MEN!.~~~,.- ~~. '()j, -~ " ',-, j '" ;~~. tl:>111h19,' ~,.. EM ' " ' - -~ ~ ::~?:"",. '"' (\':;, J\. \I. >.C ~ ". ' f;'. 'Mv - EM TO UHm o WKS? 20

21 U U 1ine spervisor, or take the trret mechanics, MOS, again a primary technical corse, or perhaps go into some other MOS. Bt selected ones cold go on to a tank commanders corse where they wold get a skill level 3. We see this being the corse length, bt that doesn't mch matter. Some of these soldiers we wold want to pick ot of the stream early-on. Again, maybe yo wold go ot and recrit gys with good eyesight and good intellect and tell them that if they can ct it in the force, we'll give them a shot at a stripe right off the bat. We did a lot of that in the Vietnam War and sometimes it worked. In any event, they go throgh a crew commanders shakeot mch like the warrant officer vetting program down in the Aviation School, of indeterminate length and then enter the tank commanders corse and when they came ot be promoted to E4 corporal, a tank corporal. They cold go ot to the force and serve as gnner or a tank commander. Obviosly, we've got to do something like that with officers and we propose that we take all lietenants of armor and rn them throgh this tank commanders corse. Then pt them throgh platoon leaders training which wold be in effect eqivalent to that of the NCO skill level 4 and send them on ot to the nits. That's the sort of dream scheme we're tinkering with; it is hard to say what's going to happen to that one. It is a way, we thoght, of getting at some of the problems that we were talking to here earlier on. In any event, or initial ct at cost trns ot it doesn't cost any more than what we're doing right now, so cost is argment against doing it. Yo might end p then with tank crews ot in the force that look like that. I showed that to General Mooney from MILPERCEN and he shddered. That's namerican, that slide. Bt I sbmit that we might get ot of it a force that cold fight that battle that I described, fight it well, and win it. D.", TC E6 TC 01 TC E4(TK CPL) G Es1 G E4(TK CPl)! G,(11,11 E3r 11 L E5J " L E3, J L E3, o ~S(63) IS 'E3 ' (63);$, '0, ~~(63), """'.:'." ~) 21