Basic combat skills… not so basic

Plan, plan, plan

I'm just about halfway through with the Blackhawk course.  This is the last week of basic combat skills.  There is nothing basic about it.  Although I've been to many "basic" courses in the Army, they seem to be getting harder and harder.  Basic training, basic officer leadership course, basic warfighting skills and now basic combat skills.  The list keeps getting longer and longer.  There are more emergency procedures and aircraft limitations,.. there is more teamwork required to get the job done, there is more planning required for every mission,… there's just a lot going on and it's hard to stay ahead of the aircraft sometimes.  When you really start getting into it and when you look past the pedagogy of all the instructors you get to work with, you realize you're part of a pretty amazing organization of professionals.  It doesn't always look like that from the outside looking in, but from the inside looking out it's impressive.  Last week we had our student led mission.  It was somewhat of a simulated exercise, but it was still fun to get a taste of what a company level mission would be like.  We had three serials with four to five chalks of aircraft.  It looked so cool to pull pitch and see four other aircraft lift off at the same time, stay that close and move from one LZ to the next.  It wasn't the prettiest formation flight ever, but not bad for our first attempt.  Two more weeks and I'll be back home in Texas again for the holidays.  I can't wait to get back home.  I was there just a week ago, but I'm ready to go back.  I can't wait until I get to go home for good.  Texas is a great state (I'm biased).