Desert.
Three components were needed to make the NTC work:
• A professional opposing force (OPFOR). Its full-time mission was to emulate in maneuver, in war fighting, and in doctrine the most likely enemy of the U.S. Army. In the 1980s, that enemy was the Soviets. Hence the OPFOR at the NTC became the Red Army, down to the last uniform detail.
• A core of maneuver experts to accompany the Blue (training unit) and to help and advise them as they learned by doing. The Army called these experts observer controllers (OCs).
• A system to promote learning.
At the heart of the learning system was the AAR, or After-Action Review.
After a training event, the OC led a small seminar for participants during which they could discover for themselves what they needed to do — improve commander and unit performance. Generally, AAR seminars used the following framework: What was the unit trying to do? What actually happened? And why the difference? The aim of an AAR was not to blame or judge, and AARs required active participation by all attendees, both commanders and subordinates. Subordinates had the freedom to bring up issues that reflected both favorably and unfavorably on their commander's decisions and actions. Commanders opened up and analyzed their own performance. All of it was based on the objective data furnished by MILES and by the observing and recording instruments that covered the entire maneuver area.
It required a significant cultural adjustment for commanders to let themselves be openly questioned by subordinates in the presence of video cameras and to overcome the feeling that the NTC experience was training, not an official report card. Many militaries around the world still cannot get over those hurdles. Though it took a while, the U.S. Army did make that adjustment, and in fact, the AAR process led to significant and positive behavioral changes more than any other training innovation. After training and the AAR process, commanders and leaders at all levels have become less arrogant and more willing to listen… without sacrificing bold acts and decisions. AARs have reduced the aura of expected infallibility around commanders, without absolving them of ultimate responsibility or taking away their will to win.
It's no surprise that the AAR method has spread throughout the Army. In fact, it's now required after every event where performance can be improved.
During the 1980s, the Army began to systematically exploit computer simulations in training. For individual weapons crews, for instance, the Army developed conduct-of-fire trainers. In realistically configured crew stations, using computer simulations of the actual fire control in their vehicles and computer-simulated scenarios, crews would engage computer-simulated targets. Following its development by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the Army began a program called SIMNET, or simulations networking. Whole units were placed in simulators and linked in a live scenario. Units drove around and fought, and commanders controlled them, just as they would have done on the ground. AARs were conducted. In time, over linked networks, it was possible to do all this simultaneously, with units separated geographically.
Other training improvements went forward, as well. For instance, firing ranges all over the Army needed to be modernized to replicate the tasks, conditions, and standards of combat. At Grafenwohr, Germany, a program was begun to put in stationary and moving targetry. Such a system could be varied through software adjustments to allow units to fire according to consistent standards but with tasks varied to resemble wartime situations more closely. Range-firing standards were revised upward, for example, to require individual tanks to kill up to five enemy tanks by themselves. Firing ranges at Fort Hood and other installations in the United States underwent similar modernization.
Thus, with a combination of simulations using computer-assisted scenarios, actual live training using simulated enemy targets on ranges, and force on force using MILES, the U.S. Army gained combat experience without having to fight a war. This generation of leaders was realizing and carrying on the early visions of DePuy and Gorman.
As far as I'm concerned, the most interesting battlefield simulation is in the Battle Command Training Program (BCTP) for division and corps commanders, which was developed at Fort Leavenworth in 1986-87. BCTP did for those commanders what the NTC did for smaller units — but all in simulation. The idea for BCTP came from Lieutenant General Jerry Bartlett, commandant of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Fred Franks was the deputy commandant at the time, and together they named the program, and Franks selected Colonel Dave Blodgett to give the idea form and substance. In 1987, General Carl Vuono made the program part of the Army's combat training centers.
Here is Fred Franks describing a BCTP WARFIGHTER exercise in Germany just before he left command of the 1st Armored Division to command VII Corps:
In the Army's Battle Command Training Program for divisions and corps, there are three distinct phases. The first is a weeklong seminar, where commanders and staffs solve tactical problems and record the solution in operations order format in a classroom environment on a ten- to twelve-hour-a-day schedule. You do this at a deliberately slow pace, so you can perfect your command and staff problem-solving apparatus.
Sometime after that, you go through the second phase of the BCTP, which is a practice WARFIGHTER, with an opposing force. There you take your command apparatus out into the field with their normal vehicles and communications setup (you use the same radios and other communications devices you would use in combat). Then a computer simulation translates actions and orders into unit icons on screens, and when units make contact with the enemy, the computer has a set of algorithms and formulae that solve the battle outcome and sets up new problems.
Units do this practice for themselves. It allows you to make the transition from the seminar to the actual war-fighting environment, and it also allows your people to practice interfacing orders with computer simulations.
In the third phase, you go through your actual WARFIGHTER. This time you have a professional opposing force (housed at Fort Leavenworth), and they play whatever opposing force you want them to play, but they do it electronically, from Fort Leavenworth. It's beamed to your particular location — Germany, Korea, somewhere in the United States. The exercise is free play to be decided on the skill of the Blue side (the training unit) or the OPFOR.
You also get a team of observer-controllers (also permanently stationed at Fort Leavenworth but who travel to your location). They take notes, teach your staff, and conduct the AARs. When the observer-controller's team arrives, they are assigned to various places around your unit, some to the staff, some to subordinate units.
And finally, you get a senior observer-controller. The senior OC is a retired three- or four-star general, who has commanded at your echelon. He watches the whole process, advises the OCs, and mentors the division or corps commander.
Senior observer-controllers were an invention of Army Chief Carl Vuono. Vuono wanted the best mentors he could get for his division and corps commanders, people who had credibility with serving division and corps commanders. So senior OCs tend to have a lot of wisdom, based on their long time of service, their understanding of the doctrine, their command of the echelons they're observing, and on going around the army as senior OCs for various units. Over a period of a year or two, they build up a lot of savvy about what commanders and staff should and should not do.
Our initial seminar in the 1st Armored Division was held at Fort Leavenworth in March 1989. General Dick Cavazos was the senior observer-controller assigned to our exercise. During the course of that week, as we were going through commander and staff problem solving and decision making, he was there giving us advice and assistance — both to my staff and to me personally.
Dick Cavazos is a veteran of the Korean War. He was a company commander there; a battalion commander in Vietnam; a division commander of the 9th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Washington; and a corps commander, of III Corps at Fort Hood, Texas. He retired as a four-star general, commander of FORSCOM. He is a very wise and experienced field commander. Additionally, Dick loves soldiers… he has an intuitive feel for them, genuinely from the heart, so he's a great observer of human behavior and interaction. At the same time, he's very skilled in analyzing problem-solving techniques and an expert tactician. He knows how to get the most combat power on the battlefield at a particular point in time. In terms of temperament, in his feel for the mind and the heart of being a
