Training any soldier on the LAV III or other vehicles and weappons is a reletively easy process. Given enough time, instructor and equipment, anything is possible. I love the way that we throw around the 'SOP' phrase whenever discussing drills. Sure, in some areas a good SOP is a good thing, but in many areas there are no SOPs. I like to call it the f**k factor, and we have all experianced it. We can hash out ideas for convoy escort and fighting patterns till we are bue in the face, but it makes little difference. Convoys must have inf support. Why? Because the CSS elements driving the trucks and other B vehs do not possess the skills to fight back against a determined attack. That may be a brash comment, but it is fact. I have seen it, so have many others. Every ambush is different, both in size and setup. Initiation signals vary, and as experiance in theaters like A-stan has shown, it is never just one ambush. There is always another set within a km down the road. Drills change as the situation changes. If a B veh is immobilised, if a LAV III gets taken out. The priority is to get the supplies through to the other end, not killing the enemy.
If ambushed at night, what then. CSS trades are not trained to fight a battle at night, and there is mass confusion. My experiance has been that if with CSS you keep moving if possible. That being said, every soldier is a soldier first, tradesmen, driver, medic second. And the fact that many CSS trades are not trained as rifleman first is our own fault.
Secondly, training soldiers on kit is easy. We are training res on LAV right now. But LAV is an extremyl perishable skill, and there must b continuation training back in the units.
Remember, soldier first, everything else second.