Battling the Reds, Two Decades On

Tactics phase is upon us! And by us, I mean me. And the other fellow ABOLC sufferers. For the last three weeks (I beg forgiveness for my lackadaisical updating of this blog, I have no excuse, really, but I promise it’s nothing personal!) we have been learning everything there is to know about the Soviet Army, Soviet doctrine, and how to defeat it. Every day seems like the day before the beginning of Tom Clancy’s thriller Red Storm Rising and will see our ABOLC class rushed to West Germany to stem the Warsaw Pact’s offensive through the Fulda Gap. 

I am embellishing, slightly of course, but my point isn’t very far from the truth. The Armor branch, which, as you know consists of Armor and Cavalry Scouts, was not designed for an insurgency. It was built for high intensity conflict, military speak for conventional warfare. So, in order to train for such a fight, we need an enemy to fight against. And the only enemy we’ve had with anything approaching a solid tactical doctrine is the Soviet Union (which is still used by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, other fairly insignificant former Soviet countries, North Korea, China to a lesser extent, and Iran to an even lesser extent). The basic plan for the Armor branch is this. In the event of a pitched battle with Red forces, the Scouts operate forward and to the flanks of the Armor units. They, as their name implies, scout any number of things. They determine route trafficablility, the size and load capability of bridges, the width of tunnels, the size of overpasses, the slope of hills and the radius of curves. They’re also looking for the enemy, their size, strength, activity and location. Once they’ve seen what there is to see, and hopefully not been seen in return, they report up their findings. Then the tanks come in. As one of my classmates put it, “Tanks are too easy. On the scout side, when you get shot at, you have to think, what am I going to do? Should I withdraw? Attack? How many are there, what are they firing? Is that the main force or a forward element? On the tank side, when the shooting starts, you get in a line abreast facing the fire and you attack, attack, attack.” I couldn’t have said it better myself…

Also in these last three weeks, we have perfected the art of planning and giving a mission. As in everything the army does, from clearing a weapon to solving an ethical dilemma (seriously, on Friday I learned the 7-step process for solving an ethical dilemma, as well as an acronym to remember the values of the people of the United States {that seriously exists, I just don’t think the people of the United States know…}), the army insists on using easy steps that are the same every time. Thus, the 5 paragraph Operations Order. Although the names are relatively simple, Situation, Mission, Execution, Sustainment, Command and Signal, they are a seething mass of seemingly unrelated details that take many hours to figure out and almost an hour to brief. We’ve been given two of these missions, one scout and one tank (the tank one being far easier- go there and kill those BMPs and T-80s- Soviet armored vehicles of course) and briefed them both to highly critical cadre. I managed to do quite well on both, but even after 12+ hours of work on both, it was amazing how much I still found that needed work. The level of perfection demanded by our instructors can be frustrating, but it’s easy to remember that they’re the only ones who can ensure that we’re prepared to go to war as soon as we graduate in December. That’s a pretty heavy weight.

I have more to relate, I promise, and I’ll do my best to get another post in before Wednesday when I’m off to the field for another week. Until then, have a wonderful Monday!