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M432: Training Management IV

Dagger Brigade Case Study

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as a whole are often at odds with those of the

unit; career development, for example, conflicts

with sustained unit cohesion. In an Army still

shrinking in size, the margin of error between

minimal readiness and unreadiness is razor thin.

Dagger Brigade

At the end of the summer, Dagger will load its

equipment onto trains and ship off to Europe for

a nine-month deployment, the second such

rotation directed by the European Reassurance

Initiative. Once there, it will disperse across the

eastern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty

Organization (NATO), where it will be tasked

with buttressing the frontline of deterrence

against Russia. For the soldiers of Dagger, who

returned from nine months in Kuwait in the

summer of 2016, readying for this deployment has

been their singular focus since early fall and will

continue to be so through the summer.

In late 2016, we traveled to Fort Riley to meet

with members of the brigade and learn about

their experiences as they gear up for such a

momentous deployment. Meeting with officers

ranging from company commanders to the

brigade commander and acting division

commander, we discussed their approach to

managing the training process, the challenges

they have faced so far, and the road ahead. The

purpose was simple: to hear firsthand what a

brigade must do to deploy and to gain a better

understanding of the greater military readiness

challenges they face. What is the day-to-day

impact of what service leaders describe as an

ongoing readiness crisis on the men and women

tasked with carrying the nation's security

strategy?

That the soldiers we spoke with were

impressive came as no surprise, but the range

and depth of obstacles they face is striking.

Dagger Brigade has been tasked with one of

the most important-and high-profile-

deployments in the Army's portfolio: It must

prepare for a high-end, combined arms fight with

the Russian army while helping NATO allies

respond to Russian efforts at subversion and

political warfare. One might expect the brigade

to be well cared for and well-appointed, yet-even

with superior leadership-the officers detailed a

host of issues.

The biggest challenge appeared to be what

we would deem personnel readiness: a

mismatch of open positions in the brigade and no

one with the

right skill set to fill them; turnover of

personnel, especially among mid-grade

noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and

majors; and shortages of soldiers available for

training. Although reflective of personnel

shortages or mismatches, these issues show

up in the Army's readiness reporting system as

training, not personnel, shortfalls. Personnel

metrics measure the total number of soldiers

in the brigade but not necessarily their

availability to train or whether their training

and skill sets are matched with the right

position. So, while Dagger has a full set of

personnel-it has more soldiers than available

roles-it does not have enough healthy,

properly assigned soldiers to fill out its tank,

artillery, or other crews at each stage of

training. That shortage may be reflected in low

training readiness by Army metrics, but it is

fundamentally a question of personnel

availability and readiness.

Additionally the brigade is wrestling with

equipment readiness challenges-recurring

shortfalls of parts for vehicles-and adapting to

the Army's transition to a new readiness

reporting system, dubbed Objective T, which

was delayed partway through the brigade's

training calendar.

In sum, the brigade is performing a high-

wire act in its effort to meet the new readiness

targets. There was little room for error, and the

unit was spread thin, with the parent division

capable of offering limited material support.

Training and Manning the Brigade

At the heart of the brigade's challenges lies a

disconnect between the training schedule and

the personnel rotation schedule. That is, even

as the brigade progresses through its training

milestones, soldiers consistently cycle in and

out of units.

Training began in early fall 2016 with small-unit

"gunnery" availabilities, or training exercises for,

at first, crews-for example, an Abrams tank

requires four soldiers per crew, and a Bradley

Fighting Vehicle requires three to maneuver and

man its main weapons systems-and then larger

units. As the weather grew colder, the scope of

training exercises increased. Dagger's goal was

to have 100 percent of crews fully trained, or

qualified, in advance of its first full- brigade,

combined arms exercise, dubbed Danger Focus,

in January and February 2017.

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From there, the brigade devoted itself to

preparing for a rotation to the National Training

Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California, in the

spring. An NTC rotation represents the lone

opportunity for the brigade to engage in large-

scale, live-fire exercises designed to emulate

combat against a modern enemy, in this case

the Russian army. It is, in other words, the

highest-profile and most demanding training

event the brigade will experience. Returning from

California, the brigade will then tend to itself over

the summer and prepare for its eventual

deployment-for which packing will take a good

month's work.

The training schedule, then, is unforgiving,

and Dagger has developed an internal operating

strategy, mapping out the inflection points and

key events, to guide its planning. Yet personnel

turnover profoundly complicates matters. The

Army's training process dictates that units,

beginning at the lowest level and moving to ever-

larger echelons, must hit a series of training

benchmarks before deployment. However, after

each table-each step up the readiness ladder

-soldiers will be pulled out of the brigade or

reassigned, leaving crews that just qualified

short a gunner, for example, or a commander.

Let us step back for a moment: The skill-

level mismatch is not a reflection of the quality

of the soldiers. The officers with whom we

spoke made clear their respect for the troops

they command. When a staff sergeant is

reassigned-"PCS'ed" in Army parlance-he or

she moves at the pleasure of Human

Resources Command (HRC), a centralized

authority pulling the personnel strings for the

service. Dagger Brigade finds itself at the

congested intersection between HRC's schedule

and US Forces Command, which dictates

deployment and usage calendars. Personnel

and training schedules are imperfectly

synchronized.

Lacking a clear understanding of what

replacements they would receive or how many

soldiers they would have, company and battalion

commanders had to plan training events and

manage their units under a cloud of uncertainty.

They could lose soldiers to health or discipline

issues or to PCS assignments, and replacement

calendars, while projected, are subject to

change. Often, commanders anticipate certain

manning and equipment levels-and plan

according to those expectations-only to find

themselves with a different set of personnel or

equipment. At points, the brigade and division

headquarters appeared to have different

personnel projections than the battalion and

company commanders did. One company

commander, for example, expected to go to NTC

with half the soldiers he needs, but the division

did not foresee such a shortfall. This confusion

may be inherent to the process, particularly

given the routine shuffling of soldiers in and out

of the brigade; continuous personnel churn,

exacerbated by general personnel shortages,

strains units at all echelons.

These units experienced 80

percent personnel turnover

between scout team

qualifications and the end of

platoon exercises. One mechanized infantry company

commander with whom we spoke had recently

completed platoon- level, live-fire exercises for

which he had scrambled to produce a full

complement of commander-gunner- driver teams

for his 14 Bradleys. In the intervening

10 days, five of those 14 crews had lost at least one

crew member. The company was preparing for

exercises the same day we were there, and the

commander had only four Bradleys up and running.

Moreover, he only had been able to field 14

full crews earlier by gutting the squads of

infantry "dismounts"-foot soldiers who can be

carried by and discharged from the Bradley to

fight in conjunction with the mounted crew

employing the main gun and other

armaments. These units experienced

So percent personnel turnover between scout

team qualifications and the end of platoon

exercises. The captain predicted he would have

one dismount squad ready just in time for

deployment, as opposed to the intended three.

Nor was that company unique. One brigade

support company expected to bring only 69 of

its

140 soldiers to NTC, and when new soldiers

did get assigned to it, most were not qualified

for the tasks they were expected to perform. The

company routinely received truck drivers who

did not have a license to drive trucks at Fort

Riley-seven weeks later, they could claim 40

hours of training and certifications.

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A cavalry company was 14 people short-79

versus 93-and expected to lose 27 more,

meaning two of its 14 Bradleys sat unmanned

and another two crews would be broken up after

NTC. The commander expected to receive

replacements, but they would not arrive trained,

meaning they would have to repeat live-fire

exercises.

Each battalion boasted about 58 crews, of

which an average of 45 could be expected to

remain stable throughout the training process.

Even an armor battalion, which deployed the

day we were there for live-fire training, was

short two tank platoon leaders, out of four total

platoons, and had no platoon sergeants.

Worse yet, the commander reported that there

were no replacements in sight.

One officer reported that the

brigade had 55 to 60 percent of

the staff sergeants it needed,

due in part to them being called

to other units deploying before

Dagger. All told, fewer than two-thirds of the required

tank crews had completed their qualification

training and were fully manned. Among rifle

squads, fewer than one-half met those

standards, and many other crucial units-including

tank plows and mine rollers, howitzer crews, and

signal and mission command master gunners-

were at similar levels. Every platoon in the

battalion suffered a grade mismatch; that is,

each had a position that required a distinct

training and expertise base but no one who

qualified.

In short, operating without complete

crews and key positions filled is the new

normal.

Commanders must live and operate with

those constraints. The brigade feels the

strain of skill- level-position mismatches-what

the Army calls MOS/SL mismatch-most in its

NCO corps.

The end result could be seen in Dagger Brigade.

One officer reported that the brigade had 55

to 60 percent of the staff sergeants it needed,

due in part to them being called to other units

deploying before Dagger. To boot, many of those

sergeants

had not completed their gunnery training, meaning they

were sent forward with fewer qualifications

than many of their peers and will in turn struggle

to get promoted. Similarly, three-quarters of the

NCOs from the brigade sent to specialized

schools to advance their careers promptly have a

permanent change of station (PCS) upon return.

For example, the brigade now expects to be

missing seven of the 37 master gunner

sergeants it needs in the coming months.

The combined effect of this constant NCO

turnover is degraded training quality. Quality

sergeants enable Army training by guiding

inexperienced enlisted soldiers and officers

through the hoops. When they get moved in

the middle of the training schedule, the forces

they leave suffer. One company in an armor

battalion had two platoons led by brand-new

lieutenants who, lacking any senior NCOs,

were stuck asking corporals and specialists-

as opposed to more senior NCOs-for advice.

Even those units gifted with quality NCOs can

lose them after doing live- fire training. Worse

still, there is no accounting for the

qualifications of the men and women sent to

fill those now-open positions; one company

expected to receive a sergeant who had been

on a recruiting billet for four years.

Victims of the abattoir of budget cuts and a

shrinking Army, officers now spend less time

in positions than they once did, even in the

midst of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the

Army shrunk and sloughed off brigades over the

past eight years, the total number of positions

for advancement- minded soldiers shrunk. To

accommodate that while still giving high-

performing officers opportunities in key roles, the

Army shortened rotation allotments. Field-grade

officers, for example, get no more than 24

months in a position before rotating to another.

Those in key leader positions, such as the

brigade S3-its operating officer-and the

executive officer, used to receive 36 months

or more, so they now garner less professional

development time. As a result, units such as

Dagger have a tension between the need to

man the brigade-retain talent-and the need to

promote career advancement-cycle out the

talent.

Under the Objective T guidance, the brigade

would have needed to deploy with at least 75

percent of the key leaders who participated in

the NTC rotation, but it was barely on pace to hit

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that target, even before Objective T

implementation was delayed. As is the

norm, it expects to lose about half its

field- grade officers between NTC

and deployment. The brigade S3,

who keeps the engines running and

will have overseen the entire train-up

process, will depart at midsummer, as

will other key staff officers. Some

battalions expect to deploy to Europe

with fewer than two-thirds of their key

leader positions filled-and NCO

numbers are not much better.

The loss of experience and

heavy turnover rates in these

positions eat awayata

brigade's overall knowledge

base and competency. The high rate of turnover affects forces not

only in the near-term but also downstream. The

men and women who cycle through those

positions are well-trained and highly competent

but get less time in positions and have less

experience. The brigade's field-grade staff now

averages only 12 years of experience, but in the

past staff usually had about

15. Similar to the drain ofNCOs, the loss of experience

and heavy turnover rates in these positions eat

away at a brigade's overall knowledge base and

competency. The forces will still hit their marks

in training, and the brigade will still be well-run

nd well-organized. But the cost of getting there,

m terms of both time and money, continues to

become an ever-growing burden on the brigade.

To complement the internal personnel issues,

the division is spread thin. There is little the

division's rear attachment-the actual division

headquarters is directing operations in Iraq at

the moment-can do to support the brigade. The

first ABCT of 1st Infantry Division deployed to

South Korea this fall, d the division's 1st Combat

Aviation Brigade (CAB) 1s spread out between

Afghanistan and Fort Bliss, outside El Paso, Texas.

Absent its HQ and two brigades, the division

provides what material and higher headquarters

support it can.

Without other forces on base, soldiers from Dagger bear

responsibility for upkeep around Fort Riley, called borrow

military manpower duties; 8 percent of a support company

was assigned to those duties when we were there,

preventing them from taking part in training activities.

Moreover, absent support from the division's CAB, Dagger

will have to rely on external cavalry units to support Danger

Focus and the NTC rotation-and even then those units will

have a limited range of acceptable roles, constraining the

scope of the training exercises. Fortunately, the National

Guard units slated to participate in Danger Focus will join

Dagger at NTC as well.

Equipping the Force

As an armored brigade-equipped with MI Abrams

and M2 Bradleys- Dagger feels the brunt of the eq

ipment readiness issue more than a light infantry

bngade combat team might. It must account for

the dual requirements of equipment availability

and crew training. This complicates the training

regimen-planners must align personnel with

available equipment-and amplifies the effect of

the personnel-training mismatch.

As alluded to above, the brigade's heavy

equipment increases the complexity of each step of

training. Light infantry units, unburdened by crew

qualification requirements, can more easily handle

personnel turnover, but even then when a small

unit is broken up and new soldiers added, unit

cohesion suffers.

In armored formations, that degradation is

compounded. When an Abrams crew cycles out

two of its four members, not only does crew

unity suffer, but so too does crew proficiency.

Even if the two new soldiers have trained

elsewhere '

the crew must rediscover its

effectiveness-four men crammed inside a tank

are not interchangeable- to say nothing of the

need to requalify the entire crew if they have

not been previously trained.

There is still the question of whether the

vehicles run and operate. When the brigade

returned from Kuwait in the summer of 2016, its

equipment went into reset-post-deployment

maintenance and overhaul. Armor units, for

example, were given three weeks for reset. But

shrinking budgets coupled with igh operational

demands have caused the Army's mventory of

replacement parts to run empty, so maintainers

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do not have new parts readily available.

Instead, they must put in contract

requests for them, which generally take

six months to fill. In turn, some of the

vehicles sent to reset did not return until

the end of the calendar year, well into the

training cycle.

What equipment did return on time

has been a hobgoblin of the planning staff.

The officers we spoke with, particularly at

the company level, spoke of shortages of

both maintenance time and teams. They

explained that maintainers are given 11

days to service tanks instead of three

weeks, the doctrinal allotment, and a

senior officer put the issue simply: There

were not enough maintainers or

available parts and equipment to keep up

with the maintenance demand in the time

allotted. Perhaps it is no surprise, then,

that at one point a company had only s of its 14 Abrams tanks available for

training and that one company expected

to deploy to Europe with 7 of its 14 tanks

fully qualified.

The result reflects what has been reported

across the military: Units cannibalize parts from

other vehicles. Commanders reported raiding the 1st

ABCT's stores-recall that 1st Brigade is in Korea-

and taking anything left behind. As somewhat of

an unspoken rule of base etiquette, they

anticipate that any equipment they leave behind

upon deployment will be gutted and left on blocks

when they return.

However, officers will also cannibalize within

their own units. One company keeps a tank on ice

as the parts source for its other 13 Abrams. If any

of those suffer field accidents during training,

another one or two could join their cousin as a

supply depot for the company. The expansion of

cannibalization from an inter-company to a division-

wide practice is a relatively new occurrence to

many of the officers at Fort Riley; 10 years ago, they

solely exchanged parts within their companies.

If a broken part in a tank means either it will

be shut down for 180 days waiting for a new

part or its crew will harvest parts from another

tank on the base, any mishap can be near-

catastrophic for readiness. A significant portion

of maintenance time and money goes toward big-ticket

demands, limiting availability for smaller things. But of course,

in a brigade operating almost 100 tanks, more than 100

Bradleys, and a host of other heavy equipment and artillery,

small issues arise regularly. These are by and large complex,

old, and well-worn systems. Since the brigade cannot run

the risk of equipment breaking, its tank commanders

reported that they cannot drive their tanks to nearby

training grounds.

Further, one artillery battalion was whipsawed by the

uncertainties of Army modernization. The unit had been

identified to receive the A7 version of the Paladin artillery

system, an upgrade involving some changes in organization

and equipment, turning in of spare parts, and crucially,

fewer people than the previous version had. The

personnel and logistics moves having been accomplished-

the A7 would have required fewer people to man it, so those

personnel were transferred out of the brigade in

anticipation of the transition-the unit then learned that the

upgrade would be delayed. When we visited, they were in

the process of trying to reconstitute themselves to the A6

configuration, without recouping the lost personnel, while

meeting the same general personnel and equipment

challenges common to all units.

Stretched Thin

In sum, the overall impression is of a dangerously

taut and unforgiving force-generation system: To

meet readiness targets, everything has to fall

into place precisely as planned, particularly in

regard to personnel. Readiness-the all-important

T-rating

-is expected to decrease between major events,

most notably between NTC and deployment, and

brigade leadership is working overtime to craft

techniques for dampening those perturbations.

Ensuring the brigade's overall fill, both in terms of

quantity and skill level, remains on track throughout

the training process is a fickle practice.

Brigade command has oriented its approach

around maximizing the percentage of soldiers

who both are available and assigned to train

and are matched to correct skills. It is not

confident that, across the board, it will hit its

marks. The brigade expects to have only one

rifle squadron and no dismounted scouts in its

cavalry and is concerned it will not have enough

cavalry scouts qualified in time for the NTC

rotation. Its models predict

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84 percent of the brigade will be both

matched to a proper assignment and

deployable, which is above minimum

standards. But those same models

cannot predict HRC diktat; they do not

account for PCS assignments.

The limited number of soldiers to fill

slots across the service is a core cause of

Dagger's personnel instability and skill-

level mismatches. As the Army has

decreased in size, its responsibilities have

remained extensive; it provides roughly

half of the forces employed by regional

commanders, and that burden is

increasing. With an expanding set of

responsibilities but a decreased roster of

soldiers, the Army cannot fully man every

brigade. The average brigade has about

95 percent of the soldiers it would need

to be at full strength, and 10 percent

typically are non- deployable due to

medical or other issues, while

5 percent are at career development schools or

otherwise unavailable.

The personnel churn Dagger experiences is largely

a result of the Army's efforts to keep all its brigades

above the baseline of So percent available to train.

And that churn is seen most clearly in the mid-grade

NCO and field-grade officer ranks because of both

the importance of those roles and the cuts to those

ranks during the recent downsizing of the force.

In some regards, Dagger Brigade has been dealt

an unusual hand. Objective Tis a new untested

model, and although implementation has been

delayed, the brigade was preparing to be the first

to go through NTC, summer reset (in which it will

lose personnel), another round of gunnery, and

then deployment while under the new system.

Its struggle to meet those benchmarks raises an

interesting question about both the current

readiness of the force and the viability of Objective

T. If the new model represents good readiness

standards, what does it say about recent

training efforts that adapting to Objective T was

such a struggle for officers? On the other hand, is

the new sustained readiness model achievable,

particularly given the current state of Army end

strength and equipment, or does it ask too

much of the soldiers?

The men we spoke with openly admitted to fatigue and

frustration. As one officer attested, he feels as if they are

employed like an Army at war but treated like an Army at

peace. That is, they experience the same deployment-to-

dwell ratios-the same amount of time deployed compared to

at home-they did at the height of the wars in Iraq and

Afghanistan, and the pace of operations has not relented.

However, they and their families do not receive the same

support they did then and are given unusual deployment

cycles, such as this one.

Some of these issues are a result of how the

Army classifies Dagger's planned deployment. It will

occur as part of the European Reassurance

Initiative but not in fulfillment of a formal, named

operation. Were it participating in a named

operation, Dagger would receive more resources

to support its soldiers and their families and to

prevent extensive personnel turnover.

There are differences of opinion about what is

needed most. The brigade listed more ammunition

for training. However, from the perspective of the

division and Army staff, ammunition is available, and

if more is needed, more will be given. The officers'

priority list also included a stable inventory of spare

parts, more funding for maintenance and training

demands, and most of all, more time. Given 10 months

to train up and deploy to Europe, while losing key

personnel throughout the cycle, not getting

enough equipment reset time, and adapting to a new

readiness reporting system, they are stretched

thin.

Committed to a singular purpose, they do not

doubt they will be ready to go when the time

comes, but what is the cost? The margin of error for

a brigade training to take on the Russian army is

slim, at best.

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About the Authors

Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow and codirector of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security

Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. James M. Cunningham is a senior research

associate in the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

2017by the American Enterprise Institute. All rights reserved.

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) educational organization

and does not take institutional positions on any issues. The views expressed here are those of the

author(s).