Go Out On A DATE With The Army

The Army Times has an article about the new structure of training center rotations.

The Army is renewing its focus on the basics of war fighting.

After more than 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Army honed and sharpened its counterinsurgency skills, soldiers can soon expect to spend more time on more comprehensive training to meet a hybrid threat that could span guerrilla, insurgent, criminal and conventional forces all in one environment.

“We’re going to go back and make sure we’re well grounded in the basics and fundamentals of war fighting,” said Brig. Gen. Clarence K.K. Chinn, commanding general of the Joint Readiness Training Center and Fort Polk, La. “We’ve been focused and training on fighting out of [combat outposts] and [forward operating bases] because that’s really what we needed to do. We needed to replicate as closely as we can the operational environment that we’re asking these brigade combat teams to go in and operate.”

Called Decisive Action training, these new rotations are already underway at the Army’s combat training centers, and they are designed for units that are not tagged for a specific upcoming deployment.

“In the future, where do we think we’ll be asked to fight?” Chinn said. “I say ‘fight’ because that’s what decisive action is. We’ve got to replicate that environment, just like we did before 2001, where we did full-spectrum operations.”

The new training rotations are part of what the Army calls the Decisive Action Training Environment.

Developed by Training and Doctrine Command’s Intelligence Support Activity, DATE is a notional operational environment that consists of five fictional countries named Ariana, Minaria, Atropia, Donovia and Gorgas.

Details on the "countries" when we can get them.

h/t Ed Mott

By: Brant