How To Train A Military

The competition for a commercial strategic partner for the British Army as part of the Land Training System continues. The real question that emerges is not one of cost or value but rather about what this will feel like for a corporal or a captain after a year of commercial/military partnering. With seven consortia competing to get the contract, I spoke to Steven Hart leading the Omnia team, about...

Over the past 12 months the British Army has designed a model to train its entire force to a set standard. It will also have the credibility and capacity to train the follow-on force, whatever that is, when the time comes. The new way of training is built on three interlinked blocks – Tradewinds (that provides the skills at individual level within a sub-unit), Cyclone (the primary sub unit trainin...

Peter sits down with two officers from the British Army who had just completed the culminating exercise of the Captain's Warfare Course. The discussion happened in a field on Salisbury Plain as the rest of the team tore down the infrastructure and camp around us.  The difference these two individuals exhibited from when Peter met them at the start of the course was striking. Here were 2 soldiers w...

Two Junior NCOs from the British Army talk about their experiences of the Armoured Close Recce course in Warminster back in December 2023.  In recording this, I was struck by the professionalism with which these two young soldiers handled themselves. Accutely aware of their own inexperience, their own failings, as well as the legacy they had to live up to. Their lack of fear in confronting these c...

The Captain's Warfare Course in Warminster delivers the key skills to the people expected to execute 'the fight' in the British Army. During my visits to the team at Warminster, I was struck by the quality of the staff that had been selected for the Directing Staff positions. This group of people really understood the demands of what was needed from staff officers under the extreme stress of comba...

In 2023, a report by the Royal United Services Institute on military training didn't make headlines. And that's a shame becuase it was a good read, and important too. The findings were not ground breaking but they codified the challenges facing the UK military and its military training provision (and infrastructure). There were snippets that did rile however. The focus on STEM was particularly int...

In this episode we go back down to Warminster – for the second of a series of interviews with the staff of the Captain's Warfare Course within the Director Land Warfare's domain for the British Army. Having had a download from Major Vicky Fraser, I was then handed over to Mark Hawthorne, the Learning Development Advisor for the HQ Junior Division under the Land Command and Staff College. Mark and...

Everyone seems to be talking about technology as the engine of future training but sometimes that drives a conversation about technology alone and not about the relevance and utility to the soldier or commander. Acknowledging that tech is subservient to those ends is critical in understanding what tech can offer, and which parts are important. Peter talks to Mark Holland from Skyral (formerly Impr...

The CWC provides junior officers with the skills they need to plan and execute operations at the Battlegroup to Brigade level in the British Army. The 6 week syllabus refreshes core knowledge for students from all arms of the army (and marines) before putting them through their paces with planning exercises in the classroom and in the field. The culmination is a deployed planning and execution cha...

On any modern battlefield, the people you want most in a fight – be it in urban terrain or facing a determined adversary in rural environments – are engineers and maintainers. They are of far more use than a coder or pentaphibian in combat operations. How do you the military train these people? After all, giving them the skills needed, both foundational knowledge and type-specific familiarity, is...

Commercial arrangements with providers of military training are usually transactional: most will have experienced how these arrangements can become strained over time as each party reaches for the contract whenever a change or amendment is needed. Moving away from that idea of a transactional or contractual modality is a shift in culture that requires both parties to embrace some risk. Peter talks...

For decades, navies have crewed the ship 'cos the ship fights (the people – apparently – didn't). According to RAdm Jude Terry, the Royal Navy has changed this: with People as a capability, the focus is on the crew rather than the ship. This reversal of priorities might just change the habit of cutting training budgets each year when money gets tight and 'savings' need to be found. But there is a...

This first series of this podcast on military training has taken us from World War One to modern day combat operations, and a glimse into the future. Key take aways have been the continuities felt in militaries when it comes to changing direction - and the lag between decisions and impacts on the training pipeline. It's a classic symptom of the A War/The War paradox, which isn't new but time has n...

The best tank on the battlefield is determined by the best crew inside it, not the best armour/gun/sights/engine/radios/reliability. That crew need to be well trained, but they also need to be educated so they can make the right decisions during combat where reality rarely replicates even the most exacting training regime. Throughout this series, training and education have been talked about as se...

Good wartime commanders are very different to those who excel in peace. How do we educate and train people for both roles? What skills are we currently prioritising in future leaders during periods of Professional Military Education, and are they the right ones? These are not oft posed questions in most Western militaries, yet France bucks that trend in having senior officers who seem to be consta...

You must train for war fighting: anything else is a waste of resources. The British Army has been given a clear mission by its chief. Mobilise for a potential fight against Russia in Europe. Soon. Peter talks to Major General Chris Barry, Director Land Warfare Centre in Warminster and it is clear that there is no going back to BAOR processes and procedures: The future of military training is build...

Peter talks to Wilf Owen about how the Israeli Defence Force train, whether you can prioritise kit over training, and the beautification of doctrine. The utility of simulation in training is clear but it is as an addendum to live field training that serves the force best. It is the blend of live and simulated training that delivers greater lethality and readiness, generating experience through rel...

The best training many of us experienced has always taken us outside of our comfort zone. For military forces this is of critical importance – you can master personal or section, even company drills well enough in a variety of places, but when you start to operate with different parts of the military you get force integration stresses. These tensions need to be worked out well before you meet an a...

Different cultures conduct military training and education in very different ways. The Israeli Defence Force might be the gold standard for a mantra of 'Train Hard, Fight Easy': the US Navy during the interwar period experimented with carrier air power to such an extent that it had a mature operating model by the 1940s (one that was instrumental in the outcome of WWII). This culture is not only ev...

The capability of a military force is often measured by the equipment it operates. If a cursory examination of combat tells us anything it is that a capable military force is determined by the people in it - and how they operate the kit they have available for the fight they are in. That alone turns the training conundrum on its head; add to that the requirements of trainng a very different genera...

As simulators have taken an increasingly prominent role in military training since the 1980s, their complexity – and cost - has also changed. Buying, operating and maintaining those systems has become too expensive for militaries to run themselves and commercial partners have slowly but steadily grown their own role in the process. Over the past 20 years, defence primes have brought out independen...

Peter talks to Professor Jim Storr about the use of simulators in the British military since the 1980s. Why and how they have become such a central element of force development for Western militaries, and what we have failed to extract from their potential use. It seems that simulators have far more potential than we current get from them: and even if we did, they still cannot entirely replace the...

Teacher training includes education processes, systems, human behaviours and methods of engagement with students. That profession has been doing it for a while but which, if any, of those skills and what parts of that knowledge could be transferred to military training that might optimise training - even if just a little bit? Peter talks to Kate Heaton, an experienced teacher and HR professional i...

After their experience in Vietnam, the US military actively pursued thinking about warfare in different ways - and reorientated training and education along those lines. It is surprising that, 50 years later, militaries seem unwilling to examine – let alone acknowledge the utility of – approaches outside manoeuvre warfare, mission command, innovation, multi-domain operations, dispersal, and the ph...

You can train a military as much as you want, but if you are not training the right skills for the coming fight, it is all wasted effort. Learning first is vital. The British military experience around the First World War – before, during and after – can be salutary when thinking about military training and education. Just as the British Army was getting serious about professional military skills,...