Two Junior NCOs from the British Army talk about their experiences of the Armoured Close Recce course in Warminster back in December 2023.  In recording this, I was struck by the professionalism with which these two young soldiers handled themselves. Accutely aware of their own inexperience, their own failings, as well as the legacy they had to live up to. Their lack of fear in confronting these challenges marked – to me – a huge humility in them, and a self assurance in their abilities and their instructors. Kudos to the senior NCO team at Warminster for delivering to junior NCOs the kind of discipline, freedoms and confidence that means they are the envy of many other militaries. This is not something create overnight – it takes a culture of excellence, of focused determination, and of belief in the next generation. And they seem to have all that in spades.

The Captain's Warfare Course in Warminster delivers the key skills to the people expected to execute 'the fight' in the British Army. During my visits to the team at Warminster, I was struck by the quality of the staff that had been selected for the Directing Staff positions. This group of people really understood the demands of what was needed from staff officers under the extreme stress of combat. Many of them had been there, done that, and got the t-shirt. Often, they had done it more than once and in more than one sort of headquarters. And more than one sort of war.  That diversity of experience is important. The validation of the CWC students cannot, in many ways, be judged for many years. The student coming off the course doesn’t know what they need to know. Their employers – in Brigade headquarters or elsewhere – will also not be able to judge the students post course for at least 6 months to a year after their arrival. And those views will vary hugely depending on the context of each fight: COIN, CT, Conventional arms, hot, arctic, jungle, urban, rural, airborne, armour heavy, coalition, or sovereign – each brings a different set of challenges and requirements. Understanding this diversity requires a set of skills, a set of people that want to adapt and evolve training as fast as realities on the battlefields change, but retaining the foundations and core skills that are needed across the differing demands in different HQs on different operations. All of that requires a dynamism and fluidity in training that too much structure can stymie. Rhys Pogson-Hughes-Emanuel exemplified that approach – something as rare as unicorns back in the day. He had obviously thought a lot about what he wanted the students to leave with: about behaviours and confidence as much as foundational knowledge.

In 2023, a report by the Royal United Services Institute on military training didn't make headlines. And that's a shame becuase it was a good read, and important too. The findings were not ground breaking but they codified the challenges facing the UK military and its military training provision (and infrastructure). There were snippets that did rile however. The focus on STEM was particularly interesting; why would those skills be more important than soldiers holding a defensive line? Even in a commercial partnership, risk is still being displaced to the front line. It might be acknowledged and shared by higher HQs but the reality is that the burden still falls to people at the edge (either taking a gap or an untrained person). The underlying issue, it turns out, remains one from our first episode: despite the rhetoric of seniors, defence simply doesn't like paying training budgets; the MoD doesn't prioritise training in the face of other requirements. Peter talked to one of the reports authors, Pat Hinton, about the reports key conclusions.

In this episode we go back down to Warminster – for the second of a series of interviews with the staff of the Captain’s Warfare Course within the Director Land Warfare’s domain for the British Army. Having had a download from Major Vicky Fraser, I was then handed over to Mark Hawthorne, the Learning Development Advisor for the HQ Junior Division under the Land Command and Staff College. Mark and I talked about training and education – the differences and the natural overlap between them. If you listened to the first series of the show, you will know about some of my own views on how militaries tend to separate training and education. To blend training and education successfully requires a different mindset and a focus that isn’t present in many other courses. When it is, there tends to be a heavy acadamic presence - alongside military instructors, to achieve the outputs you want. Yet at CWC in Warminster, there isn’t an academic presence at all. Instead, the team achieves a blend (of training and education) by using a variety of facets that we heard about in the first series: but we havent covered how you deliver that in reality until now. First, is the need to exploit the students desire for self improvement: Here is a generation that seems more willing to accept responsibility for their own development in professional military education. Second: really using peers across the British Army and those from foreign militaries who are also on the course to broaden and expand the horizons of study. Third: the way you teach, instruct, mentor, and train – a different methodology from traditional military courses. And finally, how the Directing staff behave. If these themes seem familiar, its probably because we talked a lot about these in the first series. Those conversations were about the theory not the practice though. So what was really interesting was to hear Mark talk about the reality of doing this stuff for a military organisation today – including how you address training and education for a war rather than the war.

Everyone seems to be talking about technology as the engine of future training but sometimes that drives a conversation about technology alone and not about the relevance and utility to the soldier or commander. Acknowledging that tech is subservient to those ends is critical in understanding what tech can offer, and which parts are important. Peter talks to Mark Holland from Skyral (formerly Improbable Defence) about the art of the possible and the hurdles to making ambition achievable. Not all ‘open architecture’ is the same apparently.

The CWC provides junior officers with the skills they need to plan and execute operations at the Battlegroup to Brigade level in the British Army. The 6 week syllabus refreshes core knowledge for students from all arms of the army (and marines) before putting them through their paces with planning exercises in the classroom and in the field. The culmination is a deployed planning and execution challenge over the course of a week. This isn’t a pass/fail course, but it can be a challenge. The key to success, according to Chief Instructor Major Vicky Fraser, is the instructors. She explains why.

On any modern battlefield, the people you want most in a fight – be it in urban terrain or facing a determined adversary in rural environments – are engineers and maintainers. They are of far more use than a coder or pentaphibian in combat operations. How do you the military train these people? After all, giving them the skills needed, both foundational knowledge and type-specific familiarity, is not something that can be provided on a drill square or in the field. Peter talks to Brigadier Caroline Woodbridge-Lewin, Commandant of the Defence College of Technical Training in the UK, about the British approach. Turns out, a lot of this comes down to the instructors. Training and retaining those people deserves much more of our attention.

Commercial arrangements with providers of military training are usually transactional: most will have experienced how these arrangements can become strained over time as each party reaches for the contract whenever a change or amendment is needed. Moving away from that idea of a transactional or contractual modality is a shift in culture that requires both parties to embrace some risk. Peter talks to David Hook from Capita about their experiences in running naval training through Team Fisher as part of the Selbourne military training contract: it feels like there is a genuine partnership between the navy and the commercial providers. David explains how that has been achieved and where it is going. It is a compelling story.

For decades, navies have crewed the ship ‘cos the ship fights (the people – apparently – didn’t). According to RAdm Jude Terry, the Royal Navy has changed this: with People as a capability, the focus is on the crew rather than the ship. This reversal of priorities might just change the habit of cutting training budgets each year when money gets tight and ‘savings’ need to be found. But there is a lot behind this – it has to be more than just a strap line.

This first series of this podcast on military training has taken us from World War One to modern day combat operations, and a glimse into the future. Key take aways have been the continuities felt in militaries when it comes to changing direction - and the lag between decisions and impacts on the training pipeline. It's a classic symptom of the A War/The War paradox, which isn't new but time has not made it any easier on commanders, force designers, or instructors. The balance between live exercises and simulation has also been a constant topic during this season, despite simulation being in use by Western militaries since the 1960s. The part industry can, could and should play today seems to have become a less contentious topic than one might imagine - today's issue revolve more around contracts and priorities. Yet military commanders struggle with the blend of education and training, about priorities, finding time in schedules and what optimising the force means. Training design might be getting much better - and their leaders are incredibly passionate - but questions remain. Season Two is scheduled to start airing in November 2023: we can't wait to share it with you.  Thanks for listening.