The Army shouldn't cut back on training in how to confront a live, thinking enemy

By Capt.
Paul
Lewandowski, U.S. Army


Best Defense guest columnist

Earlier this month,
the Army Times reported that
Combatives, the Army's program for teaching hand-to-hand combat, was being
scaled back from four multitiered intensive training courses to a single
two-week master trainer course. These cuts, on top of a de facto moratorium on
Combatives competitions, effectively mark the end of Army Combatives as a major
program. The dissolution of Combatives is endemic of a larger problem
throughout the military -- the fact that training for compliance is
overwhelmingly favored over training for effect.

For many leaders,
the reduction in Combatives certification requirements seems like a godsend. No
longer must commanders send capable soldiers and NCOs to Combatives courses for
weeks at a time. They now need only send a single NCO, and in two weeks he or she
can provide all soldiers in the unit with the required training at the minimum
standard. That commander can update the unit's spreadsheet to show "Combatives
training" as "green" for another a year. For a brigade support battalion or
aviation maintenance company, hand-to-hand combat skills appear useless, and
Combatives training takes valuable time away from soldiers executing their
assigned duties within the unit.

In the view of many
commanders, all training is simply a form of regulation compliance. Training
tasks are dictated by a plethora of protocols specifying what is to be trained
and how often. Everything from equal opportunity training to cold weather
injury prevention is prescribed at the Army level, and every unit is required
to maintain extensive name-by-name records. The core theory behind this
compliance-oriented training is that there are only two kinds of soldiers in a
unit: those who have received the training to the minimum standard, and those
who have not.

In certain tasks,
providing soldiers the minimum standard of training in accordance with clear,
published, specifications is the best and most effective method. However, there
is a disturbing trend in which more and more training is being treated as
"regulation compliance." Reporting the results of training on a spreadsheet or
PowerPoint slide captures the effect of training only in the most narrow,
linear sense. It treats the soldier who sleeps in the back of the classroom and
the soldier practicing until his/her hands are callused as one and the same.
Effective military training has an incredible transformative power that cannot
be articulated within a slide deck -- such as when a squad finally develops the
camaraderie to be a high-functioning team, when a young soldier understands that
his/her responsibilities aren't a burden but a source of pride, or when a young
lieutenant finds the courage to lead by example. Training has the power to do
more than alter a slide -- it can alter a soldier.

Combatives training
is a sterling example of transformative training. The basic Combatives course
is 40 hours of instruction almost always done as consecutive eight-hour days.
The course curriculum is physically demanding, with virtually no conventional
classroom time. It is extremely taxing on soldiers' bodies and minds. To
graduate Combative level I, students engage in roughly two hours active
fighting against one another. Students also must execute a "clinch drill" in
which the soldier closes with and takes down a trained instructor who, meanwhile,
is actively striking the student in the head and body. The instructors wear
boxing gloves but the only protective equipment for most soldiers is a
mouthpiece. The vast majority of students report these two aspects of the
course -- the active combat against other students and being hit full force
while achieving the clinch -- as the two most harrowing, yet rewarding, aspects
of the course.

This type of
intensive training offers each individual soldier an unscripted version of
combat. Virtually no other training pits individual soldiers against a
reactive, intelligent, aggressive enemy. National Training Center rotations,
field problems, and tactical lanes all are structured as plays, where the
"enemy" is actors following a pre-written script. This type of structured
training is important for testing systems and equipment, but as the military
has seen over the past 12 years, the enemy doesn't behave like an actor
following a script. The enemy is innovative, aggressive, and at times
inscrutable. In short, the enemy on the battlefield behaves much like a
Combatives opponent. This is because Combatives, at its core, is warfare -- human beings vying for
dominance of an environment. Combatives training puts soldiers in an emotional
state very similar to what they face in combat -- and it trains them to
function through it.

Combatives training
develops the hard-nosed, gritty, courageous mentality every soldier, regardless
of function or position, needs to possess. Soldiers who pass the Combatives
course know how to keep functioning when their bodies tell them to stop; they
know how to fall back on their training when fear starts to set in, and how to
swallow their pride and move forward when they've had a setback. Combatives
course graduates are the best mechanics, operations NCOs, and infantrymen -- not
because Combatives gives them more skills in their respective duties, but
because it teaches them to execute their duties to a higher level or performance.
These types of results -- producing soldiers who become more capable in every
aspect of their careers -- are what intensive, effects-oriented training can
achieve.

It is telling that
the Army views a program like Combatives, for which the benefits are real but
unquantifiable, as disposable. It is indicative of a move away from training
for effect, and toward a "train to the test" Army. The heart of the problem,
and its solution, lies with commanders who expect and demand compliance with
every single published standard. Leadership is setting priorities -- choosing
to execute some training and not others. Superiors must support their
subordinates' efforts to conduct the training that will produce the most
mission-effective unit, not the most effective slide deck. This is an easy idea
to espouse, but when the time comes, a commander will have to stand in front of
his or her superior and explain that cold weather injury prevention, or traffic
safety training, is going to be staying at "zero soldiers trained" for the
foreseeable future. In the culture of the Army today, that is an act of moral
courage.

Leadership is
choosing a course of action and leading subordinates in its execution. It means
looking for training that transforms soldiers and units. When every training
task becomes a priority, then nothing is a priority. If the Army continues to
sell out effective training in favor of expedient training, we have to ask
ourselves: What kind of soldiers will we be sending into the next war?

Paul Lewandowski is an active duty Military Police captain
and Operation Enduring Freedom veteran. He represented Fort Riley at the 2011
All Army Combatives Championships. This essay represents his personal views and
are not necessarily those of the MP Corps, the U.S. Army, or the Department of
Defense.