What is MCTOG? The Marine Corps Tactics and Operations Group is the center of excellence for the Ground Combat Element of the Marine Corps. Buzzwords aside, we run several courses aimed at training battalion staff officers to be better tacticians, more integrated planners, and truer disciples of maneuver warfare. We spend WAY too much time doing/observing wargames and talking about them, but we do learn a couple of interesting things in process. This podcast is designed to share those lessons as broadly as possible.
Planning can take many forms- week-long slogs through every conceivable detail to five minute decisions made by commanders. MCTOG has refined a model for how a battalion staff can run through a modified MCPP rapidly, giving them the agility to respond to changing circumstances or new directives from higher. AARs of free play exercises commonly reference the speed with which units can process new information and turn it into something operational. Only by doing so faster than the enemy can you gain an advantage. The Rapid Planning Model can help you do just that.
Captain Snell is the Models and Simulations Officer for MCTOG and a graduate of Naval Postgraduate School studying the same. Major Harris is the current XO of MCTOG, and has written a graduate level thesis on the subject of AI implementation in the military. By their powers combined, they will get us to a point where we can understand real-world AI and it's implications and uses without referencing Skynet.
Andragogy, or Adult Learning, is the science of how a fully formed brain learns as opposed to how a child's brain learns. Weirdly enough, it's SUPER different. First I explain some of the basics models that make up the field of andragogy, then my guest and I discuss implications for TECOM and the Marine Corps, how to specifically apply them to training at the battalion level or below, and generally muck about making fun of bad learning experiences that we've had or seen.
Major Nate Jones led the development of Advanced Maneuver Warfare Course, MCTOG's resident PME that focuses on developing the abilities of Operations and Intelligence Officers and Chiefs to implement maneuver warfare philosophy in tactical (battalion-level) planning. He and a small team developed the course over the course of just a few months, with direct intent to root its lessons in the MCDP series of documents, while also connecting it to real-world historical examples. The Tactics and Operations Podcast sat down with him to get his thoughts on Maneuver Warfare and what it really is.
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