29 December 2010

Week 9 - More OPORD, Fire Support, and Air Support

As all of last week was learning about OPORDs and then working on the platoon-level OPORD you would present, this week was dedicated to actually presenting said OPORDs, and just to see if I can possibly squeeze in the word OPORD in to this sentence any more than has already been done - OPORD.  I digress.

Basically, if you weren't presenting OPORDs, you were getting classes or running glass house drills for next week.  Classes consisted of learning about different air assets available to us, 5-line CCA, and 9-line CAS, de-conflicting fires and airspace, and graphical control measures associated with said airspace.  After a couple of hours of this, I remember nothing.  One of the days out of this week, we went to the call for fire trainer, where the FA NCOs were able to concisely explain everything you needed to know in about 10-15 minutes.  I've been noticing that, about the FA guys - they cut to the quick, and are very thorough.  Kudos to King of Battle - maybe they could get them to teach all of our courses - we'd be out of this place in half the time, I'd bet.

For those of you who have experience with fire missions, prepare to be underwhelmed.  All the missions were the same, no variations in shell/fuze combos, no danger close, and they made you do successive bracketing.  The civilians running the equipment frown upon you calling Fire For Effect missions right off the bat.  The CCA/CAS was very good, however, and I got a lot out of it.  I feel very confident in that aspect.  Which reminds me - I am not JTAC qualified.

Don't be surprised if you don't get to brief your OPORD this week, it apparently is a time consuming ordeal, and some people have to re-do theirs, which eats up more time.  Best advice I can give you for your presentations is to keep the scoresheet next to you to ensure you hit all the points, and don't overthink things.  People freak out for some reason and make their plans overly-complex, and use thirty words to describe something that can be said in seven (or better yet, with an overlay).   Relax, keep it simple and brief, and you'll be fine.

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