Lessons Learned by a LAV Captain - Tactics / Fieldcraft / Miscellaneous

[ballz]

Good day all,

I wanted to find a way to pass on everything I had surmised over the last 2 years. The LAV Captain is a position that is shrouded in a bit of mystery. It's treated as an Ops Capt in garrison (a good tangent is why this is wrong, in my opinion) and how to utilize him/her in the field outside of a combat team's advance-to-contact is a little up in the air.

For your reading pleasure, and any and all commentary / feedback / discussion generated from this is very much appreciated. I am particularly interested here what some of the tankers have to say.

I submitted the article to the Inf Corps Newsletter in 3 parts due to its length. I'm also posting it in 3 parts due to the topics covered, to keep the threads organized.

 

[Infanteer]

It's a shame you had to learn the value of a range card by "trial and error" as opposed to proper instruction at the school where it should have been spelled out in clear English (or French) - you're right, it's a common awareness/control aid tool.  This probably goes to my point on the other thread about our Army being conceptually weak in the defence.  This weakness finds its way all the way down to the range card.

On exercise, I fought a company defensive battle off of a 1:5,000 overhead imagery map on a 8.5 x 11 piece of map-tacked paper.  It worked quite well.  I was able to put the five essential defensive plans (direct fire, indirect fire, R&S, obstacle, and counter-moves) on this sheet with all my positions and control measures, numbered/named in accordance with a Battalion SOP.

The art and science of the defence can become much easier with enough sets and reps. Familiarity with concepts will occur and good SOPs will be established.  But good defensive training is time consuming (you need 4-5 days minimum) and boring, and requires effort to properly remediate, so it isn't the most popular thing to stick on an annual training plan.

 

[ballz]

Any chance you have a copy of that range card?

We also had 1 : 5000 for the dismounted position. I didn't put it in the article because I tried to focus on LAV stuff (my lanes, so to speak) and 1 : 5000 just didn't work as well for us, 1 : 10 000 was more appropriate given the ground we were covering. After writing the Bn SOPs on this, I had 1 : 5000 graph paper printed and map-tacked for all platoon commanders, LAV Capts, Coy 2ICs, and OCs prior to leaving for Maple Resolve, and we were doing PD on it to try and bring everybody up to speed on them. I had gotten a couple trial runs of the products done during the 18 months prior, so we were about as ready to use them as we were going to be.

I know it's a shame... but it's a reality. I think we might finally be getting to the point where we at least acknowledge we aren't perfect in this area, but we've got a long ways to go to properly addressing it.

 

[Haligonian]

I think you'd be very pleased to see I Coy's range card over here.  The process is understood now and I've got buy in on the process of developing the KZ then having range cards produced at the sect level and then filtering up to the Coy and beyond. 

Naturally there is still a hockey sock of things that still need a lot of work in the defence for us. 

 

[daftandbarmy]

I think you'd be very pleased to see I Coy's range card over here.  The process is understood now and I've got buy in on the process of developing the KZ then having range cards produced at the sect level and then filtering up to the Coy and beyond. 

Naturally there is still a hockey sock of things that still need a lot of work in the defence for us.

Send a letter to the CDS about it. Good drills all round!  [cheers]

 

[ballz]

I think you'd be very pleased to see I Coy's range card over here.  The process is understood now and I've got buy in on the process of developing the KZ then having range cards produced at the sect level and then filtering up to the Coy and beyond.

Awesome. Make sure you save them, I'll be back in the swamp lands for a trip after the tour. Or send me a picture.

Naturally there is still a hockey sock of things that still need a lot of work in the defence for us.

Maybe the eFP missions are exactly what we needed.