Oh, See, I've Been Gone To Serve As An O/C

Yeah, it's a lame title

Published on September 6, 2006 By chiprj In Blogging

So, it's been forever since I posted. That's about par for the course over the last six months or so. I do have a bit of an excuse for August, though. I was selected to go to the National Training Center at Ft Irwin, CA to serve as an augmentee Observer/Controller for a rotation.

I got to spend three weeks in the Mojave Desert watching a rotational unit train up for a deployment to Iraq. It was a great learning experience that had a lot of variables fall in to place in my favor. For some reason, the tasking message that our base received for this mission was never updated after the Operations Group at NTC reorganized. So, our augmentee for July ended up supporting the wrong team. Fortunately for me, that got fixed on the second day of my TDY there and I was moved to the correct team.

The first week of the trip was spent going to the O/C Academy and then preparing to go out to the desert with the rotational unit. I signed for my HMMWV and got my O/C gear, that included a GPS, "GOD" Gun, ballistic glasses (for driving my windshield-less HMMWV), and radio. The permanent party O/Cs that I was there to work with introduced me to the "players" (as the rotational Soldiers are called). I also did all my final packing and got my truck ready. DLI didn't have all of the items on the packing list to issue me, so I also had to do a bit of asking around to borrow some necessary gear. You might not think that you'd need a sleeping bag in the Mojave, but 40 degree temperature swings make a nightly low of 65 degrees seem cold. Especially when it's windy and your bed is the open bed of your truck. I got lucky to work with some great guys, though, and they made sure I had what I needed.

The second and third weeks of the TDY were spent in the desert observing the training. The O/C job is mostly to stay with the players and observe what they do as they do it. We take notes and pictures on everything that goes on and then as necessary conduct After Action Reviews with the players to talk about everything they did and try to identify what they did well and what they could improve. We also try to coach them to come up with their own solutions to problems instead of just telling them what to do. O/Cs are also there to make sure the rules of the exercise are enforced. When attacks are simulated, they are the ones to stand outside the battle and judge the game of laser cowboys and indians.

Overall, it was a great experience for me. I got to see one of the newer systems that people in my job field are using. I also got to see battle training from a new perspective. I may have even learned more, myself, than I actually contributed to the player unit. But that is part of why we have the augmentee program. It gives Soldiers like me, who have been in different assignments for a while, the opportunity to get back to the tactical side of things, at least a little.

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