Quality Assurance Team accredits Fort Pickett’s Air Defense School

Spc. Steve Baack
Monitor Staff

Sgt. 1st Class Richard Conrad, HHB, 2nd Bn., 265th ADA, West Palm Beach, Fla., provides force protection for Phase II FTX Soldiers.

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FORT PICKETT, Va. – “Training is our primary mission. It is our baseplate. We establish the standards and requirements for training and developments for the Army.” This statement represents one the of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s critical areas of intent.

With frequent deployments of not only active duty, but also Reserve-Component Soldiers and units, it should then come as no surprise that TRADOC requires consistency in those standards through accreditation of training curriculum to ensure combat readiness and effectiveness.

Air Defense Artillery Quality Assu-rance Team Maj. Christopher McElveen and Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Moore, deputy director and noncommissioned officer in charge, respectively, from the Quality Assurance Directorate at Fort Bliss, Texas, have the duty of accrediting ADA’s Phase II of the Advanced Noncommissioned Officer Course for the Reserve Component. Accreditation is required for RC ANCOC programs every three years; Fort Pickett’s being the last Regional Training Institute to be accredited for the fiscal year.

Sept. 23 and 24, McElveen and Moore made visits here to evaluate ANCOC Phase II for 3rd Battalion (ADA), 183rd Regiment (Virginia Regional Training Institute). Specifically, they evaluated the course for those qualified in the Military Occupational Specialties of 441-14M1O and 14CMF4O.

McElveen and Moore assessed two main areas: conduct of training and training support. Within these areas are such concerns as instructor-to-student ratios, instructor qualifications, current course materials, safety during training and operations, training sequences, corrected shortcomings from previous accreditation evaluations, effective management of manpower to facilitate mission requirements, required equipment, adequate facilities, etc. They also closely scrutinized to what extent the training adheres to the ADA Program of Instruction (POI).

“The whole thing about accreditation is really to make sure we are training to one Army standard,” said Maj. Robert Bonner, battalion commander. “It’s a value to us, whereas testing and things of that nature tend to be diagnostic – this is really remedial. We don’t dread having to go through accreditation as you would an [Inspector General] inspection or any of those issues. We work so closely with Maj. McElveen and our proponent schoolhouse that to see him here is more of a confidence booster for us; it keeps us on the same sheet of music and up-to-date.”

“Accreditation basically means that the regular Army has come down and looked at the way we train, the way we monitor training, making sure we have the administrative staff and support in order to conduct effective training,” said Sgt. 1st Class David Valentine, instructor and course manager. “It’s a big milestone to be able to say from the reserve component side that the big Army has looked at us and said that, ‘Yes, you are all qualified to instruct.’”

Concerns among the battalion staff regarding the assessment did not focus on whether their Phase II curriculum would be granted full accreditation, but rather which issues and deficiencies, if any, would arise during the evaluation.

“They met the criteria for full accreditation with small deficiencies,” said Moore. “The two deficiencies were both administrative deficiencies. They were in-processing type checks that were overlooked.”

“They were average deficiencies that are more commonly overlooked in the National Guard regions,” Moore added. Any deficiencies, he said, require instructors to correct them and report to the Quality Assurance Office within 90 days. Moore was, however, impressed with two details: instructor files and the instructors themselves.

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Sgt. 1st Class Richard Conrad redirects Stinger fire for Sgt. 1st Class Richie Shrieves, C Btry., 3rd Bn., 11th ADA, upon acquisition of a new target.

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“The instructor files were outstanding,” he said. “The instructor files are the files that show us that the instructors teaching the course are qualified. All the paperwork was in order. They had all the requirements.
“The Title XI’s (active duty instructors) are doing an outstanding job,” Moore added. “Their whole job there is to act between the RTI and the proponent. Those guys are doing an outstanding job on resources, and they’re ensuring that everyone’s doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”

Another thing the team focused on was how well the training gave students a chance to encounter up-to-date and realistic training exercises.

“Some of the things they executed extremely well,” said McElveen. “What they’re doing is integrating recent lessons-learned into their training to produce a more quality Soldier when that Soldier returns to his unit in terms of having all the characteristics dealing with all the COE (Contemporary Operational Envi-ronment) that he may be exposed to.”

McElveen also said that the challenge remains for the proponent to fully implement those kinds of variables into their POI to allow students “to experience a variety of scenarios and situations that they could experience upon being mobilized with a reserve unit and then deploying into a particular theater.” To both of them, however, resources remain one of the main limiting factors for this particular course, and the reserve component as a whole.

“They did have IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices] unannounced that you can encounter and they tried to get some civilians on the battlefield,” McElveen said. “They had some challenges in doing that just because of limited resources.”

He also stressed that instructors have implemented some of the Army’s warrior battle drills and warrior tasks, based on resources they were able to coordinate to support the Field Training Exercise.

Throughout the visit, QAO and the instructors talked about any issues as a group. Details that some might have considered minor the group discussed at length. Concerns such as POI consistency or in-processing requirements sparked debates lasting sometimes hours, but did not so much as threaten full accreditation as they did appear as notes to instructors.

“It’s a great dialogue,” said McElveen. “It’s great professional development. Because if you read one thing, this person may say, ‘You have to go back and look at it this way, because it states this.’ It’s all about professional development. On all these visits, there is always a debate – occasionally on a particular standard, and that is great. We grow as leaders and identify those issues that need to be clarified in their appropriate references. You can’t sit down and read a 500-page document every day.”

“I learn something each visit,” said Moore, who has now accredited 20 courses throughout his two years at his position as QAO NCOIC. “You have more patience, you’ve got to be more understanding, and at the same time hold the institution to the Army standard and TRADOC standard.”

“The biggest challenge is ensuring there is no distinction between the quality of training that our RC and AC Soldiers are receiving,” said McElveen. “It’s the same, because we all get tasked with the same types of missions.

“It is very critical that we train our RC Soldiers to the same equivalency that we’re training our AC Soldiers,” McElveen added. “There cannot be a disconnect between the two. That is the goal. Especially when you look at today’s Army. We are one Army, an Army at war. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Reserve unit or an AC unit. You get called up to do a mission; you’ve got to be ready to go. Part of that starts with the education of our Soldiers.”