How To Train A Military

The competition for a commercial strategic partner for the British Army as part of the Land Training System continues. The real question that emerges is not one of cost or value but rather about what this will feel like for a corporal or a captain after a year of commercial/military partnering. With seven consortia competing to get the contract, I spoke to Steven Hart leading the Omnia team, about what the LTS/CSST contract means for industry, what the risks are, and what soldiers should be expecting after the industry partner is in place.

Over the past 12 months the British Army has designed a model to train its entire force to a set standard. It will also have the credibility and capacity to train the follow-on force, whatever that is, when the time comes. The new way of training is built on three interlinked blocks – Tradewinds (that provides the skills at individual level within a sub-unit), Cyclone (the primary sub unit training block -designed to deliver individual and collective competencies), and Storm (a reinvigorated combined-arms, formation level event – the optimization phase). Within the current plan all sub-units will conduct a dedicated 10-week training period each and every year providing the UK with more military capability, more options for responses, and increased lethality across the British Army. More importantly, the new system is driven by the people within units – not the system. This means that, perhaps for the first time, the Army can exploit its people, their drive and determination to be ‘the best’, and build on the differentiation in capabilities between units. The shift in emphasis is warranted: the British Army is so not the homogenous mass of yesteryear, meaning that a reversion to a Cold War training modalities would be disingenuous to the soldiers of today. As Major General Chris Barry tells us, shifting to a new way of training that best fits the demands of a smaller, busier, more technology dependent force of today (and tomorrow) was the only way to realise the operational demands and credibly deter adversaries.

Peter sits down with two officers from the British Army who had just completed the culminating exercise of the Captain's Warfare Course. The discussion happened in a field on Salisbury Plain as the rest of the team tore down the infrastructure and camp around us. 

The difference these two individuals exhibited from when Peter met them at the start of the course was striking. Here were 2 soldiers who had changed: they were no longer just able to command at a company level and contribute to C2 at the Battle Group level within their specialisation, but both now understand the Brigade level of command – and the processes used there. What’s more they clearly both seem able to contribute – in a meaningful way – to HQ staff functions at that level. After only 6 weeks education and training, that’s quite some leap. Their confidence, their attitude, just how they held themselves was very different to the people I met just a few weeks previously. Clearly capable officers in November, by December they had an aura of success about them – and that cynical humour that is a hallmark of British soldiers – perhaps soldiers everywhere. 

There is overwhelming conclusion from being with the team at CW: This course works. And It is getting better each time.

Two Junior NCOs from the British Army talk about their experiences of the Armoured Close Recce course in Warminster back in December 2023.  In recording this, I was struck by the professionalism with which these two young soldiers handled themselves. Accutely aware of their own inexperience, their own failings, as well as the legacy they had to live up to. Their lack of fear in confronting these challenges marked – to me – a huge humility in them, and a self assurance in their abilities and their instructors. Kudos to the senior NCO team at Warminster for delivering to junior NCOs the kind of discipline, freedoms and confidence that means they are the envy of many other militaries. This is not something create overnight – it takes a culture of excellence, of focused determination, and of belief in the next generation. And they seem to have all that in spades.

The Captain's Warfare Course in Warminster delivers the key skills to the people expected to execute 'the fight' in the British Army. During my visits to the team at Warminster, I was struck by the quality of the staff that had been selected for the Directing Staff positions. This group of people really understood the demands of what was needed from staff officers under the extreme stress of combat. Many of them had been there, done that, and got the t-shirt. Often, they had done it more than once and in more than one sort of headquarters. And more than one sort of war.  That diversity of experience is important. The validation of the CWC students cannot, in many ways, be judged for many years. The student coming off the course doesn’t know what they need to know. Their employers – in Brigade headquarters or elsewhere – will also not be able to judge the students post course for at least 6 months to a year after their arrival. And those views will vary hugely depending on the context of each fight: COIN, CT, Conventional arms, hot, arctic, jungle, urban, rural, airborne, armour heavy, coalition, or sovereign – each brings a different set of challenges and requirements. Understanding this diversity requires a set of skills, a set of people that want to adapt and evolve training as fast as realities on the battlefields change, but retaining the foundations and core skills that are needed across the differing demands in different HQs on different operations. All of that requires a dynamism and fluidity in training that too much structure can stymie. Rhys Pogson-Hughes-Emanuel exemplified that approach – something as rare as unicorns back in the day. He had obviously thought a lot about what he wanted the students to leave with: about behaviours and confidence as much as foundational knowledge.

In 2023, a report by the Royal United Services Institute on military training didn't make headlines. And that's a shame becuase it was a good read, and important too. The findings were not ground breaking but they codified the challenges facing the UK military and its military training provision (and infrastructure). There were snippets that did rile however. The focus on STEM was particularly interesting; why would those skills be more important than soldiers holding a defensive line? Even in a commercial partnership, risk is still being displaced to the front line. It might be acknowledged and shared by higher HQs but the reality is that the burden still falls to people at the edge (either taking a gap or an untrained person). The underlying issue, it turns out, remains one from our first episode: despite the rhetoric of seniors, defence simply doesn't like paying training budgets; the MoD doesn't prioritise training in the face of other requirements. Peter talked to one of the reports authors, Pat Hinton, about the reports key conclusions.

In this episode we go back down to Warminster – for the second of a series of interviews with the staff of the Captain’s Warfare Course within the Director Land Warfare’s domain for the British Army. Having had a download from Major Vicky Fraser, I was then handed over to Mark Hawthorne, the Learning Development Advisor for the HQ Junior Division under the Land Command and Staff College. Mark and I talked about training and education – the differences and the natural overlap between them. If you listened to the first series of the show, you will know about some of my own views on how militaries tend to separate training and education.

To blend training and education successfully requires a different mindset and a focus that isn’t present in many other courses. When it is, there tends to be a heavy acadamic presence - alongside military instructors, to achieve the outputs you want. Yet at CWC in Warminster, there isn’t an academic presence at all.

Instead, the team achieves a blend (of training and education) by using a variety of facets that we heard about in the first series: but we havent covered how you deliver that in reality until now. First, is the need to exploit the students desire for self improvement: Here is a generation that seems more willing to accept responsibility for their own development in professional military education. Second: really using peers across the British Army and those from foreign militaries who are also on the course to broaden and expand the horizons of study. Third: the way you teach, instruct, mentor, and train – a different methodology from traditional military courses. And finally, how the Directing staff behave.

If these themes seem familiar, its probably because we talked a lot about these in the first series. Those conversations were about the theory not the practice though. So what was really interesting was to hear Mark talk about the reality of doing this stuff for a military organisation today – including how you address training and education for a war rather than the war.

Everyone seems to be talking about technology as the engine of future training but sometimes that drives a conversation about technology alone and not about the relevance and utility to the soldier or commander. Acknowledging that tech is subservient to those ends is critical in understanding what tech can offer, and which parts are important. Peter talks to Mark Holland from Skyral (formerly Improbable Defence) about the art of the possible and the hurdles to making ambition achievable. Not all ‘open architecture’ is the same apparently.

The CWC provides junior officers with the skills they need to plan and execute operations at the Battlegroup to Brigade level in the British Army. The 6 week syllabus refreshes core knowledge for students from all arms of the army (and marines) before putting them through their paces with planning exercises in the classroom and in the field. The culmination is a deployed planning and execution challenge over the course of a week. This isn’t a pass/fail course, but it can be a challenge. The key to success, according to Chief Instructor Major Vicky Fraser, is the instructors. She explains why.

On any modern battlefield, the people you want most in a fight – be it in urban terrain or facing a determined adversary in rural environments – are engineers and maintainers. They are of far more use than a coder or pentaphibian in combat operations. How do you the military train these people? After all, giving them the skills needed, both foundational knowledge and type-specific familiarity, is not something that can be provided on a drill square or in the field. Peter talks to Brigadier Caroline Woodbridge-Lewin, Commandant of the Defence College of Technical Training in the UK, about the British approach. Turns out, a lot of this comes down to the instructors. Training and retaining those people deserves much more of our attention.

Commercial arrangements with providers of military training are usually transactional: most will have experienced how these arrangements can become strained over time as each party reaches for the contract whenever a change or amendment is needed. Moving away from that idea of a transactional or contractual modality is a shift in culture that requires both parties to embrace some risk. Peter talks to David Hook from Capita about their experiences in running naval training through Team Fisher as part of the Selbourne military training contract: it feels like there is a genuine partnership between the navy and the commercial providers. David explains how that has been achieved and where it is going. It is a compelling story.

For decades, navies have crewed the ship ‘cos the ship fights (the people – apparently – didn’t). According to RAdm Jude Terry, the Royal Navy has changed this: with People as a capability, the focus is on the crew rather than the ship. This reversal of priorities might just change the habit of cutting training budgets each year when money gets tight and ‘savings’ need to be found. But there is a lot behind this – it has to be more than just a strap line.

This first series of this podcast on military training has taken us from World War One to modern day combat operations, and a glimse into the future. Key take aways have been the continuities felt in militaries when it comes to changing direction - and the lag between decisions and impacts on the training pipeline. It's a classic symptom of the A War/The War paradox, which isn't new but time has not made it any easier on commanders, force designers, or instructors. The balance between live exercises and simulation has also been a constant topic during this season, despite simulation being in use by Western militaries since the 1960s. The part industry can, could and should play today seems to have become a less contentious topic than one might imagine - today's issue revolve more around contracts and priorities. Yet military commanders struggle with the blend of education and training, about priorities, finding time in schedules and what optimising the force means. Training design might be getting much better - and their leaders are incredibly passionate - but questions remain. Season Two is scheduled to start airing in November 2023: we can't wait to share it with you.  Thanks for listening.

The best tank on the battlefield is determined by the best crew inside it, not the best armour/gun/sights/engine/radios/reliability. That crew need to be well trained, but they also need to be educated so they can make the right decisions during combat where reality rarely replicates even the most exacting training regime. Throughout this series, training and education have been talked about as separate facets of developing the military force. Militaries tend to be ok at training people - particularly in technical skills - even if this is only done to competence rather than excellence. How much and how adequate education is for people at the pointy end of the spear is debateable. Peter talks to Kate Heaton about why this is a nonsensical approach, and how to change the relationship between training and education. It all comes down to how much we value our trainers and instructors.

Good wartime commanders are very different to those who excel in peace. How do we educate and train people for both roles? What skills are we currently prioritising in future leaders during periods of Professional Military Education, and are they the right ones? These are not oft posed questions in most Western militaries, yet France bucks that trend in having senior officers who seem to be constantly thinking about and showing continued interest in military education. Their PME process is tasked to deliver “Informed decision-makers with critical thinking skills and open mindedness” (just like many other European military academies): but it has an important addendum to the task, “with the capacity to break out of a prescriptive mindset in order to solve any problem”. To achieve that, the Ecole de Guerre approaches PME in a different way. Peter talks to Emilie Cleret, Head of the English Studies Department for French Higher Military Education at Ecole de Guerre, about debating, philosophy, culture, and the future of professional military education.

You must train for war fighting: anything else is a waste of resources. The British Army has been given a clear mission by its chief. Mobilise for a potential fight against Russia in Europe. Soon. Peter talks to Major General Chris Barry, Director Land Warfare Centre in Warminster and it is clear that there is no going back to BAOR processes and procedures: The future of military training is building the ability to be successful in a 21stCentury combined arms battle. Necessarily that includes pretty much every element of an army from logistics, engineers, MPs, and medics, to armoured infantry, aviation, and artillery. And the change depends on many variable factors that have been changed irrecoverably by a myriad of small decisions implemented since the 1990s. Thus, this change is coming from the bottom up – not only wary of history, but also of observations from contemporary conflict, and cognisant of some technology that is available now. Given the mission, waiting for the arrival of big-ticket items (tanks, IFVs, arty, drones, et al) just won’t work: that recapitalisation will not have arrived in the given the timeline. So, training a force that is fit to fight (that includes the basics of wearing helmets, signature management, and practiced at digging trenches and foxholes), must get the force to a baseline (mission zero) and add value above that. CTTP is clearly a critical part of that: a keystone that will radically change the gearing of what LWC can deliver. Delaying the decision on CTTP simply doesn’t help national security.

Peter talks to Wilf Owen about how the Israeli Defence Force train, whether you can prioritise kit over training, and the beautification of doctrine. The utility of simulation in training is clear but it is as an addendum to live field training that serves the force best. It is the blend of live and simulated training that delivers greater lethality and readiness, generating experience through relentless practice that puts military forces is the best position to deter and, on orders, defeat adversaries. If there is one thing that comes from this discussion, it is the importance of “Show-by-doing” in everything from credibility to political signalling.

The best training many of us experienced has always taken us outside of our comfort zone. For military forces this is of critical importance – you can master personal or section, even company drills well enough in a variety of places, but when you start to operate with different parts of the military you get force integration stresses. These tensions need to be worked out well before you meet an adversary on the battlefield – ideally with a thinking team of professionals acting as a dynamic adversary who will thrash you, while giving you the opportunity to learn, grow and master new skills in extremely testing conditions. It is a big ask – it costs a lot of cash, and uses a huge area of space. More than that, the training itself needs to be conducted by people who really know what they are doing.

One such place in the US National Training Centre at Fort Irwin. It represents the gold standard in unit and formation training globally – and has been doing it since 1980, when it was reopened and now acts as the center for final pre-deployment training for Brigade Combat Teams from the US Army.  In this conversation, Peter is joined by Brigadier General Curt Taylor, the Commanding General of NTC and Fort Irwin. His aim, it seems, is to “give you your worst day in combat”, before you even leave the United States.

Different cultures conduct military training and education in very different ways. The Israeli Defence Force might be the gold standard for a mantra of ‘Train Hard, Fight Easy’: the US Navy during the interwar period experimented with carrier air power to such an extent that it had a mature operating model by the 1940s (one that was instrumental in the outcome of WWII). This culture is not only evident in live military exercises, it is also reinforced by the behaviours during them. In this conversation with Professor Pete Mansoor, the importance of flexibility and adaptability of successful military forces comes to the fore, often developed - to a large extent – during the freeplay periods of live exercises. Simulation certainly has a place, but there are few signs that it can replace high tempo combined arms training events with a decent adversary force.

The capability of a military force is often measured by the equipment it operates. If a cursory examination of combat tells us anything it is that a capable military force is determined by the people in it - and how they operate the kit they have available for the fight they are in. That alone turns the training conundrum on its head; add to that the requirements of trainng a very different generation, and a move from 'training to competency' towards 'training for excellence', and the training and education rhubric starts to get at the root of the underlying issues with military priorities. Turns out this military philosohy in Europe - putting kit before people in priorities - permeates almost every facet of the martial environment. I chatted this through with Tess Butler, CEO of Ruddy Nice and a Director of Fight Club International, and looked for some solutions. It seems that puttng people first (in deeds not speeches) wouldn't cost much cash, but it would change recruitment and retention in a really positive way. More importantly, it would equip our militaries better for the fight tonight, and the fight tomorrow, and be reflected in lethality, readiness, and their ability to effectively deter. Credibility, perhaps, is more about a group of people educated and trained for excellence in the Profession of Arms.