One other good thing about being an enabler for SOF: No hip pocket training. For example a Land Nav or IED class would be a 4 hour block of instruction on the same lanes we used all the time and usually the Squad Leader would literally read the doctrine right out of the field manual.
On an ODA a land Nav or IED course would be like a week long process usually in a whole other base or in some wilderness area. A land Nav would be in some shytty evironment and if you didn't find the points in time you called for help and slept til they found you. If you called for help That was in the end of your time on the team.
Same thing with Counter IED the team Charlies would set up all kinds of IED's and you had to do a whole react to contact drill no bullshyt 5 and 25 and get back in the truck shyt we hit an IED and there was always a Force on Force Complex attack.
Again way more realistic and defenitely not a waste of time.
you hit the nail on the head. Resources and taking advantage of training opportunities presented.
You would legitimately be surprised at the amount of leaders who just didn’t want to take advantage of training opportunities they were offered even at no cost to the unit because they didn’t want to form a relationship or honestly just didn’t want their subordinates to do something they couldn’t.
Ranger school for us is just a leadership school. But every cycle I’d send guys. But I also didn’t let that school be the deciding factor of who we selected to be Section or Platoon Sergeant's.
in all honesty I think I probably spent the last decade just coordinating training opportunities for others and building relationships.
in 82nd it was easy units would always reclama and I’d have guys on standby for damn near everything of value.
in 1st ID we would steady have guys go 2 ranger school twice a week.
in 1st CAV III corp always had some cool stuff going on. Especially when we were doing the BFSB thing.
in TRADOC every class we would have the recruiters for SF/Ranger/AWG/ come. Even had the EW guys set up the same way before they went to Gordon.
like really think back to the leadership you had over your career if they didn’t fill your training schedule with good training opportunities and you were sitting around the motor pool all day or hiding out in a day room they were the problem.
Training opportunities were out there.
it’s as simple as this if you are going to observe fires or call for fire why not participate in joint exercises at Nellis. I mean shyt let’s be honest who doesn’t want to go TDY to Vegas. But I used to see a lot of organizations turn down opportunities. And the hosting branch would pay for it.
it’s kind of why I want to get a training planning job now. Leaders don’t know what’s out there because they either didn’t research, are prioritizing QTB bullshyt and 350-1 crap, or they don’t realize that everything doesn’t impact their budget.
And as we all know some of them act as if they are spending their own money. And if you don’t use it than it’s possible to lose it. With the SMU types they are used to the open checking account and taking advantage of opportunities that it’s not an issue to them.
We got a 4 day weekend every month while in garrison. So of course I made sure every week was full. I also took care of my enablers assigned. They stayed at a digital/signal master gunner or foundry attending some courses even doing. Even that space enabler training.