IA receives course on military decision making

1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division
Story by Pfc. Jessica Luhrs-Stabile

Date: 05.13.2010
Posted: 05.13.2010 02:17
News ID: 49570
IA Receives Course on Military Decision Making

With the chaos of war, an incident can happen at any time, it is the mission of the commander's personal staff, to think of every detail, come up with a plan, and then to advise the commander of the best way to handle any situation using the Military Decision Making Process.

MDMP has a history of being very successful for the U.S. Army, in both war and in training, so the commander's personal staff of 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery 'Gunners', 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division out of Fort Bliss, Texas, decided they would pass these techniques onto their Iraqi partners of 49th Brigade, 12th Division Iraqi Army on Forward Operating Base Warrior, May 9.

During the day-long course, the 'Gunners' and their partners went over the U.S. standards for an operational task, then had the IA officers figure out how to work together in a rapid and organized fashion, according to Lt. Col. Charles Mills, commander of 2/3rd FA.

An Iraqi officer in the course, Dilshad said, the role of the IA officer is rapidly changing, they are becoming more involved in the decision making process.

Currently the IA uses a British-based method that does not focus on rapid decision making, this is what the emphasis is on today, since the staff has a limited amount of time to come-up with a plan, said Capt. Jonathan Palumbo, a Niceville, Fla., native and the operations and planning officer-in- charge, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2/3rd FA.

"This training will greatly benefit us [49th] because we will be able to become more advanced, we will adapt these techniques into our current method," said Col. Bazhdar, commander of 49th Bde.

Because of the positive outcome from this training, 2/3rd FA and 49th Bde. are planning to hold a training event using leadership and soldiers of the 49th Bde. IA.

"We are going to give the staff a situation and have them figure out a plan and put it into action all the way down to the soldiers," said Capt. Palumbo.