Train as you fight. Fight as you train.

So, there I am, visiting Bill and Bob's Excellent Afghan Adventure when I'm hit with a reverie bat. A reverie bat is like a cluebat - it provides sudden flashes of insight, but hurts less.

Memories of the Army in the 70's, training in the 80's,  Desert Shield and Storm in the 90's, and... the present.  In this case, Afghanistan.  This picture is what knocks all those disjointed memories out of the nooks and crannies...  the banner Old Blue uses for the blog - of an Afghan BMP and M113. 



It's the markings on the vehicles that cause the cascade.

Circle Trigon Party.  Aggressor Armed Forces.  Train as you fight.  Why are the French on that flank?  Heh.

So, if you're an old soldier...  Circle Trigon Armed Forces, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aggressor Nation, Inc. 

That's the tagline I used to put on documents and such stuff meant to be found when searching "bodies" or POWs during training events back in the 70's.  That bring back some memories?

One of the lessons learned and relearned by armies throughout history is that if you train against your own troops using your own tactics... you get really good at fighting yourself.  Which, absent civil wars, you just don't do very often.

Plus, if you don't give your tactical intel guys realistic training, they tend to give unrealistic assessments, and don't have skills, like order of battle analysis, that would be nice to have. 

Heh. Okay, we still haven't really fixed that problem.  There still a lot of learning by doing going on.

However, the State Department, peaceniks, and some foreign nations get, well, downright cranky when you just throw some real, sovereign nation out there as the enemy you train against.  And they use it to justify cranky behavior on their part; oh, like taking off their shoe and pounding it on the table, etc.  So, what's a self-respecting army that would like to at least try to get it right to do? 

Create your own "enemy" of course.

Hence the birth of the Circle Trigon party, and Aggressor Nation.  Right after WWII.  The earliest version I've found of FM 30-102 Handbook on Aggressor Military Forces is dated June 1947 and was approved by Army Chief of Staff Eisenhower, whose approval line appears under this caveat:

1. FM 30-102, Handbook on Aggressor Military Forces, is published for the information and guidance of all concerned.
2. The country, peoples and forces described herein are entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to existing countries or forces is inadvertent and coincidental.
 

Emphasis in the original.  The program was extensive on paper, if perhaps somewhat haphazard in execution.  It laid out vehicle markings, special uniforms... and when fully implemented, the Aggressors were to speak in... Esperanto.  Yep.  There is even a documentary from the era available on DVD if you want it.   

The manual laid out the history of Aggressor Nation, had the de rigeur organizational wiring diagrams, with orders of battle and unit organizations.  There was a map of the territory, and symbology unique to Aggressor Nation to go along with that Esperanto, so you could do up your maps and overlays correctly, vice just using NATO-standard graphics.

This program survived into the 70's though it was petering out in my experience.  We revived it with a vengeance when we created the Combat Training Centers and the Battle Command Training Program in the 80's, with the three "dirt" CTCs and the the "digital" training center of BCTP soldiering on strong today - training facilities that are generally the envy of every other Army on the planet.

Train as you fight, fight as you train.  That was the mantra. 

One of the reasons we spent so much money on the dirt CTCs was to have a place where we could put a dedicated OPFOR (Opposing Force) with vehicles and uniforms that were modified to be dissimilar from ours.  Not our fault if those people most likely to oppose us also happened to supply military equipment and training to the people we were most likely to shoot at... so if it all looked very...um, well, Soviet - they had only themselves to blame. 

Because one of the problems with the Aggressor program was it used standard Army vehicles.  There were the special uniforms, with the funky helmet and Circle Trigon patch, like you see these guys wearing.

 

The problem is - we were training tank and anti-tank gunners to shoot at... their own stuff.  Even if it did have a nice little Circle Trigon on it, like this M47 on the tank gunnery range at Graf.



Or, like this Berlin Brigade M48, or this M113, also in USAREUR:


One of the things about Desert Shield and Desert Storm was we found ourselves in a Coalition where people on our side, the Syrians and Egyptians, were equipped with Warsaw Pact gear - exactly the kind of gear we had just spent the last decade training our gunners to pull the trigger on.

For all the other tactical reasoning - one reason the French forces in Desert Storm were positioned where they were - on the Corps flank, [I goofed, and got called on it in the comments] one of the reasons the Saudis and Brits were between the Syrians and Egyptians and our guys... was the Pact-equipped folks wanted something between them and us, in case our guys engaged in reflexive shooting.  They'd heard about our training, and didn't want to validate our silhouette recognition and trigger reflexes.

Train as you fight, fight as you train.

Which brings us back to Old Blue's banner - I saw the Afghan Army markings... and my trigger finger got all itchy, in a "those were the days" kind of reverie.

And the picture just unifies the theme.  The M113, the BMP, the Circle Trigon-like markings.  From those three visuals in the picture, you can spin a tale of Army training over a six decade span.

Kewl.

And, it gave me something to write about.  No doubt some one will now fill the comment section with "Me too!" stuff about the Air Force and Navy Aggressor programs...

Several of the pictures used here came from this excellent website on the Berlin Brigade - which is maintained by a German, who has done a really good job.  They didn't all hate us!  If you are a Berlin Brigade vet, you owe it to yourself to visit - and if you've got pics to share - you should!