by Wombat Six » Sun Mar 15, 2009 11:33 pm
Seriously, excellent job....do it again!
The Phase I false start, while hampering, doesn't seem to have dampened our enthusiasm, as we were making pretty good progress on Starlog. There was a breakdown in what defined "out of bounds", and I figured out something was amiss when I had ACU-clad personnel coming up the logging road into the spawn point, preparing to fire into us.
Having spent the better part of the day watching and observing and trying to fit the pieces together, I have no major complaints. It would have been nice to have the yellow smoke's purpose identified in advance, as I had quite a few "What does that mean?" calls that my only real response was "Got me..."
For those of you who didn't know what was going on, waiting until OP
time to ask those questions of an obviously busy CO is pretty poor timing. I know there were a lot of people camped out overnight who would have been happy to answer questions. I've been aware of the OPORD that Top put out since day one. I got the baton pretty late in the preparations, but I know I put out mission taskings to my command personnel and I know they put every effort into implementing them. If nothing else, you knew where we needed to be and could have easily gone there.
Not being forward, I don't know how bad the "HAX!" situation was, but folks: if you're on target and they're not calling hits, call an admin. Waiting to get back to the spawn point to let me know makes the whole thing irrelevant. By the time I get an admin on the wire, it's been...15 minutes?
If there are going to be smoke missions (or any sort of "fire support"), those individuals need to be dedicated admins who are monitoring for the calls. Once we've used our mission, they can do whatever needs doing, but until then, I need them on the wire, ready to listen.
A change I might suggest to the next person (un)lucky enough to command a unified structure such as the US did: get your Platoon Commanders, Squad Leaders, and Fire Team Leaders all in the same room, sandbox the exercise, and rework it until you have a plan that they can explain to their men. Span of control standards are three to seven individuals. Beyond that, the brain stops trying to comprehend and starts spinning in place.
The CO really needs a strong "first shirt" to handle the tactical details of "take that hill". I realize this makes it look like there are two people in charge, but the reality is that as CO, I spent most of my time listening to the radio and trying to make sense of the radio traffic and where I had people.
People: calling for medics over the radio won't make them appear. I had six medics in the field, all of them attached to one platoon or another. I wasn't holding medics in reserve for calls, nor was I going to deprive a platoon of a medic without good and sufficient reason.
There's probably more stuff in my brain, but this is all the stuff I can think up...
Ludere Causa Ludendi
