Jordanian general visits, learns about CAC, CALL

By Melissa Bower, Fort Leavenworth LampSeptember 24, 2010

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (Sept. 23, 2010) - The Center for Army Lessons Learned has become a resource for the U.S. Army, but recently began serving as a resource for the Jordanian Armed Forces as well.

After a visit last month by U.S. CALL teams to Jordan's lessons learned, Lt. Gen. Mashal Mohammad Salem Al Zaben, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Jordan Armed Forces, visited Fort Leavenworth Sept. 20 as part of a tour to learn more about how the U.S. Army trains leaders and uses simulations in training.

Learning about CALL was also one of his top priorities.

Col. Thomas Murphy, CALL director, briefed Al Zaben about the organization and how it functions.

"The big thing is, we're here to help the future Soldier, the Soldier of today's battlefield learning today, but also to help guide our Army into changes and doctrine," he said.

CALL, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary, takes in information by sending out teams to deployed units and from personnel working at schools and training centers. There are now 12 uniformed CALL personnel in Afghanistan, including one at the Afghanistan's lessons learned center.

CALL shares information with units and commanders directly, maintaining a website that both archives and handles specific requests for information and by publishing handbooks. The organization doesn't publish Army doctrine, but the information it collects can influence doctrine and the publication of field manuals, Murphy said.

"We're a repository," he said. "We hold not only the lessons learned we've gathered, but organizations send us their standard operating procedures, articles. We're almost like a giant library, not just for the lessons learned, but SOPs, how things are done."

Murphy said CALL recently sent a collection-gathering team to Haiti to find out how U.S. military and partners were working together.

"Primarily, the collection effort was not on the rescue, but on how the Army and joint services mobilized and then moved ourselves, and how we support ourselves in theater," Murphy said.

Another CALL team recently reported about engineering and infrastructure in Afghanistan. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, then-commander of the International Security Assistance Force, had identified that engineering assets were not always being applied to the best of the military's ability in theater, Murphy said.

"And that was due to a lack of recognition of how the infrastructure, the roads and other aspects that would need engineering in Afghanistan were different from Iraq," Murphy said. "We had started out by just applying the same model."

Murphy said by evaluating engineering, they may have identified a new method for culvert denial in Afghanistan, essentially taking away opportunities for terrorists to set improvised explosive devices.

Murphy said CALL teams in Afghanistan could also work with Jordanian peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan.

"We know we need your permission as well as the commands forward, but we are prepared to assist them in theater," he said.

Murphy said CALL's cooperation with Jordan's lessons learned came at the request of that country's leadership.

Al Zaben told Murphy his country is working on improving its own lessons learned organization and looked forward to learning more from CALL staff.

"I want everything to be done as soon as possible," he said. "We are suffering in Afghanistan. There are many times that we don't know what's going on in our peacekeeping missions."

Al Zaben also mentioned making plans to allocate the necessary funds to his country's lessons learned organization to make it an effective one.

Murphy said the challenge for CALL is implementing policies and procedures back into the military.

"We can gather lots of lessons learned; our challenge is integrating that back into the training base, into the schools, so that the Soldiers actually learn them and apply them in the future," he said. "If we don't do that, then I can't change the way Soldiers act."