Student Review: HEAT Recon
You need the Recon class at MVT because figuring out how to see what is going on is more important than anything else you might learn. Before you’re thrashing the flat range or executing sick CQB moves, you have to know what is going on. That means reconnaissance.
The class is a little different from most because the first two days are in the classroom, with a few practice exercises mixed in. The next two are force-on-force where the class executes a recon mission against opposition.
The lecture portion is taught by an instructor with extensive experience in reconnaissance, both in the GWOT and at the late stages of the Cold War (google the stay-behind operations during the Cold War – that’s the guy teaching the class), so you are getting a couple days of conversation with someone who did the job at the highest level for a long time. These lecture days are a perfect mix of practical and abstract, ideal for later thinking about how you might really use all this in a different context like, say, a leafy suburb.
The next two days, the class plans and executes recon missions. No part of these missions is wasted for training, even the march to the objective, because the opposition team is used to mess up your plans – but only in a way that increases the overall learning aspect. When the exercise is complete, we went through a debrief, explaining what the team observed, in detail, and whether
we accomplished the goal of the recon exercise. It is possible to fail, or only partly succeed in these missions (“Did you see anyone move mortar tubes?” “Mortar tubes? They had mortar tubes?”).
Great class, very much worth the investment in time and money. As usual for classes at MVT, you leave with a much better understanding of the topic, but also a good grasp on how much more there is to learn. Strongly recommended.
Bryan