Nero.
The training and challenge factor are important things when dealing with motivating volunteer soldiers to come into work so I don't think you're off the mark.
I remember skipping a lot of work years ago because it seemed like all we did was light stupid stoves over and over or dick around with tents in toboggans. I have better things to do with my Thursday nights.
The way I see it, the army is meant to be more than a job. If you dont challenge the troops, make them feel like it is more than a job, then all it becomes is a job for them. Different than sweeping isles at Farm boy, but a job none the less, and they'll treat it as "just a job".
I like to think our training nights now are far more interactive. The other month while prepping for a live fire jungle lane we took the parade square and turned it upside down with vehicle,s barrels, obstacles, low wire(like) entanglement and made two jungle lanes giving 4 of our best shots paintguns with speed balls as enemy force and sending pairs through the maze of junk using cover and movement. That's pretty fun AND challenging if you ask me.
For a thursday night yes, thats pretty good, considering the limited amount of time and resources you have, but how is it challenging? How does a soldier feel challenged afterwards? Are most of the thursday nights like this, or are they not?
The problem is you can't grab a young new soldier and send them through a kill house. You need to run them through jungle lanes blank/live, pairs jungle lane blank/live. Then section attacks blank/live. Platoon attacks blank & live. You might be able to skip something here and there but ultimately you need to build up to the challenging stuff.
Youre assuming all of the challenging stuff is live fire. I propose that there can be a lot more challenging stuff without resorting to live fire. The best times I've had on exercise was not doing live fire, but with blank or even no ammo.
Most of the time, because of safety concerns, I think the live fire actually takes away from the challenging stuff.
Either way, I stay of the opinion that the troops need to be challenged on exercise, and that this will increase meaningful attendance. Sure you'll lose the ones that are in it for the easy ride, but you'll gain those who are on the verge of quitting or CTing because they're not learning/being challenged. Along with that, I'm of the opinion that live fire section attacks arent a "challenging" exercise. I wouldnt even consider it an exercise, I'd consider it IBTS. Get to the point of livefire section attacks if necessary, get it accomplished by october/november and then dedicate the rest of the year to organizing challenging exercises. Ones where you're not able to tell the troops "It'll be a good go. It wont be hard. We're sleeping in heated tents" and rather ones that you can tell the troops "Make sure someone's picking you up sunday night, because we're non-stop from 1830 Friday night. Pack light."
I'm pretty confident all our ex's as of late have been positive.
How long has attendance been suffering, and how long have the ex's been live fire section attack oriented? I'd suggest that the next training year, focus on making the exercises as hard and challenging as possible. Make the troops
and the leaders endure hardship, and see what attendance will be like then, and see what the quality of the soldiers is then. Enduring hardship like this will make the troops and leaders bond. They'll hate it during the exercise (maybe), and Sunday when its all over they'll look back at all the good stories that they got from the exercise, all the hardship, all the things that went great, all the things that went horribly, all the things that they did that they can be proud of and they'll want to do it again. I'm willing to bet you you'll increase section cohesion, you'll see who the true soldiers are and, once the dead weight is cut, you'll see attendance remains high. Furthermore, you'll have these soldiers now setting the example for the young ones, and this will help keep the brand new soldiers from becoming "dead weight" to the unit.
Thats how I believe the attendence issue can be resolved.
When you say a section attack is just a section attack, what kind of training do you consider challenging?
Section attacks posting grenades in bunkers (and not just concrete throwing bays) mixed with gunfighter training (Pistol PWTs & C7/Pistol transition drills) to me is top of the food chain in the reserve world.
Maybe it is to you, but that doesnt necessairly mean everyone sees it that way. I propose this as an example for challenging training: Orders are hashed out by the ICs Thursday night, while the 2IC do "rehearsals"/training/battle procedure with the troops. Friday night orders are given to your section, and immediately you get off the bus, grab your equipment and its go. Its tactical. You dont "pack the rope for the one rope bridge" in a vehicle. You take it with you. You walk however far is required to your hide, set up your hide, deploy your OPs/recces/what have you and you operate, tactically, with an enemy force that isnt scripted to "sit on their ass and fire a couple of shots", but rather are intent on finding you. Sunday, book the range from sun-up and do those pistol transition drills and whatnot.
The best year in the reserves I had, the one that I learnt about 90% of what I know from infact, it was run like this. Friday we got off the vehicles infront of the mess, grabbed whatever kit we had to grab (radios, ammo, rope, etc.) and hiked out at least 18km to where we did a partisan link up, set up our hide or deployed on our recce, whatever the situation was, and our final destination was conveniently at one of the ranges, either the Ridley Walters range or some conventional range, we did the debrief there and did some shooting.
The manpower that was required to set this up? We had 3 GD and 1 WO.
Those were the days when we'd cover 30km in a weekend exercise, set up an OP and perform 3 recces, and finally did some live fire at the end, and to accomplish this it took some out of the box thinking. Half the reason we could accomplish this is because we didnt pack "Best Western" in a cube van and take it with us to set up and tear down during the ex. The most we'd bring with us on those exercise that wasnt mission critical was tables and hayboxes. We didnt have to dedicate so much time to tearing down and packing up.
There are plenty of ways to make the training challenging. Sleeping in a heated mod tent in a little city you braught with you from your armoury isnt one of them.
What would you consider as challenging training which can be run reserve level?
I realise it seems like its running off topic now talking about the challenging training, but it is my firm belief that that is how you can motivate such a soldier to attend.
