RecceDG said:
Aside from the sudden downpour on Sunday AM that caught my guys in the middle of helicopter loading/unloading practise and soaked us to the skin, overall, it was a great ex.
lol. My section was tasked to put up a fence all around Camp Bengal. Which brings me to first point.
If you're going to do something, like putting up a fence, at least do it right, instead of one strand of wire, or not put one up at all.
Haggis said:
I think the soldiers generally found it to be a good ex. Our FOB was well laid out and contributed to the effectiveness of the training. The OPFOR (of which my son was a member against 32 CBG) was well briefed and used.
I agree as well. Camp Bengal was well organized and everything was good to go. But yeah. White light, mods and cots did some getting used to.
1. Presence patrols often made efforts to avoid being detected (i.e. diving into the ditch when vehicles approached, not using white light etc.) as junior leaders still equated patrolling with stealth.
It also helps to have presence patrols in urban area. I realize there isn't enough real estate to go around, but doing presence patrols in an area where there is no presence needed kinda defeats the purpose, otherwise it's just a walk on the road.
4. Comms sucked. Need more freqs and many, many more radios. PRRs should be used on training like this as a supplement to TCCCS.
Agreed. Being 'out there' and might run into trouble and having no comms with a higher up is unsettling, esp. with armed bad guys running around. How does one solve that problem, when your FOB is outside of range of radios? (Have a mini CP somewhere half point?)
Also, when dropping arty sims, it defeats the purpose if it is meant for only certain section of the camp and advanced warning (or anything warning at all) reaches other units after the arty sims have been dropped. Having to scramble out from doing whatever and being told it's a false alarm means troops start to take them less seriously.
Overall I was pretty satisfied with the ex. OPFOR gave a lot of interesting scenarios to deal with (incl a firefight with PLA and a protester just happens to wander through, then an NGO shows up. How likely that is I'm not sure, but pretty interesting) Most of the time well organized and I think I learned a lot while enjoying the experience.
This is not badmouthing our armoured recce comrades, but do you guys know what an infantry guys want from recce on an objective? (IE suggested positions for assault and firebase, etc)