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 what the LTS/CSST contract means for industry, what the risks are, and what soldiers should be expecting after the industry partner is in place.

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 training block -designed to deliver individual and collective competencies), and Storm (a reinvigorated combined-arms, formation level event – the optimization phase). Within the current plan all sub-units will conduct a dedicated 10-week training period each and every year providing the UK with more military capability, more options for responses, and increased lethality across the British Army. More importantly, the new system is driven by the people within units – not the system. This means that, perhaps for the first time, the Army can exploit its people, their drive and determination to be ‘the best’, and build on the differentiation in capabilities between units. The shift in emphasis is warranted: the British Army is so not the homogenous mass of yesteryear, meaning that a reversion to a Cold War training modalities would be disingenuous to the soldiers of today. As Major General Chris Barry tells us, shifting to a new way of training that best fits the demands of a smaller, busier, more technology dependent force of today (and tomorrow) was the only way to realise the operational demands and credibly deter adversaries.

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 who had changed: they were no longer just able to command at a company level and contribute to C2 at the Battle Group level within their specialisation, but both now understand the Brigade level of command – and the processes used there. What’s more they clearly both seem able to contribute – in a meaningful way – to HQ staff functions at that level. After only 6 weeks education and training, that’s quite some leap. Their confidence, their attitude, just how they held themselves was very different to the people I met just a few weeks previously. Clearly capable officers in November, by December they had an aura of success about them – and that cynical humour that is a hallmark of British soldiers – perhaps soldiers everywhere. 

There is overwhelming conclusion from being with the team at CW: This course works. And It is getting better each time.

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 challenges marked – to me – a huge humility in them, and a self assurance in their abilities and their instructors. Kudos to the senior NCO team at Warminster for delivering to junior NCOs the kind of discipline, freedoms and confidence that means they are the envy of many other militaries. This is not something create overnight – it takes a culture of excellence, of focused determination, and of belief in the next generation. And they seem to have all that in spades.

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 combat. Many of them had been there, done that, and got the t-shirt. Often, they had done it more than once and in more than one sort of headquarters. And more than one sort of war.  That diversity of experience is important. The validation of the CWC students cannot, in many ways, be judged for many years. The student coming off the course doesn’t know what they need to know. Their employers – in Brigade headquarters or elsewhere – will also not be able to judge the students post course for at least 6 months to a year after their arrival. And those views will vary hugely depending on the context of each fight: COIN, CT, Conventional arms, hot, arctic, jungle, urban, rural, airborne, armour heavy, coalition, or sovereign – each brings a different set of challenges and requirements. Understanding this diversity requires a set of skills, a set of people that want to adapt and evolve training as fast as realities on the battlefields change, but retaining the foundations and core skills that are needed across the differing demands in different HQs on different operations. All of that requires a dynamism and fluidity in training that too much structure can stymie. Rhys Pogson-Hughes-Emanuel exemplified that approach – something as rare as unicorns back in the day. He had obviously thought a lot about what he wanted the students to leave with: about behaviours and confidence as much as foundational knowledge.

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 interesting; why would those skills be more important than soldiers holding a defensive line? Even in a commercial partnership, risk is still being displaced to the front line. It might be acknowledged and shared by higher HQs but the reality is that the burden still falls to people at the edge (either taking a gap or an untrained person). The underlying issue, it turns out, remains one from our first episode: despite the rhetoric of seniors, defence simply doesn't like paying training budgets; the MoD doesn't prioritise training in the face of other requirements. Peter talked to one of the reports authors, Pat Hinton, about the reports key conclusions.

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 I talked about training and education – the differences and the natural overlap between them. If you listened to the first series of the show, you will know about some of my own views on how militaries tend to separate training and education.

To blend training and education successfully requires a different mindset and a focus that isn’t present in many other courses. When it is, there tends to be a heavy acadamic presence - alongside military instructors, to achieve the outputs you want. Yet at CWC in Warminster, there isn’t an academic presence at all.

Instead, the team achieves a blend (of training and education) by using a variety of facets that we heard about in the first series: but we havent covered how you deliver that in reality until now. First, is the need to exploit the students desire for self improvement: Here is a generation that seems more willing to accept responsibility for their own development in professional military education. Second: really using peers across the British Army and those from foreign militaries who are also on the course to broaden and expand the horizons of study. Third: the way you teach, instruct, mentor, and train – a different methodology from traditional military courses. And finally, how the Directing staff behave.

If these themes seem familiar, its probably because we talked a lot about these in the first series. Those conversations were about the theory not the practice though. So what was really interesting was to hear Mark talk about the reality of doing this stuff for a military organisation today – including how you address training and education for a war rather than the war.

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 Improbable Defence) about the art of the possible and the hurdles to making ambition achievable. Not all ‘open architecture’ is the same apparently.

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 challenge over the course of a week. This isn’t a pass/fail course, but it can be a challenge. The key to success, according to Chief Instructor Major Vicky Fraser, is the instructors. She explains why.

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 not something that can be provided on a drill square or in the field. Peter talks to Brigadier Caroline Woodbridge-Lewin, Commandant of the Defence College of Technical Training in the UK, about the British approach. Turns out, a lot of this comes down to the instructors. Training and retaining those people deserves much more of our attention.