Training Rangers in combatives, or hand-to-hand combat, was not a straightforward task. First using existing army manuals, then moving to hiring outside experts and nationally renowned college wrestling coaches, we struggled. We could send a few Rangers to specialized training, and they would return proficient and enthusiastic, but their skills wouldn’t permeate through the battalion.
Finally, after almost a year of dead ends, we hired two of the Gracie brothers, Royce and Rorion, who were famous competitors and instructors in Brazilian jujitsu, a fighting style their family had pioneered. They would run a two-week course at Fort Lewis. Instead of sending just Rangers who had exhibited interest in or aptitude for it, I sent all of the platoon sergeants.
While we could have chosen any one of several fighting techniques, the breakthrough was sending the right people to training. Platoon sergeants controlled the culture and training schedule of each forty-two-man platoon, which they commanded as senior NCOs. Lieutenants led the platoons, but platoon sergeants shaped the organization and were its heart. As long as the platoon sergeants lacked confidence in their personal mastery of combatives and did not share a strong belief in the importance of the skill, we’d never get real traction. The course proved the point. After finishing the course, the platoon sergeants, now zealots for combatives and eager to demonstrate their skills, demanded their platoons follow their lead. Within months, combatives had infused into the culture of the battalion. In a couple of years, it had spread across the regiment, and soon it infected the Army as a whole. It was a lesson in leadership I never forgot.
I believed that more than anything else, soldiers and units must learn to win, and yet the Army’s Joint Readiness Training Center, or JRTC, unintentionally undermined that. Designed to exercise units under demanding conditions against a highly proficient opposing force (OPFOR) who mastered the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (MILES) training device, allowing them to routinely defeat units larger and better armed. Many units blamed their failure on MILES. In my second year in command of the 2nd Rangers, we were programmed for an early spring rotation to the JRTC, and I decided to focus the force on winning.
Winning at JRTC would demand that the 2nd Rangers adjust our tactics away from what would work in actual combat to what would be better suited to the MILES fight. It would require us to spend precious training time mastering MILES, at the expense of more realistic live-fire marksmanship. Many experienced leaders in the battalion felt we were “training to win at training” when we should be training for war. It was a valid point.
But to me, it was training to win. Future combat would be unpredictable in nature, and winning at JRTC, with the odds stacked against us, would build the Rangers’ confidence that they could win at anything. We trained. Week after week in the field consisted of combat lanes run against MILES-equipped OPFOR that we’d designated and trained from within the battalion. I became a fanatic on MILES marksmanship. Before the start of many lanes I’d pull two or three Rangers from the squad or platoon, place several targets a couple hundred meters away, and demand they demonstrate the ability to “kill” the targets with their MILES on the first shot. In the first weeks, few could do it. I could feel some of the NCOs seething, feeling MILES proficiency a gross waste of time.
Finally, at about 2:00 A.M. one night, after a difficult platoon lane, we were conducting a critique of an operation in a tent we’d erected. We were exhausted and frustrated, and I was tired of haranguing leaders, when a squad leader, Ken Wolfe, who was later a command sergeant major in Afghanistan, stood up. Grabbing his M16 rifle with a MILES transmitter mounted, he erupted.
“This is what we have to do,” he said, pointing at the transmitter. “This is the war we’ll be fighting and the war we have to win.”
I watched him intently, hoping he was saying what he appeared to be.
“It’s the MILES fight. We might not like it. But if we’re going to win we have to be better at it than the OPFOR.” His voice rose. “And goddamn it, we’re better than any OPFOR.”