Military Review English Edition July-August 2015 | Page 90

Tailored and streamlined administrative
personnel processes are
needed to make complex
predeployment activities
more efficient. A second lesson learned is that
deployment to the remote
areas of regionally aligned
force missions requires
significantly more administrative paperwork and
preparation than locations
to which units are generally
accustomed to being sent.
This results from a lack of
status-of-forces agreements
(Photo by Mollie Miller, 1st Infantry Division PAO)
with the many nations to
Capt. Ritchie Rhodes, 1st Battalion, 7th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat
Team, 1st Infantry Division, works with an African role player 10 May 2013 during the field training
which units are sent, as well
portion of Dagger University at Fort Riley, Kansas. Dagger University is a weeklong course that preas a lack of forward regional
pares teams from 2nd ABCT deploying to Africa by educating them on basic language and cultural
support bases to provide
skills. The brigade combat team, aligned with U.S. Africa Command, is the first to be tasked with a
regionally aligned mission.
support at remote locations.
Consequently, units preparAs a result, USARAF’s ability to assess mission
ing to deploy to these areas have a number of addieffectiveness was inadequate. Trip reports were not
tional administrative requirements unique to each
quantitative, nor even qualitative, in nature. According
location. According to a 2013 interim lessons learned
to the 2014 “CALL [Center for Army Lessons Learned]
report from the Army Irregular Warfare Center, these
Interim Report on Regionally Aligned Forces in U.S.
requirements include diverse requirements for authoArmy Africa,” assessments of the missions were, at best,
rization to enter countries and planning challenges for
educated staff judgments based largely on the past trainsupport once in country, requests for passports and
ing experiences of trainers in Iraq and Afghanistan.13
visas, and unique medical readiness challenges.15
Assessments were made based on host-nation feedback
This means that units must begin a detailed process
and limited first-hand observation on host-nation
of working administrative requirements for deployper formance. Such a process lacks standardization and
ments earlier than they are used to, including estabquality management required to track progress and
lishing contingency plans and anticipating the need
effectiveness of training accurately over time.
for resources not readily available once in country.
Regionally aligned forces would benefit from a more Planning also needs to include making requests for arstructured trip report system that enforces a uniform,
ea-specific cultural training early in the process through
disciplined, and systematic reporting methodology for
the Asymmetric Warfare Group.
conducting after action reviews and capturing lessons
Notwithstanding, in the preparation stage, unit
learned. This would enable valid and reliable measures
mission-essential tasks, decisive action tasks, and theater
of performance and effectiveness for analysis over
security cooperation common training tasks under the
time. Equally important, according to the Asymmetric
modified Army force generation rotational cycle seemed
Warfare Group’s 2014 Analysis of Support to the
adequate. These should remain the standard tasks for
Regionally Aligned Force, units need an easy-to-use
upcoming rotations of regionally aligned forces.
and accessible knowledge management database where
Additionally, administrative tasks should be intrip report results are archived.14
corporated into a predeployment program to ensure
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July-August 2015  MILITARY REVIEW