FORT CARSON, Colorado -- Various agencies representing the Department of Defense visited 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division Soldiers who have recently returned from Afghanistan to gather information to help the shape future of deployments for the Army.
This week-long study, called Umbrella Week held in Fort Carson will collect Soldiers' experiences and send them to the Center for Army Lessons Learned to try to consider implementing lessons learned for changes to future doctrine.
"The nine organizations that are attending can conduct research with the intent of taking the lessons we have learned [through our last deployment] and apply them to create better equipment, update doctrine, conduct better training and spread that across the United States military," said Maj. Kevin McCormick, Umbrella Week action officer, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 4IBCT.
"The agencies consist of [groups such as] the Joint IED Defeat Organization looking for ways to mitigate the explosive hazard threat, to various Army Research Institute scientists coming down to look at ways to better train leaders, increasing their leadership competencies and attributes," McCormick said. "A couple of organizations are looking at time management, and collecting information from attacks on vehicles and dismounted Soldiers to help protect them in the future."
One study focused on unit cohesion trying to understand what factors cause Soldiers to bond.
"We're working with leaders at the company level and Soldiers underneath," said Armando Estrada, senior research scientist with the Army Research Institute. "Were taking assessments of cohesion from both of those groups to see how our metrics that we developed from our previous conversations with Soldiers and leaders are working, seeing how the two perspectives correlate with one another to see if the metrics are aligning."
The goal is to finalize these metrics and develop doctrine and training to help leaders develop a more cohesive unit, Soldiers who take pride in their unit and its mission. The scientists also understand that a units training and mission time are important.
"Soldiers are surveyed quite a bit so in the end we would like to link cohesiveness to other metrics out there such as data reported in the Army Training Management System may be used to infer how cohesive a unit is," said Estrada.
Soldiers, such as Sgt. Andrew Baldwin, section chief in 2nd Battalion, 77th Field Artillery Regiment, 4IBCT who have deployed multiple times with the brigade were surveyed on their experiences.
"During my first two deployments we were involved a lot in doing our jobs, this time it was more establishing fire base operations for hand over, closing down forward operating bases for our counterparts (Afghan National Security Forces) to use," said Baldwin. "If the feedback is positive, then it's going to help the Army identify what's being done right and hopefully this could allow Soldiers to enjoy their deployments, give everybody a sense of pride in their unit and build a brotherhood that lasts forever."
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