Troop Leading Procedures A Non Standard Approach

good afternoon captain justin de leon here and today we're going to be talking about the troop leading procedures also known as the tlps we're going to be doing this at the platoon level but it's also applicable at the company level the references that we'll be using for today are first atp 3 guys 21.8 infantry platoon squad and also the ranger handbook 2017 tc3-21.76 okay so today i want to talk about the tlps i'm going to do it a little bit differently though i'm not just going to talk about these specifically or the way i'm going to teach it is how would i captain de leon if i was in a platoon leader's position in the field with realistic situation how would i plan it out and i'm going to plan it a little bit differently than the tlps kind of show and demonstrate but i want you to see how i would do it and i think it'll make sense there's a couple of these that i do out of order or i do them simultaneously which i think is purposely would think is acceptable but i'll show you how i do it so first of all let's go over the tlp real fast first we receive the mission we issue our warno we make a tentative plan initiate movement we recon the objective we complete the plan we issue our order and then eventually we supervise and refine you know as that leader on the ground okay so i'm going to talk through though how i would do it if i was the pl on the ground so the first step is not going to be any different the first step is obviously receive the mission again this is the tlps so one i'm going to receive the mission and this sounds like a very very simple step but there's actually a lot to it and this can how you receive it how you pertain the information that's provided to you is going to have a large effect on your operation all right so what i do when i go to receive the information is me the pl i bring my rto with me all right so the people that i have going with this is the pl slash the rto all right and what i do is especially um if i want to get make sure i'm getting a good understanding of the mission i remove myself from the platoon meaning i leave a platoon sergeant in charge i leave him in charge of the platoon all right i remove myself from that i probably don't go outside of my security but i go to a spot within the patrol base or wherever we're planning that no one can really find me so i basically kind of try and hide make sure that no one's coming to me for information for guidance for anything like that right now while i'm receiving my mission all of that should run through the platoon sergeant so i can stay completely focused on what i need to and that's receiving this mission and receiving it properly okay a lot of times when we're receiving a mission we're about to go execute something we're on a very very tight timeline you know whether you're in range of school you're in cadet command advance camp you're in some type of school where you're running operations you're going to have a very short amount of time tight time constraints right so we have to try and find ways to to hastily work through this operations order process it's likely that we're not going to write everything down but we need to be able to brief it properly so that our platoon can eventually have understanding and accomplish our intent on the battlefield okay so one of the first things i do is i always have my off-border shell i have a shell created and i have it ready and in fact i have an operator shell created and ready for every different type of mission because i want to put as much detail before the operation into these upward shells so let's say we're doing an ambush i'll flip to my ambush shell and i'll be praying and i'll be prepared to copy so while this is being brief to me what i the pl i'm doing is i am writing down information in my shell okay i am writing as much information in there specifically so it's almost ready to brief on turnkey so obviously if i'm a platoon leader i'm receiving a company level operations order okay so there's certain things that he's going to say to me that i can write in right away probably the ao the probably the ao isn't changing okay when the company briefs the company commander briefs his mission statement to me where am i going to write that i'm going to write that word for word in higher unit mission that part of the situation paragraph okay when he's briefing me the task of supporting units and he's saying hey first platoon you're doing this second platoon you're doing this let's say i'm third platoon when he says third platoon you're doing this he's basically going to provide me my mission statement for me so i'm ready to write that immediately into the mission statement in my operator shell everything i can i'm filling into my shell already so i don't have to do that later every single second saved is a second that you can use towards something later on in the operation and be more effective okay your rto on the other hand he is right he or she is writing everything down they are just scribbling on a blank piece of paper as much information as possible they're getting down every grid every single nuance everything that the commander says okay i want them to just gather information i'm not as worried that they're comprehending everything just want all the info all right and that's of course so i can go back if i miss something he's got it on his notepad somewhere okay the moment i'm done receiving this mission i confirm specifics with my rto meaning specifically grids right i want to ensure that i i um you know i wrote down this stuff correctly so i'm going to go over the grids or anything you know very special that's about this order or specific or unique to this order that i need to remember i'm going to make sure talk to my rto confirm that we have consensus that it was read properly and so i'm good to go if we don't and we find a discrepancy hey that's an opportunity for my for me to call my commander and ask for some clarification on what the numbers are whatever it is okay so again receiving the mission is a deliberate task it's a deliberate duty duty do it correctly don't uh don't just have half half-ass it and use a piece of paper and just write stuff down have your shell out fill it out as much as possible to expedite the planning process okay number two i'm going to check these off as we go so we're going to receive the mission number two a lot of times what people do what i want to get across here is well a lot of times what people do is they say hey the next step is issue or no and they just jump in and try and kind of issue uh a warner real quick well you if there needs to be some thought before you issue your war now yes you want to issue warno very very quickly after you've received your mission to get your platoon moving and doing stuff and preparing for the operation however you need to put a little bit of thought into it first okay so the first thing that i do is i actually do a quick map recon so once i've received my mission i do a quick map recon so that's actually kind of you know taking care of this step of the tlps right here okay if i have the ability to do further reconnaissance later on i will but right now at the very least i need to do my map recon and what i'm looking for what i'm going to do is i'm going to plot i'm going to plot my sp point or my current location all right i'm also going to plot my objective location all right i'm going to look at routes and i'm going to look at major terrain this does not take very long think about this to plot two points to look at some tentative routes and to look at the major terrain features i don't need more than five minutes okay i'm not wasting a ton of time here but i am taking a little bit of time to gain understanding and getting some situational awareness of where i'm going and what the objective's going to look like all right specifically yeah i want to plot this i want to plot these and really all i'm doing is let's say here's my sp point here's my objective you know let's say here's my map i'm looking hey there's a you know the mountain here okay there's an lda that runs this way and i either can either go south of this mountain or i can kind of go north of this mountain either way i'm going to cross the lda and now i have some planning guidance now i can visualize a little bit and i realize hey both these movements are about 800 meters long so i can visualize the battlefield better am i saying and this is all i'm going to be moving through dense terrain i'm going to cross an lda for sure on the way to this objective all right hey i looked at some routes and some major terrain features on the way we need to go north or south also i can visualize on the battlefield now where my sp location is and my objective location is and i have a general idea of how far i have to move so i can kind of work into planning my timeline now those are things that you need to do in a quick map recon before you rush into that war now it's going to help you it's going to help you set your priorities straight okay the next step that i do is i still don't quite issue my war now because a very very important part of your worn out correct correction needs to be your timeline so i'm going to generate my timeline for the operation this includes my execution timeline during the operation but it also includes my planning timeline before i sp all right the biggest thing that i need to make sure i do here is that backwards plan typically when you're doing operation they are going to give you a hit time an end time and you have to plan backwards from that time to make sure you meet uh meet that mission okay so for instance let's say we're doing an ambush and the uh the time that they say is hey you need to be your ambush needs to be set and established no later than 1600. well now i know where i need to move back from a lot of times and typically you're not going to get an sp time hey you must sp at this time it's not about that you're the pl you can manage your time hey be there and have the ambush set at 1600. so what we'll do now is we'll start to create our timeline so we know that the ambush must be set at sixteen hundred well now i can work back from this time and and see what i need to do so that means hey i need to leave my orp at 1540 to set it in now whether you think that's enough time or not is irrelevant let's not worry about that but this is what i need to do i need a plan all the way back so that means my leader's recon is complete by 15 you know 25. and let's say i want to take uh let's say right now right now for instance the time is 1200. i've got four hours for this operation all right let's say then i want my leader's recon to be at least you know 50 minutes so leaders recon begins at you know 14 35. all right i've moved back from here so i'm going to move all the way back to sp now i realize hey i need a sp no later than 13 30. okay so that means i need to brief my upboard maybe at 12.50 so upboard brief at 12.50 you know and go from there maybe rehearsals are in here at 12 you know or you know 13 15. the point is is now i know i realize hey i'm briefing at 12 50. so i know i have 50 minutes to plan this all right that sounds crazy but if you utilize your platoon you utilize the team to plan together it's actually very doable all right so again we make our timeline we backwards plan it to make sure we're going to meet it appropriately and and make sure we're going to give ourselves enough time to conduct some of these key moments within uh looking in within the mission the biggest one is that leaders recon you've got to unlock enough time for earlier recon that oftentimes is like the difference between success and failure in these operations okay once we have gathered our timeline now is when i'm ready to issue my war now [Music] okay this is when i'm issuing my warno and i've kind of started with this map recon in this timeline i've basically start made a tentative plan so i'm check marking that as well i'm really making my tentative plan here okay and then i'm going to issue that warno of what that looks like okay so there's some key things that need to be in your war now first of all okay first of all i'm going to say in the ranger handbook it gives you a good warno format it also gives you a good format in 321.8 uh infantry platoon squad there are defined ones all right however sometimes you're not able you don't have the time to push all that information out sometimes you you only have you know a little bit of time here's what i would say minimum needs to be in your war now all right minimum you got to have a piece of the situation and specifically within the situation paragraph things that you need to hit on is you need to hit on your ao any major terrain that's going to affect you slash weather and you need to talk about the enemy you need to talk about those four things that are going to affect your operation at this point in the war no you need you don't need to go super into depth but you need to give them a piece of it so all you need to say is hey for terrain features hey rao rao we're going to be in the x-ray golf one two three four grit square major terrain features just just be cognizant of the fact that through this operation we're going to be walking through dense vegetation basically a forest at all times there's one hilltop in the center of rayo and that serves as key terrain and just of note no matter which route we take whether we do choose to go south or north of that hilltop we are going to have to cross one lda boom i covered some terrain and now they have a picture of what you know what the environment looks like weather yeah it's sunny today see no issues good visibility for us good visibility for the enemy nothing major there boom enemy a we're expecting uh once we get to the road to setting our objective set in our ambush we're expecting a six to nine man team with ak-47s and rpgs mostly connecting resupply operations i'll give further detail in the op order boom they have an understanding now what they're preparing for mentally okay quick situation paragraph all right of what that looks like okay all right next we want to talk about is the mission statement all right so i want to go from here and i want to go directly into the mission and this is easy it was already described to me when i uh was briefed the company up order so i'm going to brief the mission five w's who what where when why already done i'm then going to brief a brief concept of the operation and really what i'm going to do here is i'm going to brief my my phases of the operation a real fast it's a summary right that's just a summary content of the operation phase one is ongoing it's planning it's going to nysp um once we sp we're gonna be moving either north or south of this mountain to an orp either around here around here right from there we're gonna be setting in on this road the tentative grids where i'm looking to set in is this grid in this grid once we're done then we'll move back to the patrol base and we potentially will have fallen operations okay i'm thinking the patrol base is going to be in this location in this general area okay give them a brief concept nothing crazy nothing in depth just so they have an idea all right that's it okay and then you need to brief the timeline this is one of the most important parts we need to brief the timeline so everyone is understanding okay when and where they need to be all right and specifically on that uh they need to know like when the op order is when rehearsals need to be done when sp is so they have understanding all right and last i'm going to put in here as well is any task that you want to be given so you want to give out tasks that you want to want to provide so when i say tasks things that you want people to be working on i want assault one i want you to be rehearsing epw search all right hey assault 2 i want you to be working on aiden litter security squad i want you to supply me with one team that has begun working on my terrain model giving out all those tasks and we're going to talk about some of those here in a second but those are key that you want to put out in that in that area of the operator okay again if you have a warno that includes these it's going to give out that information that your platoon needs to start necessary movement okay so once the war note finishes now we're initiating movement and that's starting and now we get on to completing the plan and start working that process okay so the next step that i do is i start getting people moving all right again i gave these tasks out in the war no but this is what it looks like now i'm going to number them but really a lot of these are happening simultaneously i'll kind of point out here in a second so first of all is i'm going to have i'm going to assign a terrain model team and they begin building i'm going to give some guidance out to our terrain model team and they're going to start creating that terrain model and start getting ready for my brief for my opera brief which is in what 50 minutes it sounds like okay again you as the pl this is your time to delegate duties and responsibilities you can't do it all you've got to have your platoon help you and they've got to work for you okay that's a very important part here so terrain wild team typically you'll see that you'll have guys that are more artistic guys or girls that are more autistic and can do this better so sometimes your trained model team will kind of just naturally happen but if it hasn't i typically captain de leon i typically assign this to my security squad so i pull on my security squad leader and say hey provide me four man and one team leader to go and make my terrain model execute okay and they start doing that all right now they're doing it i'm going to spot check every once in a while to make sure they're meeting my intent but i'm not the one doing it because i don't have time i'm working on other stuff okay next my alpha team leader for my security squad or my lead squad which it's by the ranger handbook doctrine it is supposed to be your security squad but i've also seen your assault one uh people believe with their assault one anyways that alpha team leader your point man for the whole platoon he's going and playing the routes all right so he's playing your route so again like what i what i'll do is i'll take the map out and like i kind of showed you the route think my route thought here i'll do that to him i'll say hey there's this hilltop we can move south of it we can move north of it what i want you to do is basically build the routes moving south build the routes moving north call you know whatever one you assess is the best call it the primary the other one call it the alternate and i'll confirm i'll validate that that makes sense okay but the point is is don't plan your own routes yeah you can have some influence on which one you want your primary alternate but let the eight let that alpha team leader plan it he's the one that's actually going to be leading your platoon the worst thing you can do as the pl is plan the whole route yourself plan all the legs plan the asmus and the pace counts and then hand it to your your point man 10 minutes before sp and now he's got to try and figure it out and lead the platoon there okay obviously you need to be cognizant of it you need to know it as well because you know the navigation of the platoon is ultimately your responsibility as the pl but delegate that to your alpha team leader which means your alpha team leader may be squared away can't just be some random dude all right make sure he's just you know one of the top team leaders in the platoon okay additionally what's going on here is your platoon sergeant and your medic are planning sustainment they're planning paragraph four [Music] your platoon sergeant is going to be the guy focused on logistics obviously and your medic is focused on the medical side so psg logistics [Music] medic obviously medical [Music] okay now the platoon sergeant has lots of duties going on this obviously isn't going to take him a full hour to do the plantoon sergeant is the enforcer right he is the one ensuring that throughout the operation uh priorities of work are going on during the planning phase priorities of work are going on people working on weapons maintenance they're finishing ciao they're ensuring that they're camoing up they're ensuring they're getting ready for this operation hey the weapons squad are they doing their rehearsals are they doing their crude rehearsals good soul one hey have you guys done your epw stuff yet the pl assigned you to do epw rehearsals or get on it okay he's the enforcer rolling around and making that happen all right obviously you know you could talk to e7s and eights they're probably gonna give you more wisdom than me on platoon sergeant duties but really they're enforcing all that uh throughout the platoon and making sure squadrons are doing their jobs okay additionally though he is playing the logistics and he wants to know the logistical picture for your operation specifically he's going to give out requirements but he's also going to give out what the current status looks like okay so when he's in sustainment when we're looking at those classes of supply he's looking at um you know okay how much ammo do we have per 240 weapon system hey this 240 right now has 300 rounds this 240 has 800 rounds okay roger hey weapon squad there cross level so we got an equal number of rounds with each gun so we can be more effective okay two four nines hey average two four nines round count right now is 400 rounds roger m4 hey average riad is too mad what you really don't want to say is you don't want to say the average you want to say hey what is the least what is the lowest member of the person with the least amount of ammo what do they have hey the lowest person has two mags hey sir everyone in this platoon has at least two macs you want to give it that low number so you know when you need that next resupply okay again obviously he's also talking about logistic or sorry maintenance he's talking about uh resupply and throughout the operation okay again i covered more of that in my actual sustainment up order video that i made uh earlier okay and then the medic he has planned all that whole medical piece so he's planning where the hlz's are the ccps the axps he's playing that picture and what it looks like the key thing that these guys need to do is they need to make sure that the sustainment picture is on the terrain model all right so again these guys up here they're they're building the train model but they're kind of building the shell of the train wall they're they're building what it looks like it looks like they're building in the terrain all right and then they're going in and building routes sp point objective some of the basic stuff everyone else needs to put in the specifics okay eight all right rto is planning command and signal [Music] all right that's obviously his baby all right because he's got that information he knows the call signs the frequencies the challenge and passwords and he can talk the command stuff to the mission command part because he's managing the communication for mission from the commission commanders all the way down to the lowest level so rto should plan that and just so you ask you know just so you know if you have the time you know this sustainment and command signal it also can be briefed in the warnow and that can save time you know when you're doing uh when you're doing your operation all right okay nine the last thing that's going on is that pl is doing his planning so while everyone he gets everyone working on their piece of the plan now he's doing his planning so you can see though he's delegated a ton out so really the planning that he's doing isn't that isn't that much really he's playing elements of the situation paragraph and he's planting elements of the execution paragraph and that's really it okay so he's just going more in the depth here talking about terrain [Music] talking about weather talking about enemy you know and friendly and a lot of this was already maybe discussed in your warno but he's going to do a little bit better analysis okay so he does have to work on these in the execution paragraph all right really what he's got left is that commander's intent key tasks his end state okay you know he's got his scheme maneuver or slash concept of the operations right and then he's got really fires his tasks to subordinates and he's got his coordinate instructions you know and there you have like your pir your timeline all that stuff but the point is is again i want to i want to emphasize that preparation preparation into this order is is going to make or break you okay for an ambush overall are your commander's intent key tasks and end state really going to change typically they're going to be very very similar so if you have a specific upward shell solely for ambush these can already be written into it and yeah if you need to you can make a quick small change but the key tasks likely aren't going to change right the scheme of maneuver is never going to change there might be some specifics with the train you're in but you should know how to do an ambush if you are in this point still where you have to write down every single step of the operation on paper to brief it you're wrong okay take it upon yourself as a leader and study the ranger handbook and know the steps and the ski maneuver of an ambush when you're briefing the ambush you should be briefing off that terrain model you should not be reading your notes you should know this mission like the back of your hand because it's your profession and it's your duty to do so all right if you want to perform well if you want to perform well range of school if you want to perform well at us army cadet command advance camp you will memorize the scheme of maneuver the tasks within the operation itself i'm talking from sp to you know the actual ambush itself and movement back to the patrol base you should be able to recite that right that's how you perform at the highest standard and as leaders we all want to excel and perform at the highest standard okay fires i'm going to have to plan that my tasks are born in units again our task of supporting units ever going to really change for an ambush they shouldn't on an ambush my security squad is always going to isolate the objective in order to deny enemy freedom of maneuver on and off the objective every time that's never going to change that's always their task they're always going to supply me a compass man they're always going to supply me a paceman they're always going to supply me a point man they're always going to supply me a train wild team because that's the way i do it okay it will never change it's already done right so i don't even have to really write that it's already written according to the instructions i'm going to have to reset my pir which i got basically from the company level up order i already made my timeline all right and i might talk about reports in uniform a little bit but there's not much there if you think about it really you just kind of have to organize your content operation and kind of like make sure your ski maneuver works with the terrain that you're in and then write up your situation paragraph all right and just make sure that these three are good as well your your intent your tasks and your end state i'm telling you if you only have 45 minutes to train or to plan for an event or for an operation and you get everyone else working for you you don't actually have that much to do four and five are taken care of all right so you really and you know paragraph two was written way long ago it was basically written as you were copying down the order and received a mission so there's not that much to plan out don't get overwhelmed with it all right and prepare have as much prepared before the operation as humanly possible it'll help it'll pay dividends in the end okay again the last thing i want to mention is is all these steps really five through nine they're all happening simultaneously they're all happening together okay that's not like in generic order the last thing i'll do once my planning is complete and once i'm ready to brief i'm going to brief my order i'm going to brief the operations order okay and i'm going to brief it uh to my platoon off the terrain model all right if i'm blessed and fortunate enough to get some security some additional security to my platoon area i'll bring the whole platoon in and brief the platoon as a whole all right i can always ask and see if there's someone else in the area to provide me security if not then i'm obviously going to bring my squad leaders in brief them and they're going to have to disseminate from there there's some techniques on that but you know either way is right just make sure you're briefing off the terrain model itself use the visual the most the best you can to brief that okay once we're done with this we're going to do either a confirmation brief or a back brief oops all right so i'm going to make sure i do this to ensure that i am confident my my subordinates have received this mission and have a shared understanding so specifically what i don't want to do what you see all the time is hey random soldier what's the mission statement that doesn't help me know that my security squad knows their role in the operation okay the point here is now go talk to your assault one squad there and say hey assault one give me your overall task on purpose during movement and give me your overall task and purpose on the objective security squad give me the same all right everyone do that you know and talk through hey if we come into contact at this point what's our contingency make sure that everyone just understands their roles and responsibilities during movement and action on the objective and how those roles and responsibilities collectively meet into your platoon leader's intent to your level of intent okay i'm sure that that happens we are then going to have rehearsals all right which there's a lot of different ways to do rehearsals effectively okay obviously if you're if you don't have security around you your platoon just can't get up and do a complete walk through now we already tasked some illness to do rehearsals you know the weapons squad was probably doing crew drills you know we're doing eight and then or epw rehearsals this rehearsal pertains to the platoon as a whole the movement and the actual actions on the objective of your platoon a great way there's tons of ways to do it you can do you know you can do rehearsals over the radio everyone talks their piece a great way to do it is to do it on the terrain model itself where squad leaders the pl and the platoon sergeant are actually moving icons and talking their part through it so for instance the pl says okay we just moved to the orp and we're establishing the rp security squad talk me through your steps the security squad if we're doing a hasty lrp is like all right at this time we'll consolidate to the center and begin prepping man weapons and equipment on the battlefield i'm going to start moving radios here i'm gonna start applying face paint ensuring that we're blending into our environment okay good salt one what are your actions at the orp well we're gonna move in from the six and occupy on the left hand side of the orp from there we're gonna begin doing blah blah blah okay once we're done with the rp okay at this time leaders recon security squad leader since you're the leader of that or whatever whoever it is talk me through what we're going here rehearse it and let them move icons all the way through the actions on and it'll what it'll do is you know you guys know rehearsals are important but what it does is it gets you guys synced up but also what rehearsals do as well is they bring out holes in the plan there's always holes in every plan no one makes a perfect plan the first time that's okay okay but doing rehearsals someone will be like oh wait i thought i was going there you're going there too no we need to clarify this there's a discrepancy here it happens all the time and it's a great way to make your plan even better by rehearsing and for people identifying stuff okay and lastly the last thing we're going to do is we're going to sp on our mission all right and that's how we move so again the things i didn't talk about here we obviously completed the plan we issued the outborder and then while these rehearsals are going on the confirmation brief is going on you know their platoon is getting ready on the outside that's where the p on the platoon sergeant they're supervising and refining okay again like i said while we're doing rehearsals some holes might come out and that's a chance for the pl to refine the plan you know all this stuff works so again this is kind of the way i do it this is the way i think and this is the way i do it you're meant to put some thought in before that warno don't just rush and print out your 100 right away because that's what the tlp says to do you need to put a little bit of thought into it okay now you got to get the worn out quickly because you want your platoon to have the information but don't go at the expense of that you know not create an understanding again five minutes to do a quick map recon and gain some understanding this timeline again going to preparation i already have the steps of my timeline written in i probably already have written down everything i'm going to put on my timeline and i just literally fill in the times okay i'm not choosing oh do i want to include you know occupying the orp this time or not no i have it written down for ambush what things i include in my timeline i just write down 1600 1445 1325 blah blah all the way down so really this takes like let's say this takes two minutes so once i receive the mission you know i literally do five minutes of analysis on the map two mountains and two minutes of analysis on the timeline compile it for three minutes you know i'm giving my warno out 10 minutes later total for a total for 10 minutes later after receiving the mission that is still quick enough that we're giving out a good warno in a timely way but i have some good information and i can really build a good warnock quickly that's going to get out get out the uh you know the stuff that i need to to make sure that everyone's moving on within your move okay okay again i know this is a little bit unique but i wanted to break it down and show you kind of in these steps what i would be doing if i'm a light pl um on in on the battlefield again this is the kind of this this is the way i employ it when i was a pl in afghanistan when we were working on patrol bases uh planning missions i definitely used basically this method i did the same thing in ranger school and advanced camp when i was you know cadet long time ago this stuff works and it's effective okay the biggest deal is is do not do it all yourself as i talked to here you know delegate delegate use your team to help you plan and everyone will be a writer off for it and you'll have the time to really brief to really build and brief in that an effective plan that you can you know you can really really accomplish on the battlefield all right i hope this was helpful yeah my name is captain justin de leon and rangers lead the way

Channel: University of Iowa Army ROTC

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Length: 36min 22sec (2182 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021