Training Scouts

to the challenges of battle - or at least so we assume. "Scouting is an art, as well as a science." - Anonymous To call scouting a complex husi-ness has become commonplace. Maneuver commanders expect the scout to do more kinds of things than any other fighter. 0 To find the enemy without being discovered himself, the scout is a master of movement by stealth, whether mounted or dismounted. 0 In locating his prey, he routinely demonstrates proficiency in map reading and land navigation. 0 To reach his objective - typically without engineer support - he may have to breach an obstacle or clear a passage through a minefield. 0Once he finds the enemy, the scout, regardless of his rank, becomes a communicator. 0 In contact. he can dispose of the enemy with dispatch. Small arms are his stock in trade; he knows them all from the M16 to the S O caliber. 0 When the enemy is beyond small arms range, the scout adjusts indirect artillery or mortar fire onto the target. If pressed, he becomes a Training scouts by LTC A. J. Bacevich tank-killer, skilled in ATGM employment, on or off his vehicle. The scout employs all of these skills on the most exposed reaches of the battlefield, operating at best as part of a platoon or section but oftcn virtually alone. In cavalry units, scouts occupy the center of the overall training program, and rightly so. Without good scouts, cavalry is ineffective. But what makes a scout "good"? What type of scout training is most effective? In 2d Squadron, 3d Armored Cavalry, we've wrestled with these questions and believe that the answers are not as obvious as they might seem. The purpose of this article is to share our tentative findings. Typically, scout training focuses on technique - on teaching the myriad skills that scouts require. The tasks, conditions, and standards of Soldiers' Manuals and ARTEPs provide the meat in the scout's training diet. Mastering those skills will produce scouts that will measure up Consistent with the Army's insa-tiablc penchant for evaluation, units spend as much time testing the scout's proficiency as they do nurturing it. In 2d Squadron, we call that evaluation the Manly Cup. In the fashion of cavalry everywhere, the Manly Cup has its own distinctive gloss of panache. (Our scouts perform their feats of derring-do in a semi-mythic desert land, recovering long-lost artifacts of great political significance or struggling to liberate a benevolent ayatollah - educated at UCLA! - who promises to bring democracy to his oppressed countrymen). But panache aside, the Manly Cup is pretty much like scout exercises conducted elsewhere. Whether eighteen hours long or thirty-six, whether conducted at section level or platoon, they are all much alike. Like the Manly Cup, they include a live-fire phase, requiring scouts to engage targets with machine guns and ATGMs, employ demolitions, and adjust indirect fire; and they feature a maneuver phase - a part of which occurs at night - during which scouts execute various reconnaissance and security missions. As with these other scout evaluations, the Manly Cup is good train- ~ September-October 1987 form, while the numbed majority is content to watch - whether the activity is a sports event, a rock concert, or a videotape. In either case, the impact on the Army is severe. The scout who cannot sound the alarm is indeed a cripple; the cavalryman who cannot rapidly assess, decide, and effectively communicate his intent is a danger to those around him. What sort of training will huild teamwork and initiative and help the soldier overcome his tendency to be inarticulate? Clearly, training by checklist so typical of the Army will not do. Thcre are no ritualized performance standards that will guarantee improved teamwork. Nor does the local training aids office provide a laminated card listing "five steps" to initiative. There are no cut-and-dried solutions. As so often, a sports analogy gives some idea of what we're looking for. A basketball team requires players with sound individual skills. But a team that devotes all of its practice time to lay-ups, free throws, and drills won't be a winner. A team also needs practices that replicate game conditions. For this reason, coaches traditionally make scrimmages the centerpiece of their practice sessions. What are the characteristics of a good scrimmage? The first is intensity, demanding the total involvement of each individual. The second is spontaneity, continuously changing situations force the players to adapt prescribed plays to fit the actual circumstances. The third is the rhythmic interaction of the players as they respond to each other's capabilities and communicate to one another with a glance, a gesture, or the briefest shouted command. To build quality scouts calls for training that can be likened to a scrimmage. The similarity to a scrimmage must extend in particular to the training's accessihility. Just as the coach can scrimmage his team at will, so too must the trainer be able to "scrimmage" his scouts as often as he wishes, avoiding the complex coordination required for a major deployment. The scout scrimmage needs to be close at hand and easy to execute. In 2d Squadron, we've taken a cut at developing two such scrimmages, excrcises that we call COSMIC CASTLE and PHOTON WARRIOR. Neither is the "approved solution"; both are offcred as examples of the direction that we believe scout training must take. The Cosmic Castle The COSMIC CASTLE is an unused WWII-era building that stands hy itself along the northern edge of Fort Bliss, a building like countless others except for the unusual number of small irregular rooms that it contains. We compounded the interior complexity by adding obstacles and crawl spaces, cutting firing ports through walls, and in general converting the interior into a maze (see figure 1). Then we painted the windows, making it pitch black inside as well. Our aim was to place the individual scout in a closed, high-threat environment that provided strong incentives for him to exhibit the qualities we wanted. Four scouts play Cosmic Castle at a time, each one wears a MILES-harness and is armed with a MILES-equipped MI6 rifle and ten rounds of ammunition. On a signal, each scout enters the building through a separate cntrance, the door is immediately locked behind him. Stancl-ing in the eerie silence of that vacant building, waiting for his eyes to acijust to the darkness, the scout contemplates a series of perplexing problems: 0 Two of the other scouts in the building want to kill him, but he doesn't know which ones they are. 0 The remaining player is his teammate, hut our scout doesn't know which of the three is his partner or even which door he entered; (teams are designated moments before the game begins when two scouts are marked with engineer tape; a player knows whether or not he has been marked but not who else has been). 0 Three containers of "secret documents" are hidden about the CASTLE; each side needs to recover them; neither side knows where they are. 0 Once the two teams have been given fifteen minutes to eliminate each other, a single door will open to admit the "Grim Reaper," an alarming figure in a hooded, black robe. Armed with a MILES-controller gun, the Grim Reaper glides like death from room to room, looking for survivors to claim. Assuming that he is still alive, our scout can win the game by eluding the Grim Reaper and escaping with the secret September-October 1987 documents through the one unlocked door. These miniature combats in the COSMIC CASTLE have no standard outcome. Each contest differs from all previous ones - sometimes hilariously so. Most, however, share certain common themes that contribute directly to the development ol artful scouts. Circumstances in the CASTLE compel the player to deal with his opponents. Some scouts aggressively seek out their enemy, others cunningly lie in ambush in the recesses of the CASTLE. But no one stands around uninvolved. Even as he worries about his enemy, the scout feels an urgent need to link up with his partner. The shadow lurking behind the dtmnvay - is it friendly or enemy? The scout is terrified of killing, or of being killed by, his own teammate. Thus, the scout confronts the most elemental of communications exercises, that of ,telling friend from foe and of conspiring with a fricnd to destroy a common enemy. Photon Warrior What the COSMIC CASTLE does for the individual scout, PHOTON WARRIOR attempts to do for the section. This scrimmage occurs outdoors, in a fragment of desert, about 400 meters by 200 meters, across from the squadron motor pool. This fugitive from the asphalt and gravel that covers the rest of Fort Bliss consists of small dunes, three to five meters apart, covered with the tough, thorny scrub brush indigenous to the region. Two teams play PHOTON WARRIOR, each consisting of seven MILES-equipped scouts with Ml6s. On each end of the playing area is a 'gate," the only ways to enter or exit. In the center is another box of 'secret documents' in an enclosure of concertina. Starting at opposite ends, each team has an identical mission: recover the documents and escape through the far gate. Doing so necessarily requires a fight with the other team.

PHOTON

WARRIOR

incorporates troop leading procedures. Each team has a leader. After receiving the mission, the leader has time to plan and to explain that plan to his subordinates. Once both teams enter their gates and collide at the center, the plan, however well-conceived, falls apart. Here the training value of the exercise is at its greatest. Changing circumstances force the leader to modify his plan while under great stress, to communicate it to his teammates, and to rally them to carry out his intent. Or the leader is killed, a common occurrence, forcing another scout to take charge and to formulate his own plan. Again, the enclosed, laboratory-like conditions virtually eliminate the bystander syndrome characteristic of large-scale exercises. The light see-saws back and forth as first one side then the other gains control of the documents and struggles to escape with them. Almost without exception, victory comes as a byproduct of one team's annihilation. Conclusion It would be nice to report a quantifiable improvement in the performance of scouts who participate in COSMIC CASTLE and PHOTON WARRIOR. We cannot do so. Frankly, we doubt that the outcome we seek can be quantified in any rigorous sense. We can report this much: scouts enjoy these exercises enormously. The challenge turns them on and engages them - physically, mentally, and emotionally - in a way that more traditional forms of training seldom do. To those who appreciate the importance of artistry, a quality felt rather than measured, we recommend this type of training. Those who insist on a precise demonstration of its values will have to wait until the time for scrimmage is past and the actual competition is upon us. Lieutenant Colonel A.J. Bacevich commands the 2d Squadron, 3d ACR, at Fort Bliss, Texas. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, he was a cavalry platoon leader in Vietnam and commanded a troop in the 3d ACR. More recently, he has served as S3 of the 3d Squadron, 2d ACR, and S3 of the 11 th ACR. 40