Another exercise

This past month, I spent some time last month at another exercise. Like the one I did in December 2020, it was pointless. Unlike that one, this one was also a complete mess, for the following reasons:

1. Poor design. We were tacked on to an already existing exercise that was happenening somewhere else. It was as if somebody, somewhere, said, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we also played along?" And because that somebody was a senior ranking person, thatis what happened.


2. There were ad hoc last minute pesonnel fills that went against the whole "Train as you fight" methodology. The training unit doesn't have enough people to do the stuff it wanted to do, so it tapped my workplace for backfill. Rather than go back to Senior Somebody and say, "we don't have the people to even do the exercise, let alone what it would take in a real world scenario," they slapped together a team so they could "make it happen."


3. Organizers couldn't figure out if we were going to do 24-hour operations or not. This is kind of a big deal for civilians, because we have timesheets to fill out and we get paid overtime. However, as the only civilian involved, nobody cared about that. I suspect that there was a conversation that went like this: A."We need two captains." B."Best I can do is one captain, one civilian." A:"Ok that's fine." B:"By the way, you should kn-" A:"If I have two bodies, that's all I'm worried about."


4. We didn't have good security. The room we occupied wasn't built to handle classified information, but someone in charge told us, "I'll assume risk." Well OK then. Your career's on the line.", I thought.


5. COVID infections. The guy sitting next to me got COVID, and I had to go get my brain stabbed. Not fun.


6. Flight data was not coordinated with the higher headquarters, which was focused on that other location. So as we tried to move people in and out of the exercise country, we kept running into problems with flight information. The ad hoc solution was to use a proxy, but proxy information leads you to GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) problems. There's simply no getting around bad data.


7. Poor simulation data. In exercises, there's a certain amount of stuff that's made up to prevent NIMBY freak-outs from the host nation. This is understandable. However, the made-up places have to be credible. How many busses would it take to move X number of people from Here to There? And how long would it take? I don't know -- does your made-up pace have highway access? Does it have bridges with an appropriate weight allowance? If you want a credible test of the staff, you need a credible scenario.

As it turned out, 24 hour operations did *not* happen, and I wasn't needed, so I went back early. I wasn't off the hook, though.

I got the phone call about the guy who got COVID on Friday afternoon. I got tested immediately, but still had to get quarantive throughout the whole weekend. Not fun at all.