https://youtu.be/CnaVNAj7YLQ

This is one of many lectures given at West Point (and other places) by a wide range of experienced military leaders and analysts.

This is a great talk on the warrior ethos which includes the story of the 507th Maintenance Unit which became lost in Iraq, then ambushed and was, in the speaker's words, "wiped out".

I enjoyed the talk and have watched other talks given in this series.

As an aside, I attempted to find a copy of the After Action Report for the 507th and the links to the report were not active. The discussion about failures (batteries, GPS, lubricants, leadership) leading to this debacle are hard to contemplate. https://web.archive.org/web/20...nThe507MaintCmpy.pdf

For those of us with a background in the martial arts, this talk will be particularly interesting.

great discussion to have and unfortunately it's easy to 'take your eye off the ball'

but no matter how you slice it - it always comes down to 2 things

Leadership and Training

if a combat unit has weakness in those areas the performance will suffer

the other thing which is important to consider is that - the military in general - loses probably 25% of it's ranks EVERY year (I'm sure the actual stats are out there) ... sure there are men and women who make it careers - but many thousands upon thousands are in for 2-4 years and gone. so all that training and experience just walk out the door. obviously in high speed units the tenure would be higher...

but I enjoy this subject immensely. I have been involved in several different areas of training development throughout my life : sports / Army / medicine and it's fascinating to compare the similarities / differences when designing systems to achieve high level performance

I know we all like movie quotes : one of my favorites is from 'Man On Fire' when discussing this topic -- paraphrased : 'There is no tough - there is only trained and untrained...' which I have found to be very true. If your training is properly designed, measured, feedback oriented, tough, realistic, demanding, etc - you will see the task through especially when surrounded with others operating on the same level

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