Week 9- CAID

Mon- Tuesday- The remainder of the Platoon briefed their OPORD's While the rest of us got to relax at home, so there are some good things about volunteering first. Tuesday morning we were bussed out to the Ranger Training Brigade where the Darby Queen is at to conduct the Ranger School 5 mile run. The road course is not flat by any means but it is not a horrible course I finished in 33:05, so I lost about 40 seconds off of my previous time. You have 40 min to complete the run so a few seconds will not matter. The company CO ran the 5 miler with us this time. A little background on him, he is a Crossfit junky and looks the part, and he finished 4th in the world Crossfit games so he's in shape. Anyways the point is that we ran together most of the route and of course I could not let him beat me at the end so it was a mad dash to the finish. There were only 4 of us that beat him so he gave all of us positive spot reports (my third to date in the course). 

Wed- Friday- CAID classes followed by the exam. I don't think anyone in IBOLC knew what CAID stands for, not even the cadre. CAID deals with combined arms and how we can use them on the battle field. Some of the instructions were very interesting, like the CAS and CCA and knowing how to call and facilitate air strikes. I could have done without some of the other blocks of instruction, but I might need to know one day how to provide my soldier legal advise when he's in a Tijuana jail. 

Something I did not mention before, the exams in IBOLC are solely memorization of terms and acronyms, not short answer or multiple choice. So if you want to do well pay attention and STUDY STUDY STUDY.

Week 8- TLP's

I have really been slacking on these post and to get them all done before Leaders Forge I will skip minor details.
Forget everything you were taught about OPORD's in ROTC, forget all the impractical missions a movements that your instructors taught you. As you know the Army is an adaptive unit and we need to constantly be changing anything that we are getting good at. So we were informed of the new format through a series on power points, that were leaps and bounds above our head. The questions were flying and there were a few very long days in the classroom cramming information to prepare for our first PLT level OPORD.

The PLT level OPORD is very time consuming and the course is set up to force you to produce an order with in a short period of time. Some people spent sleepless nights on it and racked up 16 hours working on it. I am telling you the horror stories to shock you a little bit because it is difficult, but  if you prepare yourself it will not be as taxing on your sleep. The PLT OPORD has graphics and layovers as well as enemy and friendly analysis, so the length of it is considerable, it took me 1:15 to brief my OPORD. Like any other presentation confidence kills, so I practiced briefing my OPORD to my wife, who I am sure loved hearing about the enemies Fields of Fire.

The first OPORD is confusing and difficult to complete but now that I have done and received my AAR comments I know what to do to improve it next time. If any of you would like to see the OPORD format used in IBOLC let me know and I can send it to you.