In military circles, training can mean all things to different groups. Some think it is for making friends and building partnerships. Other parts of the national security community think it is for validation of value-for-money; other parts consider it an assurance exercise. Even within the military, training gets a bum rap: being seen as either a waste of time, or a rare moment to escape barracks or dockyard hassle (or HQ long screwdrivers) and get away from it all. There is also a significant proportion of HQ staff – especially those in strategic level HQs – who think it is a waste of cash: something European militaries have been short of for decades. Perhaps this is the reason that training budgets often get hit to pay for shiny new kit that promises much but has less utility than might be expected.
Yet for adversaries, the amount a military train sums up its credibility. Smart intelligence officials can make correlations between the amount of time that units regularly spend training with the credibility, lethality and readiness of their forces. If an adversary trains more, you need to at least match that in order to prevail in a conflict: any conflict.
When building training events for contemporary militaries, leaders now need to tackle both the problem of smaller forces – doing by the same commitments as their predecessors – and a wider array of skills across the combat echelon. All this makes time for training the most precious resource a military force has.
In recovering from campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the British Army recognised that something was not right with it’s training: it simply wasn’t getting what it needed from Cold war scripts and training design. So it started from scratch. Major General Chris Barry is the man who changed it: and who is leading delivery of the new Land Training System. I went down to his HQ at Warminster for a chat.