After nearly a year in the making, a new air cavalry course at the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence is graduating students with the skills required of maneuver leaders.
The Air Cavalry Leaders Course, which is designed for AH-64D/E pilots, OH-58D pilots and Unmanned Aircraft Systems operators and technicians who are members of attack reconnaissance squadrons, graduated more than a dozen Soldiers after an intense two-week session here Nov. 20.
Maj. Gen. Michael D. Lundy, USAACE and Fort Rucker commanding general, presented certificates to the graduates. He spoke about the importance of what Soldiers do at the company level and thanked the group for their hard work and dedication.
"This is a milestone, but don't let this be the end of it," Lundy said to the graduates. "It's an opportunity to go out there and develop those future leaders that will fill your shoes."
With the Army's focus shifting toward a hybrid threat, and a potential broader range of contingencies, the Aviation Center is focused on deliberate planning and cultivating a scout mentality.
The ACLC develops cavalry leaders through an in-depth study of the fundamentals of reconnaissance and security, by building on what students learned in the Aviation Captain's Career Course and Warrant Office Advanced Course, according to Maj. Brian Hummel, course director.
"The course teaches students how to apply the cavalry planning principles during the parallel planning process. These principles help bridge critical gaps in the execution and understanding of the military decision making process observed at the [Combat Training Centers]," Hummel said.
The course includes two days of academics designed to increase proficiency in cavalry operations by focusing on doctrine, correlating intelligence requirements, Brigade Combat Team cavalry organization composition and capabilities, and synchronizing assets in an information collection plan.
The Soldiers work together with cavalry squadrons in support of the BCTs. They are given a mission and broken out into squadron positions, where they go through the Military Decision Making Process to achieve specific desired outcomes. They use manned-unmanned teaming capability to carry out multiple reconnaissance and security missions by using simulation technology in Virtual Battlespace 3 and the Aviation Combined Arms Tactical Trainer.
The course, which is academically aligned with Fort Benning's Cavalry Leaders Course, includes a module on cavalry history and heritage.
The ACLC aims to step up the level of integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems into Aviation.
"The way I'm teaching an aviator how to be a cavalryman, I'm teaching the same thing to a 15W. Now we're going to see a more direct relationship. The UAS team is an organic asset, owned by the Aviation unit. They will take on that cavalry mission where they're the forward eyes of the ground commander in support of a more robust ground scheme maneuver," Hummel said.
The overall goal is for Soldiers to be able to return to their units with a cavalry mentality, an advanced understanding of the fundamentals of reconnaissance and security, and a better grasp on their own ability to conduct detailed mission planning using troop leading procedures and the Military Decision Making Process.
"When the commander puts me on a screen, he expects me to aggressively develop the situation and provide him with early warning and maneuver space. He expects me to conduct reconnaissance to fill intelligence gaps and report accurately and rapidly to facilitate the development of his overall maneuver plan," Hummel said.
Hummel said Soldiers who enroll needn't expect an easy course. In fact, not everyone passed the early iterations of the pilot course back in the summer.
"This is hard stuff. We have to teach ourselves how to do [reconnaissance and security] in a decisive action training environment against a near peer hybrid threat, and it's the right way to do it," Hummel said.
Graduating Soldiers described the course as "challenging" and "value added."
"As a Cav guy by trade, the course definitely gets at what we call 'cavalryness'--overcoming challenges as a team, working together to accomplish the mission. There's always a lot of uncertainty and it's your job to figure things out under constant pressure in a stressful situation, but Cav leaders adapt and overcome. I think our team really came together in the last two weeks. We all worked well together, benefited from each other's experiences and insights and were ultimately successful," said Capt. Spencer Gray, an OH-58 aviator with 1st Battalion, 145th Aviation Regiment.
As Soldiers face a changing world and more complicated threats, it's important to learn how to act and respond in those types of environments to better support the troops on the ground, according to Gray.
Maj. Gema Robles, a Black Hawk pilot who serves as the deputy G3, Air for 1st Armored Div. at Fort Bliss, Texas, was among a handful of students in the course who are not attack or scout pilots. She is preparing to potentially serve in an S3 shop for a task force deployment.
"To go into the depth of planning for a reconnaissance/security type mission for me is beneficial, because I never would have done that otherwise. It's extremely beneficial for me to set conditions for the task force to have an operations officer that's confident and able to do wide spectrum security operations," Robles said.
"It's absolutely needed in the aviation community as we amplify the perspective of our attack community to … also being responsible for this [mission]. This is how we can learn from our scout and cavalrymen who have been doing this for a while, so we can take it on forward," Robles said.
It's about a mentality, not the airplane, according to Gray.
"As the Army is changing and we're getting new systems, getting new aircraft, it doesn't really matter what airframe you operate, what aircraft you fly, it's all about who flies it," Gray said. "This course really teaches you how to get out front and fight for that information."
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