Doctrine

The first month or so of OBC was focused on basic soldiering skills. Now we are starting to get more into the engineer side of things. The first module we learned was on doctrine (possibly the least interesting of all the stuff I am learning here). We learned about mission analysis and the military decision making process. The army likes to dumb things down a lot and make them idiot proof so there are steps for everything. Seven steps for the military decision making process, and a lot more for mission analysis (which is part of the MDMP).

I've also started learning more about engineer tools and capabilities. There are a lot of interesting vehicles that are being developed to help out with route clearance. Route clearance is what engineers are doing a lot on deployments. Here are a couple:

The Buffalo is an up-armored vehicle that can withstand most IED attacks. It's one of the better vehicles for route clearance.
The wolverine is used for bridging. The platform on top folds out into a bridge...pretty neat.


The rest of the doctrine phase was really boring...so I'm not going to say anymore about it!