The Pro-Reading Challenge Program

September-October 2009 — 3 tion of the crew compartment of the test vehicle. The second vehicle was put on the ATC road course to see how it would hold up to the additional armor weight. Testing was stopped after approximately 500 miles, but there were no recorded problems and this was an off-the-shelf commercial truck chassis selected just for the demonstration. In the same month, the government identified a workable solution for defeating EFPs, which corresponds directly with the increasing procurement requirements for MRAPs, but no one raised a red flag and stopped to assess what could be done to immediately improve the MRAP. With the test data accumulated at ATC belonging to the government, it was assumed that the leadership of the department would recognize the value of the demonstration and immediately attempt to field the MRAP, but that was not the case. In response to a public announcement in June 2007 on the availability of the technology to defeat EFPs, the upcoming Assistant Secretary of Defense for Procurement was briefed, still nothing happened. By August, it was clear that the casualty rates for mounted soldiers were not decreasing, and under pressure from Congress and the direction of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Procurement’s office, the MRAP program office issued a new solicitation for MRAP — the MRAP II. The reason this is significant is because not only did the new requirement incorporate the specific requirement for defeating EFPs, it increased the levels of protection against IEDs and direct-fire ballistic attacks to levels significantly higher than the original MRAP specification. In December 2007, contracts were awarded for the MRAP II; however, the MRAP was in full production and still nothing was being done about providing EFP protection for soldiers. The MRAP II was delivered to the Army’s test centers, at both Aberdeen and Yuma, where it underwent a full array of durability, mobility, and environmental and force protection testing, demonstrating its clear superiority in design over the original MRAP, but it was clearly too late. The course was set and there would not be any deviations. As we fast forwarded to mid-2008, we saw the technology that was introduced in the fall of 2006 and early 2007, and purchased in December of 2007 for the MRAP II, finally make its way as a retrofit application on the MRAPs. Just like the add-on armor program for the HMMWVs early in the war, the MRAP vehicles initially suffered from a lack of weight-carrying capacity and provided only partial coverage to protect vital crew areas. Currently, nearly all of the technology requested and delivered for the MRAP II has been retrofitted onto the original MRAP fleet — it’s not as good as it would have been on an MRAP II, but soldiers and Marines will benefit from the effort. I just wanted the record to show that there was an MRAP II, which made the MRAP a more successful program than it would have been otherwise.

MARC A. KING

LTC, U.S. Army (Retired) The Pro-Reading Challenge Program by Major Scott Shaw and Captain Kelly Jones The Pro-Reading Challenge Program

(FREE BOOKS)

Company Commanders: Choose a book and the Pro-Reading team will mail you copies to read and discuss with your platoon leaders. The program also includes creating a space on the online forum specifically for you to discuss the book. When commanders and their leaders read together with an eye toward practical applications, the conversations that result will improve unit performance. The emphasis of the Pro-Reading Challenge is on the conversations about the reading, which results from commanders creating a time and place, such as meal time, around the hood of a HMMWV, under a tree, as well as online, to promote professional discussions. Commanders who participate in the Pro-Reading Challenge Program are very intentional about choosing books that tie in with mission requirements. They choose books that reinforce what they are already doing and they situate the program and conversations in the “now” experiences of subordinate leaders. In other words, they focus their leaders on how the reading and discussion applies to their specific needs as a unit. Commanders are encouraged to contact the Pro-Reading team at: http://ProReading.army.mil You may also directly contact Niel Smith, the program manager, at pro.reading@ us.army.mil, or alternately at cocmd.team@us.army.mil, to become part of a collective learning and professional development process that provides invaluable training in an extremely time-constrained environment. One thing stands clear about the current fight — junior leaders are given much more autonomy than ever before. To deal with the ever-increasing responsibilities of today’s platoon leaders, veteran company commanders and field grade officers must provide junior leaders the tools to succeed, which include nurturing analytical skills (troop leading procedures), intuitive leadership skills necessary in combat, and the ability to deal with the aftermath of combat. A tried-and-true method of developing junior leaders is through a professional reading program, which is not only critical to individual development, but also to collective learning and development in our units. The idea of “it’s more trouble than it’s worth,” critically falls short of the value of a professional-development program. There are hundreds of books and a multitude of reading lists available for platoon leaders; however, there are six classic volumes that offer platoon leaders a place to start discussion on issues from the tactical to the ethical and everything in between. These six classics (known as the “platoon leader six pack”) include The Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War by Frederick Downs; Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix: A Personal Account by Stuart Herrington; The Defense of Jisr al-Doreaa: With E.D. Swinton’s “The Defence of Duffer’s Drift” by Michael L. Burgoyne and Albert J. Marck-wardt; Platoon Leader: A Memoir of Command in Combat by James McDonough; Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest by Stephen Ambrose; On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and Peace by Dave Grossman and Loren W. Christensen; and as an added benefit is Once an Eagle by Anton Myrer. As part of the platoon leader and Company Command online professional forum, “Pro-Reading Challenge” was developed to create a forum to assist commanders in integrating reading as a fundamental part of leader-development programs in their units. This program is readily available, free of charge, and takes the legwork out of research by streamlining the process of developing a pro-reading program for junior leaders. Please visit the website below for further information on the “Pro-Reading Challenge.” Professional reading is a powerful way to develop leaders!