Accuracy builds Speed.
Which most people will never really accomplish because they use stupid big targets and only try to go fast
Mmmmm...no, not really.
FORM builds speed, not accuracy. Accuracy is an important part of form, but that's all it is...a part.
You can be accurate all day long, but if your form is not correct, or suitable, then when the need arises to perform at speed, you will not have the desired end results.
I have a good buddy who was a nuclear reactor operator in the Navy for more than 20 years. He always said he didn't have any problem receiving his training from people who'd never had to deal with a reactor meltdown or a damaged reactor core with release of radioactive isotopes...
As someone who spent a 20 year Navy career in exactly this job, he is absolutely correct.
But the training must be as realistic as possible to get the most out of it. In the nuclear propulsion program, that training is complex, in depth, multi-faceted, and based on a bedrock of sound fundamental knowledge of both how and why things work the way they do.
Knowing what to do to operate the propulsion plant isn't even the half of it. You have to know all the "why's" behind everything as well.
Knowing the "why" behind everything not only helps people to remember the correct actions to take, it is also critical to enabling the operators to take the correct actions under stress and when the unexpected or unusual happens.
Drills are the part of the training program that puts all the theoretical training and operating experience together and they are conducted to be as realistic as possible and to build from the basic building blocks to what we called "graduate level" drills.
A basic, fundamental drill, for example, could be a reactor scram with a following fast recovery start up. Could be the loss of a turbine generator under conditions which will not produce a reactor protective action or otherwise seriously affect propulsion. Loss of cooling water to something. These are the types of drills which are used to develop the "form" required of operators to correctly identify these types of casualties and to take the correct, effective casualty procedures and recovery actions.
From there, the drills become more complex, moving towards "graduate level" casualties. Finally, they have worked up to something like a fire in a switchboard which results in loss of half the electric plant, a reactor protective action caused by a loss of coolant flow, smoke filled spaces requiring people to don breathing protection while still combatting the casualty, loss of feed water to the steam generators, electrical grounds caused by the fire fighting efforts, shifting propulsion to the EPM, getting the ship up to periscope depth and clearing baffles during all this, preparing to snorkel and emergency ventilate the spaces, etc.
Oh, and have I mentioned this is all taking place in an area where discovery of the ship's presence could mean the loss of the ship?
Everything is going to H*ll in a handbasket...and yet the Reactor Operator KNOWS what he has to do for his part if the reactor scrams. He KNOWS what he has to keep track of for the eventual fast recovery startup that will follow. The Electrical Operator KNOWS what he has to do as soon as he hears the report "FIRE IN STARBOARD NON-VITAL BUSES". He KNOWS what he has to do to restore maximum electrical power and he KNOWS what he has to do for snorkeling.
And if, in the middle of all this, something unexpected happens (
gee, Chief, you mean all this was EXPECTED?) in addition to all this, the operator's understanding of how and why things are done will enable him to figure out what needs to be done and how to go about doing it. Like the failure of a reactor coolant pump to shift properly, for example. This is, in fact, the ultimate goal of "graduate level" drills...to effectively coordinate and take the correct effective actions to combat casualties under a variety of circumstances, all while still fighting the ship.
All this to explain why you don't REQUIRE people with actual combat experience to conduct combat training. Combat training isn't just based on "book learning" any more than operating a naval nuclear propulsion plant. Book learning is only a part of it, and that in itself doesn't mean what's in the book is some form of idealized theory. Mankind is a historically warring species and we've been at it throughout our entire history. That "book knowledge" of combat and warfare was developed, and continues to evolve over time, by ACTUAL combat and warfare.
That knowledge, whether from books, training exercises, combat drills, and instructors (both with and without combat experience) has to be ACTED UPON in training exercises and drills. Exercises and drills specifically designed to develop the skills required to successfully execute combat missions. Train like you fight, fight like you train.
Even if you HAVE combat experienced instructors, all those coming up through the pipeline under them most certainly do NOT have combat experience. And even if they did, no combat will be exactly like any other combat. Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke once said "No plan survives contact with the enemy".
In fact, it's for exactly this reason that we don't conduct our war games "to win". We handicap the bejeebers out of them so that they're always operating at some kind of disadvantage during training so we can actually LEARN how to fight that way.
