Daniel K. Bourke
It’s an essential building block of the way the Army trains and operates: the after-action review. A unit, from the squad level to echelons above brigade, completes a training exercise, or even a real-world operation, and turns to this mechanism to identify what went well, where there are opportunities for improvement, and what changes can be implemented next time. It’s how we keep our swords at their sharpest, our readiness and lethality maximized. But in a period of accelerating change in the character of warfare—faster and more digital than ever—are the mechanisms by which units conduct this fundamental activity fit for purpose?
If not, what are the components necessary for a meaningful after-action review (AAR), specifically in today’s digital landscape. And do we have actually to wait until after the action to do it? This question has remained front of mind for me since becoming a task force senior for the Joint Multinational Training Center (JPMRC), the Army’s newest combat training center (CTC). Army Leaders are well versed in the doctrinal standards of AARs from Field Manual 7-0 and the Leaders Guide to Unit and Training Management but struggle to quantify the metrics that drive improves and sustains, those elements of the action that need work and those that were accomplished successfully.
How many of us have sat through an AAR where events are blurred, challenges to existing processes are ignored, and opinions on performance drive the conversation? The training audience’s attention is quickly lost and valuable lessons learned are not internalized. To avoid this, the shared observations of observer controller / trainers (OC/Ts) must be linked to the unit’s performance using data in real time. At JPMRC we often refer to a training unit’s data as its “fantasy football stats.” Anyone who has played fantasy football knows that nobody wants to wait until after the game to see the stats. The same holds true for training. Why wait until after an event when data is available during the training? This is where the Data Assessment Tool developed at JPMRC comes into play.
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