Page 91 - QDG 2023

1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards 89
Allied Rapid Reaction Corps
ARRC has for some time, fairly or unfairly, had a reputation as a sleepy posting, with staff officers drifting from sports afternoon to international families day with only the occasional ski trip as an interruption. It may not surprise you to learn that this is yet another aspect of service life that has been shaken up by the war in Ukraine. As one of NATO’s ten corps headquarters, HQ ARRC has been rotating through readiness in a way that will be familiar to all QDG and will therefore stand up as the NATO Response Force Land Compo- nent Command for the first half of 2024, before assuming a Strategic Reserve role as the model changes thereafter. This has seen a busy year of preparation, from study weeks at the start through run-up exercises and battle planning periods to evaluation and validation on Ex STEAD- FAST JUPITER in October, an enormous CPX held across Europe but with HQ ARRC deployed to Bucharest. Happily, we beat back the Donovian hordes from the gates of Europe and were declared ‘ready.’ Who knows what the coming year will bring? It is quite possible that by the time you are reading this we may have deployed somewhere.
My own role here is as a generalist planner in the G5 branch. We have the luxury of concentrating solely on oper- ational planning as there are G7 and central staff branches who take care of planning HQ activity. In my own team,
led by a Dutch Lt Col and accompa- nied by a Turkish Maj, we run planning training courses for staff officers from across the Alliance as well as contrib- uting to actual planning on exercise. This also involves a lot of conceptual development as we continually refine our practices in light of new technology, for example. The multinational aspect means there is a hugely broad range of experience to draw on. The war hasn’t completely doused all our fun though and I managed to squeeze in qualifying as SF2 on that ski trip after all, as well as taking a team to the Isle of Wight for the Combat Arms Regatta. I would defi- nitely recommend a posting in ARRC to all QDG soldiers and officers for the opportunity to learn about warfare at the corps level, valuable experience for a formation reconnaissance professional.
DCMH
Dave Hoey
Dave Hoey Skiing
intake) were spread out among the 1000 US officers. These are only the top 50% of their year group, with the other half attending remotely. CGSOC focuses on Divisional level planning with a healthy dose of history and leadership thrown in. A real highlight of this first year is thinking about Division in a Corps context without the cognitive reservation of hollow struc- tures. When you are told you are the G5 for 4th Infantry Division being deployed to Europe as part of 5th Corps, you can refer to the manning and equipment tables of all these organisations and be confident that they exist on more than paper.
It is during CGSC that those hoping to attend the School of Advanced Military Studies go through a rigorous selection process. SAMS is a blue ribband course for the US Army that attracts attendance not just from the international commu- nity but all of the other US services. After several exams, interviews, and essays, I
was lucky enough to be awarded one of these coveted slots. SAMS is an ACSC equivalent course focusing on translating strategic direction into tactical output through operational design. The array of high-profile speakers from business, government, academia, and the very highest echelons of the US military infers the cachet of this experience. The wider institutions invest in the students here because the statistics tell them that 20% of this student body will achieve 1* rank or higher. Herein lies the true privilege of attending SAMS: working with highly motivated, extremely intelligent, and driven colleagues.
Staff college in the United States should be an aspiration for any QDG officer, and should any be interested, I encourage them to get in touch. The earlier you express an interest the stronger the case for attendance can be made through MS.
JPC
A military genius and Churchill