MVT: Positioning, class scheduling and looking to 2020.

It is a source of immense pride to me the level of excellence we have achieved both with the course curriculum at MVT, and also with the development of the VTC. We offer the best tactical training available. No one does it better. But, as with any commodity demand drives supply.

I am always assessing what is happening with classes and what is selling and what is not. In 2020 we will make some re-positioning decisions based on this.

Much as we want to train you how we want you to be trained, it is up to students if they book classes or not. It is up to demand. The flip side to that is that this level of tactical training takes time, and we do have classes that are longer than a weekend, simply because it takes that long for safety and training reasons. A source of frustration to me is that I often schedule a class based off the resounding success of one I have just run, but then see, even with 3 months notice, that it will not fill. Despite the great success and benefit the FoF Squad tactics course offers, the course I added, scheduled in two weeks time, is cancelled due to low enrollment. Certainly, from my perspective, the lack of flexibility and responsiveness to booking classes among potential students, even at several months notice, is an obstacle.

I get a lot of people who say “next year I will do that class.” However, if classes are not filling this year they will not run “next year.” The Combat Leader Class is currently half full. It is perhaps our flagship class in terms of the huge benefit it has to students. It has run annually for the last two years and each previous year we have had the required 13 students. At this point, Combat Leader Course will not run in 2020. Cancelled. The only thing that would alter this course of action is:

1) We fill up to 13 students and 6 OPFOR this year.
2) I am approached for a useful dialogue by a suitable number of students who want the class to run at a certain time in 2020.

I did write prior to publishing the 2019 schedule that I wanted students, perhaps organizing on the forum or privately, to be more proactive on when they wanted to train. No one did. So I had to schedule the training lottery again for 2019.

What I am planning on doing for 2020 is going ‘part time’ again at the VTC, like I was at the beginning. I plan to focus more on other projects such as book writing. This will also have the benefit of leaving spaces in the calendar for private classes and also for SOF bookings.

I will likely plan on running one class a month, separate from any classes Scott also schedules. Given this years attendance, it may look like this for 2020:

CLC – cancelled for 2020.
HEAT 2: run once
FoF Squad Tactics: run once
CQBC: run once

Night Operations: spring and fall.

HEAT 1 Combat Tactics and the Reconnaissance class: run alternately on other free months.

Here is an entirely random sample calendar:

February: Texas 2020
March: Night Operations
April: HEAT 1 Combat Tactics
May: HEAT Reconnaissance
June: FoF Squad Tactics
July: HEAT 1 Combat Tactics
August: HEAT Reconnaissance
September: CQBC
October: HEAT 2 Combat Patrol
November: Night Operations

As I have mentioned elsewhere, we MAY run one OP class over a weekend. I may also look at bringing back the Land Nav class and also TC3 perhaps once each.

This will allow me more time for writing, and also give me more time for precious weekends with my own family.