71MILITARY REVIEW July-August 2007
Colonel Jeffrey R. Sanderson, U.S. Army,
and Captain Scott J. Akerley, U.S. Army
Colonel Jeffrey R. Sanderson com-
mands the 4th Cavalry Brigade, First
Army Division East, Fort Knox, KY. He
holds a bachelor’s degree from West-
ern Carolina University and master’s
degrees from Western Kentucky
University, the School of Advanced
Military Studies, and the Air War Col-
lege. COL Sanderson commanded C
Company, 3d Battalion, 7th Infantry
during Operations Desert Shield and
Desert Storm, and 2d Battalion, 69th
Armor during Operation Iraqi Free-
dom I. He has served in a variety of
command and staff positions in the
continental United States, Korea,
Kuwait, and Iraq.
Captain Scott Akerley is the 4th
Cavalry Brigade planner. He holds
a bachelor’s degree from the United
States Military Academy and is a
graduate of the Armor Ofcer Basic
and Advanced Courses. He was a
tank and scout platoon leader in Op-
eration Iraqi Freedom I and is currently
awaiting company command.
F
EW PLACES IN our Army today train Soldiers with as much intensity
as our mobilization stations. With about 184,000 National Guard and
Reserve Soldiers deployed to combat theaters of operation worldwide (60,000
in Iraq), mobilization training is at the forefront of the War on Terrorism.
1
Training these Soldiers is a decisive mission. Without their contributions,
our Army—not to mention our strategic goals—would collapse.
Preparing for this war is not getting any less intensive, even as our Army
gains experience. In fact, as combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan
have evolved in complexity and criticality, training requirements for units
and Soldiers deploying to these theaters have increased. We are in a war of
adjustments. We take emerging insights and lessons learned and incorporate
them into our training with remarkable speed and accuracy.
While we in the 4th Cavalry Brigade train all applicable leader tasks
during the mobilization cycle, we place special emphasis on ve areas we
call “The Big Five for Leaders.” The focus areas are—
● Troop-leading procedures (TLPs).
● Intelligence preparation of the environment (IPE).
● Ground assault convoys (GACs).
● Fire distribution and control (FDC).
● Counterinsurgency (COIN) tactics.
Based on personal experience, observation, and countless discussions
and interviews with returning Soldiers, we believe these are the ve areas
leaders must master to enable their units to execute successful sustained
combat operations.
We focus our Observer/Controller/Trainer certication program on these
areas. Each of these critical skill sets is doctrinally important, easily taught,
and provides immediate feedback. Old Soldiers will claim the “Big Five”
are simply leader basics and should be givens. In our experience, however,
they have not been ingrained in the leaders we train.
To those of you who believe strongly in cause-and-effect relationships,
we say all tactical failure comes from the leader’s failure to integrate and
execute the “Big Five.” We can teach skills in these areas in a classroom,
but frankly, they are worthless until the chain of command practices them
repeatedly in the eld. Thus, we integrate them fully into all our training.
Every mobilizing battalion executes a minimum 10-day Army Training and
Evaluation Program (ARTEP) exercise during which we not only emphasize
these leader focus areas, but also create opportunities for multiple applica-
tions in as realistic and time-constrained an environment as possible.
