Personal PME: Find Your Mentor

As Col Mike Wyly will tell you, the most important part of Maneuver Warfare is to make it come alive for your subordinates. John Boyd would also tell you that your mental model must be continuously challenged and updated. With this in mind, I have attempted tackling both these problems as I prep for company command. Through TDGs, War Games and Kriegsspiels and with the guidance of mentors, this approach serves to not only challenge me tactically, but also to help develop my future company PME and training plans. 

Mentors: The most important action I have taken while at MCCC is to have a running dialogue with several senior officers. Half I knew previously, half I have still yet to meet in person. Don't hesitate to find an email and cold call someone. They want to help you prepare for command. I regularly email them the results of what I will lay out below for their comments and feedback. 

TDGs: At least once a week, myself and Zach Schwartz, sit down and complete one, usually from Mastering Tactics. In the allotted planning time, we compose exactly what we would say to our subordinates in the moment. We focus on this after reading Col Brendan McBreen’s article, “All Stations, this is Kodiak Actual” about delivering orders under fire. We find that we usually have similar tactical plans, but how we communicate our commander's intent is what draws out the most interesting debate. Why did you waste time saying this? Why exclude this information? When would you update them on the enemy situation? From there, we type it all up and then send it off to mentors for their input and critique. One mentor does a tremendous job analyzing our word choice and what remains unspoken. His feedback has identified assumptions that I make subconsciously and have since identified to be potential future problems for communicating with platoon commanders. 

War Games: Regularly, we play Combat Mission: Black Sea, a turn-based computer war-game. It requires one computer, presents a tactical problem based in modern day conflict and technology and allows us to fight each other from the platoon to battalion reinforced level. It even has a custom scenario designer to focus your efforts even further. At the end, we pull up the map, remove the fog of war and see how our plans unfolded. This has been great for employing the tactical tenets, terrain analysis and feeling some stress from a thinking enemy. 

Kriegsspiel: Additionally, we have been lucky to have a senior officer provide us with a kriegspiel (map problem) for us to fight each other in a double-blind scenario. At the end, we generate an order, match up our overlays and then send the results up for feedback. We've found that these exercises serve as useful windows into our own decision-making processes, generates reflection and mentors ensure that we aren’t just fooling ourselves. With a solid rep under our belts from one of these methods, we now look at how we have to train our subordinates to understand our thinking and be responsive to our tasking. 

Future Plans: Following analysis of the plan and our orders, we then deliberate how we will teach this to our Marines, and who the target audience will be. Just platoon commanders or squad leaders as well? Do I want to change the TDG at all? How will I deliver it? What aspects of Maneuver Warfare do I want to get out of this exercise? What supplemental reading/quotes can I include? Most importantly, what MUST I learn about my Marines' thinking and communication when confronted with this scenario. A great reason to use Mastering Tactics, is that the TDGs include potential solutions to review, build upon one another and were designed to illustrate maneuver warfare. All helpful when you’re building a PME plan. 

Layering this even further, what training events do I now need to ensure happen to guarantee we can execute in a similar situation? What training events can now tie in the physical, mental and moral levels of war as they relate to this problem set? From here, the ideas radiate out in several directions: I review notes of previous training events, review the T&R manual, look into resources at my future base and most importantly, begin to anticipate how I will challenge the decision making of my future Marines. Ideally, at the end, I have a garrison PME plan, which will help prepare us for individual to company level FEXs and a sharper focus of the training and education progression. 

But most importantly, we are bouncing this all off of those who have been in the seat before and carry diverse opinions on warfighting and tactics. "Reps" are great, but educated feedback exponentially increases the value of PME. 

For resources pertaining to TDGs, Wargames and DFCs, visit themaneuverist.org. And if you have a better approach, want to challenge us at Combat Mission online, or want to learn more, please don't hesitate to reach out. 

Capt Geoff Ball is currently a student at MCCC and will soon be joining V21. He can be reached at geoffball213@gmail.com