Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
U.S. News & World Report
March 24, 2008
Pg. 27
Marines' training center ramps up the stress to avoid mistakes
By Anna Mulrine
CAMP PENDLETON, CALIF. -- In an unassuming building situated in the middle of an old tomato patch, the staff of the Marine Corps Immersion Training Center grapples with an ambitious task: teaching marines how to make the sort of split-second decisions that will keep them alive--and keep them from killing innocent civilians.
Here, to this end, there are bazaars with tables full of brass lamps and games of backgammon, courtesy of a Hollywood set designer. There are courtyards, too, and clotheslines strung with laundry. There are also wagons filled with propane tanks, blood-stained alleyways, and motion-detection scent machines that pump the smell of dung through trash-laden streets.
The training center is at the heart of a new effort not only to give troops a heightened sense of the sights, sounds, and smells of Iraq but also to teach them some hard-and-fast ethics lessons. As a Camp Pendleton-based marine faces court-martial this month in connection with the 2005 Haditha killing of 24 civilians, including women and children, the Marine Corps is increasingly aware of the need to prevent lapses in moral judgment by stressed-out troops that can result in the death of bystanders--and turn Iraqi families against American forces.
In one faux house, trainers project an image of a fighting insurgent--and the women and children caught beside him--before soldiers about to enter a room. To add to the confusion, these Iraqis happen to be standing in front of a wall that leads to a bedroom. Even if the troops shoot straight, hitting the insurgent but not those near him, they could still send a bullet through the wall, injuring, say, a child in the next room. If they know what they are doing, they will "take a knee" and angle their shot upward to hit the insurgent and perhaps the roof.
When to shoot. The troops who train here also wrestle with the decision to shoot a woman, as a role-playing female suicide bomber walks up to them and detonates an explosive vest, sending tofu dyed with food coloring flying.
The combined effect of these scenarios is one of the most realistic training experiences the military now has, say the center's designers--one that homes in on the ambiguities of this war. "What they are doing is creating chaos," says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who toured the facility last month. "I was really taken aback by the stress level" that the training simulation was able to induce, he adds. "This is breakthrough stuff on the ground."
Sgt. William Jones, who helped design the program, says that he has seen what the stress brought on by the simulations can do to the judgment of the marines. He cites a "Haditha-like incident" that he witnessed firsthand in one recent training exercise. After losing two comrades during a simulated mission with deafening explosions, one unit entered a village and found itself once again under fire. "After taking two or three more casualties, they were wired up," or on edge, says Jones.
What happened next is the center's reason for being: On approaching a house, one marine "did the whole sticking the gun around the door corner and shooting" blindly inside, without first looking to see who was on the receiving end of his fire. Immediately, the center's team shut down the simulation. The trainers emerged to tell the marines what a big mistake the unit had made. "We just crushed that whole thing," says Jones. The incident also allowed them to discuss "how are you going to deal with a populace, with people, after receiving casualties?"
That sort of immediate feedback is vital, trainers here say, and it is aided by a series of video cameras and recorders. In a control center, trainers and a cognitive psychologist watch as marines make their way through the streets of the mock village. "They have this feedback," says Mullen. "You don't get to say, 'No, I really didn't do this.' You get to critique bad decisions."
That sort of scrutiny also allows the Marine Corps to take a close look at small-unit leadership. As a result of the training center experience, a number of units have shuffled around team leaders who prove to be less capable during the training, says Jones.
Col. Robert Coates, the assistant chief of staff of the training and experimentation group of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force here, notes that the center uses a numbered laser tracking system for each rifle, so trainers know exactly who fires which shots. That, combined with the cameras, means that troops don't get to remember an incident "like they would like to" but rather, he says, as it actually happened.
March 24, 2008
Pg. 27
Marines' training center ramps up the stress to avoid mistakes
By Anna Mulrine
CAMP PENDLETON, CALIF. -- In an unassuming building situated in the middle of an old tomato patch, the staff of the Marine Corps Immersion Training Center grapples with an ambitious task: teaching marines how to make the sort of split-second decisions that will keep them alive--and keep them from killing innocent civilians.
Here, to this end, there are bazaars with tables full of brass lamps and games of backgammon, courtesy of a Hollywood set designer. There are courtyards, too, and clotheslines strung with laundry. There are also wagons filled with propane tanks, blood-stained alleyways, and motion-detection scent machines that pump the smell of dung through trash-laden streets.
The training center is at the heart of a new effort not only to give troops a heightened sense of the sights, sounds, and smells of Iraq but also to teach them some hard-and-fast ethics lessons. As a Camp Pendleton-based marine faces court-martial this month in connection with the 2005 Haditha killing of 24 civilians, including women and children, the Marine Corps is increasingly aware of the need to prevent lapses in moral judgment by stressed-out troops that can result in the death of bystanders--and turn Iraqi families against American forces.
In one faux house, trainers project an image of a fighting insurgent--and the women and children caught beside him--before soldiers about to enter a room. To add to the confusion, these Iraqis happen to be standing in front of a wall that leads to a bedroom. Even if the troops shoot straight, hitting the insurgent but not those near him, they could still send a bullet through the wall, injuring, say, a child in the next room. If they know what they are doing, they will "take a knee" and angle their shot upward to hit the insurgent and perhaps the roof.
When to shoot. The troops who train here also wrestle with the decision to shoot a woman, as a role-playing female suicide bomber walks up to them and detonates an explosive vest, sending tofu dyed with food coloring flying.
The combined effect of these scenarios is one of the most realistic training experiences the military now has, say the center's designers--one that homes in on the ambiguities of this war. "What they are doing is creating chaos," says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who toured the facility last month. "I was really taken aback by the stress level" that the training simulation was able to induce, he adds. "This is breakthrough stuff on the ground."
Sgt. William Jones, who helped design the program, says that he has seen what the stress brought on by the simulations can do to the judgment of the marines. He cites a "Haditha-like incident" that he witnessed firsthand in one recent training exercise. After losing two comrades during a simulated mission with deafening explosions, one unit entered a village and found itself once again under fire. "After taking two or three more casualties, they were wired up," or on edge, says Jones.
What happened next is the center's reason for being: On approaching a house, one marine "did the whole sticking the gun around the door corner and shooting" blindly inside, without first looking to see who was on the receiving end of his fire. Immediately, the center's team shut down the simulation. The trainers emerged to tell the marines what a big mistake the unit had made. "We just crushed that whole thing," says Jones. The incident also allowed them to discuss "how are you going to deal with a populace, with people, after receiving casualties?"
That sort of immediate feedback is vital, trainers here say, and it is aided by a series of video cameras and recorders. In a control center, trainers and a cognitive psychologist watch as marines make their way through the streets of the mock village. "They have this feedback," says Mullen. "You don't get to say, 'No, I really didn't do this.' You get to critique bad decisions."
That sort of scrutiny also allows the Marine Corps to take a close look at small-unit leadership. As a result of the training center experience, a number of units have shuffled around team leaders who prove to be less capable during the training, says Jones.
Col. Robert Coates, the assistant chief of staff of the training and experimentation group of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force here, notes that the center uses a numbered laser tracking system for each rifle, so trainers know exactly who fires which shots. That, combined with the cameras, means that troops don't get to remember an incident "like they would like to" but rather, he says, as it actually happened.