A map? Isn’t that a paper thingy with weird marks all over it?
"About seven months after the Army reintroduced land navigation to its Basic Leader Course, or BLC, half of the soldiers in that pilot program have failed the training.
BLC is a 22-day school for the Army’s junior leaders to rise to the rank of sergeant. Land navigation was brought back after a roughly four-year hiatus. The school is supposed to teach young noncommissioned officers about the service’s policies, including legal authorities, processing paperwork for awards, and sexual assault and prevention efforts.
Service leaders have been aiming to add fieldcraft and combat tactics to the training, part of a larger effort to get non-combat arms troops up to snuff on basic soldiering skills. At the center of that push is land navigation, which tasks soldiers with plotting points on a map with a protractor and finding spots in the woods using a compass during both day and night. No GPS, which has become ubiquitous in combat with an approximation on just about every smartphone, is allowed.
But of the 914 soldiers who have been through the training, half have failed that portion of BLC, according to Command Sgt. Maj. Daniel Hendrex, the top enlisted leader for the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, or TRADOC.
As of now, passing isn’t required to graduate. But the high failure rate is a troubling sign as the service gears up for conventional warfare, with future conflicts expected to see the wide use of cyber weapons, which can knock out the GPS tools soldiers relied on during the Global War on Terror era."
Hell, you should see how many idiots can’t merely find their way around their own towns without somebody taking them by the hand and leading them… not even Steyr’s “Fat Girl Directions” work with them, and they can’t understand the simple “each road number is 1/10 mile, if you put The Mountain behind your right shoulder you’re facing north, south is behind you, east to your right and west your left.”
[snark]“But dat means TINKING! TINKINGMAKEZMUHBRAINHURT! NOTINKNOTINKNOTINK!”[/snark] Seriously, these people make The Hulk look like a frickin’ Quantum Physics major, and I don’t mean “Smart Hulk” from Endgame…
I always made sure growing up my kids knew which direction they are facing/traveling at any given moment. I’ll still tell them “I’m on the south side of the parking lot” and they will easily find me.
Being USAF, we didn’t learn any of that navigation stuff (as long as you could find your way back to the barracks or chow hall you were good to go), but I can see why land nav would be essential in a GPS-denied environment.
That isnt new. From talking with guys and buddies that were cadre at various military schools, non combat jobs personnel almost always have issues with basic infantry/combat skills. Not always obviously. But land nav eats a lot of the guys who dont use it regularly.
Non combat MOS’s always struggled with such tasks and the NCO schools are the only places they encounter it. It something more to be endured than actually learned, I guess.
In my day the school was called PLDC (pull dick) and the land navigation was a big part of it, a major challenge for many and pretty much the crucible that made or broke you. The schools emphasis wasn’t centered on it, but I think it presented the major go/no go challenge. That it’s just no long taught is a headscratcher that I probably should have have seen coming, as cynical as I can be.
I don’t have a natural sense of direction but fortunately I learned alot about map and compass orienteering in my youth, while with CAP. So I did fairly well whenever the army put land nav on the schedule and I breezed thru the PLDC course. I forget what the standards were, but most passed. And I think there was a block of time set aside later for mulligans, so it wasn’t preventing any but the hopeless from graduation.
Gps then was cumbersome and dodgey (mid-late 90s).
Sadly my trusty lensatic from those days locked up on me… What a kick in the sack that was, like having your boyhood dog die.
Most of the guys that I practice SARS with are painfully dependent upon phones, GPS, and eye in the sky drones. Actual paper map, compass, and distance walked? Forget it!! Lambs lost in the wild…
Part of the problem is methods of instruction and generational impact. Many are raised tech-oriented and inside. Leverage tech combined with old school. Take a team to the field and actually hike out terrain, practice feature ID, learn impact of topo and scale, count pace, learn experientially, teach as you go. Have some folks on devices, some on printed map/compass, have them switch. Easier in some places and teams than others, but better learning.
I would have assumed that is the way they were already doing it, but thinking about it now I’m probably wrong.
Every time something in the military fails it’s usually a case of 50/50 responsibility between the younger crowd who has never tried something and really poor training methods.
Sheesh, 50% failure rate of ostensible “leaders” at a basic F’ing skill. Guess what, GPS ain’t bulletproof. Hell I remember having to tackle land nav problems without a compass, using a map and identifying terrain features to judge direction. Why, cause shit breaks and people lose shit. You still gotta navigate.
Need a new parlor trick? If you have an analog watch (esp GMT), next time you’re out with your group nav by it. Be obvious about looking at your watch, and evasive about how you’re doing it. Watch them look for a hidden compass or electronic feature.
I think this is a major part of it. BLC is a mix of every MOS with the majority of them being junior E4s. Land Nav was always a killer at schools I went to that included non-combat arms; Ranger School being a standout with just the sheer number of failures at land nav in RAP week.
But to be fair, land nav was also the killer at EIB when I got mine.
When I went to BLC, it was called PLDC. All MOS’s had to attend it was a prerequisite for promotion to E-5.
We had to find painted coffee can lids at the base of trees, write the number on the can lid on your car and hit the next grid. All of that went to hell when it snowed that night.
We did it anyway.
