A Romanian Special Forces Soldier fires an AT4 rocket launcher simulator at enemy tanks while a U.S. Air Force JTAC calls in their location during Combined Resolve 15 at Hohenfels training area on February 26, 2021. Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTAC) play a key role in providing a link between air assets and personnel on the ground. (U.S Army photo by Sgt Patrik Orcutt)
Practice Notes
Building National Security Law Readiness Through Combat Training Center Rotations
By Major Timothy A. Davis & Major Jason D. Young
In no profession are the
penalties for employing untrained personnel so appalling or irrevocable as in the military.
1
Readiness is what makes the Army a credible deterrent to war and a capable force to fight war.2 To fight and win, the Army must conduct tough, realistic training for the truly unknown: the time, place, and adversary in the next fight. Constant attention, effort, and dedication to readiness are all required to consistently improve. One critical part of the Army’s preparation to win in a complex world is the crucible of collective training events at the combat training centers (CTCs).3 For judge advocates (JAs) and paralegals in peacetime, there is no better way to build and maintain national security law readiness and proficiency in the austere practice of law than a CTC rotation. This article provides an overview of the mission and composition of the Army’s CTCs, how the CTCs contribute to the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps mission, and how a brigade legal section (BLS) and offices of the staff judge advocate (OSJA) prepare to ensure they gain maximum training value from a rotation.
Observer-Coach/Trainers HMMWVs stage before heading into the Fort Irwin training area during a decisive action training rotation. (Credit: Operations Group, National Training Center, U.S. Army)
The CTCs: Mission and Composition
The Army charges CTCs with providing “realistic joint and combined arms training, according to Army and joint doctrine, approximating actual combat.”4 There are four CTCs: the Mission Command Training Program (MCTP) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; the Joint Multinational Readiness Center (JMRC) at Hohenfels, Germany; the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, Louisiana; and the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California.5 This article focuses on JMRC, JRTC, and NTC, collectively known as the maneuver combat training centers.6
The JMRC is forward deployed in Germany and focuses primarily on U.S. Army Europe and Africa brigade combat teams (BCTs), while also providing events for North Atlantic Treaty Organization response forces, regionally-aligned forces, and other rotational forces.7 The JRTC and NTC primarily focus on achieving decisive action proficiency for the Army’s BCTs.8 Typically, JRTC receives airborne and light infantry BCTs, while the NTC receives primarily armored BCTs and Stryker BCTs.
Training at JRTC and NTC focuses on force-on-force and live-fire training for the Army’s BCTs with a professional opposition force (OPFOR) and experienced operations group observer coach/trainers (OC/Ts) to provide unbiased observations and feedback.9 Each training center can resource up to ten rotations a year.10 Training is tough, realistic, and combat-like across a wide range of tactical operations to help a BCT achieve decisive action proficiency.11 In addition to the seven organic battalions of a BCT, there is always a combat sustainment support battalion and a combat aviation battalion, with occasional involvement from chemical battalions, multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) battalions, and other battalions. Also, JRTC and NTC execute rotations focused on BCT preparation for global force management allocation plan, with rotations geared specifically towards a geographic combatant commander’s needs. At times, the training centers travel to distributed locations to observe, coach, and train in a particular area of operations.12 Additionally, security force assistance brigades, special operations forces (SOF), and other unique organizations conduct rotations tailored to their missions.13 Frequently, multinational forces participate in rotations, providing an excellent opportunity to build interoperability with partners.14 In support of the rotation, legal OC/Ts provide detached observation, candid feedback, and necessary coaching and training to the BLS, with an ability for easy, candid discussion between peers that can be more difficult in a rater/senior rater/rated Soldier relationship.
For the Army, the CTCs remain “the cornerstone of an integrated strategy that builds trained and proficient, combat-ready units and leaders to conduct operations as part of the joint force-ready to win in a complex world.”15 In short, the CTCs prepare BCTs for large-scale combat operations (LSCO) and for any regionally-aligned missions needed by geographic combatant commanders. The CTCs provide a “crucible experience for units and leaders training in a complex and highly realistic decisive action training environment (DATE) designed to replicate combat by stressing every warfighting function with operations against tough, freethinking, realistic, hybrid threats under the most difficult conditions possible.”16
The CTCs focus on increasing the pace of the Army’s transition to unified land operations by challenging units and leaders to adapt to battlefield conditions, and by enhancing lethality and our ability to operate with our unified action partners and SOF across the range of military operations.17 Centrally, the CTCs focus on LSCO, at the right edge of the range of military operations.18 The CTCs prepare JAs and paralegals, as part of a BLS and BCT, to deploy worldwide, fight with confidence, and win against any adversary, anytime, under any conditions.
How the CTCs Advance the JAG Corps Mission
The CTCs advance the JAG Corps mission by providing tough, realistic, doctrinally-based training to build national security law readiness, help the JAG Corps and the Army learn what role Judge Advocate Legal Services (JALS) personnel play in LSCO, and allow JAs and paralegals to learn how to practice law in an austere environment.
As the Army shifts from twenty years of counterinsurgency (COIN) back to a focus on LSCO, the CTCs provide JALS personnel the opportunity to build and sustain national security law readiness for a type of conflict not seen in years. With deployment opportunities dwindling, there are fewer opportunities for building national security law readiness. Moreover, while valuable, these recent deployments do not necessarily build national security law readiness for LSCO or for multi-domain operations (MDO).19 Combat training center rotations mimic a near-peer threat, with a living, thinking OPFOR and an array of capabilities the Army has not faced in years. For example, the OPFOR contests air and frequently jams mission command systems, cyberattacks systems, and employs long-range precision fires and chemical weapons, presenting a real threat to command posts requiring frequent survivability moves and more robust protection planning.
In addition to building NSL readiness, the CTCs provide a testing ground for the JAG Corps to re-learn how it provides legal services during LSCO. While the Army most certainly provided legal services in LSCO during the Cold War and prior to recent COIN operations, the battlefield has significantly changed in the intervening years, as adversaries such as China have rapidly advanced their capabilities.20 And while there are lessons to learn from how the JAG Corps provided legal services in LSCO in the past, the shift to LSCO will require practitioners to continuously build and maintain competence in key areas.21 There are attempts, such as the recent and upcoming Defender exercises,22 to rebuild this capability, because there are few current practitioners in the JAG Corps who experienced an old REFORGER exercise.23 A DATE rotation at a training center provides tough, realistic training, which allows JAs and paralegals with critical repetitions with the pace, tempo, and stressors to mimic combat. Additionally, CTC rotations provide the most realistic repetition of defending MDO that Soldiers will receive, with active cyber and electromagnetic activities, long-range precision fires, chemical weapons attacks, contested air, and the enemy combining arms in a way that only a peer or near-peer threat can muster. Additionally, multinational partners with a BCT provide an opportunity for multinational attorneys to integrate into a BLS, providing U.S. JAs and paralegals an opportunity to practice interoperability prior to working together in combat.
Likewise, most commanders and staff have no experience fighting in anything but COIN.24 Their perspective of the JAG Corps is shaped entirely around the garrison legal mission and legal services provided in COIN, with prescriptive tactical directives and rules of engagement (ROE) and little strategic appetite for civilian casualties.25 Not all, but some commanders and staff question what role JAs play in LSCO, arising out of a misguided view that JAs are only necessary in COIN for a recitation of prescriptive tactical directives and ROE. Their view of LSCO is that the “gloves are off” and that JAs will be less necessary than before.26 By our presence and contributions at CTC rotations, the JAG Corps can help teach and train our commanders and staff about the vital role of JAs in LSCO in preparing tactical formations to have a level of decision-making responsibility often held at the general officer level in COIN. Tactical commanders’ ability to assess risk and create a risk-mitigation structure with fires at the BCT level has atrophied due to COIN ROE and prescriptive tactical directives.27 While commanders routinely assess and either accept or reject risk, they have extraordinarily little experience in doing so with a LSCO ROE.28 To fully educate them and get repetitions, a BLS needs to come fully staffed, with support from a home-station OSJA if required.
Failing to fully staff a CTC rotation with legal personnel sends an implicit message that providing legal services in LSCO is not as important as our home-station mission, undercutting an effort to show the importance of legal personnel regardless of the type of conflict. In addition to preparing JAs and paralegals for advising in LSCO, CTC rotations afford the JAG Corps an opportunity to be robustly involved in CTC rotations to help educate commanders and their staff about the significant role JAs play in LSCO. It is difficult for the JAG Corps to argue it plays a key role in LSCO if OSJAs do not send a full complement of JAs and paralegals to the key training requirement for LSCO.29 Presence is the single biggest indicator that a staff section or warfighting function plays a significant role. Routinely, sections that do not send a full complement of personnel are marginalized during rotations to the training center.30
The CTCs also provide a unique opportunity for JAs and paralegals to learn and refine how to practice law and leadership in an austere environment. An austere environment and tough, realistic training provide a crucible experience where leaders can experience how they and their subordinates react when sleep-deprived, hungry, hot, or cold, and mentally and physical exhausted in a way that is impossible to replicate at home station. A CTC rotation also provides infrequently experienced challenges that arise from a peer adversary, such as unreliable communications, a crushing pace of battle, and a capable enemy with long-range fires requiring frequent command post survivability moves. The rotation also presents an opportunity to conduct legal operations in a distributed manner, with paralegals supporting battalions and even companies at times, much like those that may be necessary in LSCO.31
Additionally, JALS personnel are accustomed to constant digital connectivity with technical chains and ready access to the internet.32 In a degraded information environment due to jamming, lack of power, cyberattack, or other enemy means, JALS personnel will learn the importance of planning for such situations. They learn to manage network erosion through robust Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency (PACE) communication plans, built-in redundancy, and clear mission command with subordinate personnel.33 Further, the importance of analog fighting products to build shared understanding across the BLS becomes critical with digital communications and survivability issues. CTC rotations also offer a rare opportunity to attempt a distributed legal section, with the majority of BLS running a consolidated legal office at home station. Only by experiencing these challenges can JAs and paralegals learn how to mitigate risk, provide legal services in a degraded environment, and adapt and overcome a variety of challenges.
Preparing for a CTC Rotation
CTCs offer a realistic and austere training environment for BLS to prepare and practice for the rigors of combat. Even practice requires preparation. Unfortunately, the BLS is normally all-consumed with higher priority command discipline issues and, as a result, they delay preparation for the CTC until the last moments before departure. The difference between BLS offices that prepare and those that do not is obvious, but BLS and OSJAs can do a couple of things to posture for success: 1) set the dial on risk tolerance and LOAC compliance in the targeting process; 2) advocate for physical space and staffing; and 3) develop training objectives aligned with the BLS state of readiness, OSJA guidance, and any follow-on mission with redundant and analog fighting products to ensure readiness for an austere environment.
Targeting Process
The brigade judge advocate (BJA) should help the commander dial in the right amount of risk in the targeting process while ensuring compliance with the LOAC. In general, the fires warfighting function is accustomed to formulaic ROE with clearly delineated target engagement authorities (TEAs) based on collateral damage estimates (CDE). In LSCO, and at the CTCs, this formulaic process is not effective in a dynamic, high-intensity fight. Based on this, the CTC legal OC/Ts discourage using CDE as a control measure to delineate TEAs. Instead, the OC/Ts coach the rotational training unit to use CDE as a tool that “informs the commander’s application of the law of war principle of proportionality to assess the risk to mission and strategic risk due to collateral damage.”34 Without the luxury of time and a formulaic targeting ROE, brigades struggle to implement a process that identifies targets and employs fires dynamically when civilian casualties are anticipated.
After twenty years of COIN, the targeting officer (TARGO), the field artillery intelligence officer (FAIO), the fire support officer (FSO), the fire support coordinator (FSCOORD), and the brigade commander all have experiences conducting the targeting process, but those experiences formed in different operations with more time, more sensor fidelity, and more precise munitions. Due to the formulaic process and experiences, a BJA is likely to encounter misunderstandings on the law, risk-aversion, and an imbalance towards sacrificing combat power to protect civilians. This imbalance may lead to an inability to accomplish the mission.
A way to restore balance to the force is for the BJA to host, or actively participate in, a pre-rotation fires conference or round-table discussion. The BJA must provide more than a basic understanding of identification and proportionality to the team. In other words, one cannot simply define the terms and consider the team trained. The BJA must walk through scenarios on sensor fidelity, cross-cueing assets, and target value relative to anticipated civilian casualties. Consider the following questions: What level of fidelity do ground moving target indicators (GMTI) provide? What is a lob, a cut, or a fix for target identification? How can we use counterfire radar and GMTI together? How will we value the assets on the high payoff target list relative to the anticipated civilian loss? How does the evaluation change from the defense to the offense? How and when should we conduct preparatory fires into a populated area to ensure our maneuver battalions preserve combat power for follow-on operations? These questions discussed openly in a large forum with the brigade commander’s input will help the staff understand the brigade commander’s risk tolerance in targeting and allow those with delegated engagement approval authority to understand and implement the commander’s targeting philosophy. Moreover, this gives the BJA an opportunity to lawfully shift the targeting dial from COIN to LSCO before arrival at a CTC.
Manning and Physical Space
The BJA and the noncommissioned officer in charge (NCOIC) should sit down at least 180 days prior to the start of their rotation to discuss staffing for the CTC. They need to identify who will participate and who will remain in the rear to keep the wheels of justice grinding. Once needs are identified, the BJA and NCOIC should request additional legal personnel from the division or from outside organizations. When a unit shows up to a CTC rotation with less than the authorized number of legal personnel, an OSJA leaves a valuable training slot vacant and opportunity to build the bench of proficient national security law practitioners and paralegals.
The physical location of JAs and paralegals is equally important. First, the most successful units conduct decentralized operations with paralegals serving in their battalion operations centers as radio or joint battle command-platform (JBC-P) operators.35 The goal is to make the paralegal value-added to operations, so they have access to information and an ability to identify issues for the BJA, who remains physically near the commander. This may require networking with the battalion operations sergeant major and a willingness to support paralegal’s participation in unit home-station training exercises to develop those skills.
In addition to the paralegals, the BJA should articulate their role in operations to avoid fighting from the administration and logistics center (ALOC).36 The most successful units networked with the operations noncommissioned officers to ensure the standard operating procedures physically located JAs and paralegals in the best locations to maintain situational awareness and influence decisions. These locations span physical space in the main command post (MCP), the tactical command post (TAC), and the ALOC. A seat in the MCP is especially critical as an opportunity to ensure proportionality and distinction are appropriately understood in a LSCO context.
Training Objectives and Fighting Products
To properly focus during a CTC rotation, a BLS, in conjunction with the parent OSJA, must develop training objectives towards which to strive. Meeting these training objectives should support a measure of building—organizational readiness. The JAG Corps training objectives support multiple legal functions and multiple warfighting functions, so it is critical that mission-essential task list (METL) tasks are carefully examined to properly refine a BLS’s focus.37 Each BLS will primarily derive training objectives from their home-station training plan and the METL, as listed in Field Manual 1-04.38 Necessarily, these METL tasks must nest with the parent OSJA’s training plan and METL. Ideally, a BLS incorporated training objectives into home station collective training events conducted prior to the CTC rotation to familiarize themselves with and refine the objectives. Further, OSJA training plans should contemplate BLS training objectives to build readiness in support of collective training objectives.39
Achieving properly focused training objectives presents a challenge even in ideal conditions. In an austere environment, meeting training objectives proves even more challenging due to difficulty in tracking progress and building shared understanding in a degraded environment. To properly focus on, track, and achieve training objectives in an austere environment, a BLS must develop and test redundant analogue fighting products (e.g., a legal running estimate, authorities matrix, investigations tracker) that can survive degraded communications, frequent survivability moves, and legal personnel at multiple nodes (e.g., an MCP or mobile command group (MCG)). Testing such systems for the first time at a CTC rotation will likely fail. Failing to have such systems at all creates little to no shared understanding across legal nodes, an inability to track organization progress and readiness, and makes it difficult or impossible to achieve objectives across legal and warfighting functions. Properly developing and testing such products is a predicate to success in an austere environment.
Conclusion
A CTC rotation offers a BLS and the JAG Corps a peerless opportunity for tough, realistic training. As the JAG Corps and Army re-orient towards LSCO, the rotation provides a valuable testing ground for building national security law proficiency and readiness under significant stress, demonstrating to the rest of the Army the vital role that the JAG Corps plays in LSCO. It also hones the skill of practicing law under austere conditions to stress the BLS’s ability to provide legal services without the luxury of a static base, significant continuity, and continuous communications. Yet, a BLS and OSJA will reap only a benefit commensurate with the amount of emphasis, preparation, and staffing invested. This article provides a starting point for the planning and analysis necessary for BLS and OSJAs to appropriately prepare, with necessary bottom-up refinement to come for the distinct missions of each team. TAL
MAJ Davis is the senior judge advocate observer coach/trainer (OC/T) at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California.
MAJ Young is the senior judge advocate OC/T at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany.
Notes
1. Jim Greer, Training: The Foundation for
Success in Combat, Heritage Found. (Oct. 4, 2018), https://www.heritage.org/military-strength-topical-essays/2019-essays/training-the-foundation-success-combat (quoting Douglas MacArthur).
2. U.S. Dep’t of Army, Doctrine Pub.
1, The Army para. 1-1 (31 July 2019).
3. U.S. Dep’t of Army, Reg. 350-50, Combat
Training Center Program para. 1-5a (2 May 2018) [hereinafter AR 350-50].
4. Id. para. 1-5c.
5. Id. para. 1-5e.
6. The Mission Command Training Program (MCTP) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas is the primary combat training center for command training, with a focus on sustainment process, mission preparation progression, and other Army requirements. It trains divisions, corps, and other units such as Army service component commands.
7. AR 350-50, supra note 3, para. 1-5e.
8. AR 350-50, supra note 3, para. 1-5e.
9. This candid feedback has been provided consistently since the first judge advocate OC/T was assigned to the NTC. See CLAMO Report: The Shifting Sands
at NTC, Army Law., Mar. 1998, at 46.
10. AR 350-50, supra note 3, para. 1-5c.
11. AR 350-50, supra note 3, para. 1-5c.
12. In 2021, the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) traveled to Hawaii to do a decisive action rotation with a brigade combat team (BCT) from 25th Infantry Division.
13. AR 350-50, supra note 3, para. 1-5j. In February 2022, the 3d Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) and 2d Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division (2/1 ID) both came to the National Training Center (NTC), with 2/1 ID replicating an Atropian BCT and 3d SFAB charged with advising and assisting a “partner force.”
14. In the last year, NTC and JRTC have had multinational forces from a multitude of countries from every geographic combatant command’s area of responsibility.
15. AR 350-50, supra note 3, para. 1-5a.
16. AR 350-50, supra note 3, para. 1-5a.
17. AR 350-50, supra note 3, para. 1-5.
18. See Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Pub. 3-0, Joint Operations, at V-4 (17 Jan. 2017) (C1, 22 Oct. 2018). The range of military operations extends from military engagement, security cooperation, and deterrence on the left edge; crisis response and limited contingency operations in the middle; and large-scale combat operations on the right edge of operations.
19. Lieutenant General Charles Pede & Colonel Peter Hayden, The Eighteenth Gap: Preserving the Commander’s Legal Maneuver Space on “Battlefield Next,” Mil.
l. Rev., Apr-May 2021, at 6, 17.
20. U.S. Dep’t of Army, Field Manual 1-04, Legal
Support to Operations para. 2-1 (8 June 2020) [hereinafter FM 1-04].
21. Id. para. 2-2.
22. DEFENDER-EUROPE 20, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Eur., https://shape.nato.int/defender-europe (last visited Mar. 25, 2022).
23. Andrew Feickert & Kathleen J.
McInnis, Cong. Rsch. Serv., IF11407, Defender Europe 20 Military
Exercise, Historical (REFORGER) Exercises, and U.S. Posture in Europe (2020). The REFORGER exercises brought two full brigades to Europe each year to augment a forward-deployed brigade. The two U.S.-based brigades would travel to Europe, link up with the forward-deployed brigade, draw prepositioned stock, and conduct a field training exercise. This exercise intended to maintain a U.S. capability to rapidly deploy combat power to Europe and to deter the Soviet Union.
24. Pede & Hayden, supra note 18, at 17.
25. Pede & Hayden, supra note 18, at 16.
26. This assertion is based on MAJ Davis’s recent professional experiences as the Senior Observer-Coach/Trainer at the National Training Center from 1 July 2021 to 1-August 2022 and MAJ Young’s recent professional experiences as the Senior Observer Coach/Trainer at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center from 1 July 2021 to 1 August 2022 [hereinafter Professional Experiences].
27. Pede & Hayden, supra note 18, at 17.
28. Pede & Hayden, supra note 18, at 17.
29. Professional Experiences, supra
note 26.
30. Professional Experiences, supra
note 26.
31. FM 1-04, supra note 20, para. 3-43.
32. FM 1-04, supra note 20, para. 3-41.
33. FM 1-04, supra note 20, para. 3-41.
34. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Pub. 3-60,
Joint Targeting, at II-20 (28 Sept. 2018).
35. See Major William A. Obringer, The Distributed Brigade Legal Section: A Concept of Legal Support for a
Brigade Combat Team in High Intensity Conflict, Operational L.Q.,
Apr. 11, 2019, at 5.
36. See Lieutenant Colonel Christopher M. Ford, Operational Law in Practice: Observations from the
Mission Command Training Program, Army Law., Dec. 2016, at 5, 8.
37. FM 1-04, supra note 20, app. C-2.
38. FM 1-04, supra note 20, app. C-2.
39. FM 1-04, supra note 20, app. C-2.