An Cosantóir

14 AN C O S AN T Ó I R N o ve mb e r- D e c e mb e r 2 0 1 0 I n late 2009, advertisements for the 4th RDF Infantry Young Officers (YOs) Course began appearing in Reserve units across the country. Those of us who successfully applied for the course assembled in the Officer Training Wing (OTW), DFTC, in February 2010 to be briefed on the course, which was to start in July. After briefings on fitness, administration and field assessments, we left the Curragh aware that we would be in for a challenging few months as it was made clear that physi- cal and mental fitness would be crucial. The RDF Infantry YOs course, first conducted in 2005, has been a major driving force in improving standards throughout the Reserve. Students who passed the initial courses were key to the RDF integration pilot programme and have helped disseminate knowledge of current tactical techniques and practices throughout the ranks of the RDF. Designed to mirror its PDF counterpart as closely as possible, given the time limits inherent in RDF courses, the course has become increas- ingly important in RDF officer development in recent years. Run by the OTW in conjunction with the Reserve Defence Force Training Authority (RDFTA), the course is undoubtedly the most demanding open to reservists today. The course is a mixture of distance-learning, three training weekends and a two-week tactical bloc, and students are assessed through two written general tests, a practical navigation test and field assessment. The training weekends covered subjects like intelligence; human resources; command and staff relationships; battalion-level combat service support (CSS) tasks; TAMs and reports; and revision of the orders and combat estimate processes. Given that much of the RDF's tactical experience is at platoon-level and below, learning how higher echelons operate was of invaluable use on the two-weeks tactical bloc. While the training weekends were highly informative, the real challenge came the tactical bloc, which contained three exercises of 72-, 24- and 48-hours respectively. On arrival on the Saturday we went straight into our battle preparation drills. We would be linking up with the PDF YOs course the next day to participate in the defensive phase of their tactical assessment. Since the PDF YOs had been working together for weeks at this point (and in fact were just finishing their offensive operations phase when we formed up) it would be a challenge to get ourselves up to speed and ready to operate alongside our PDF counterparts so quickly! Immediately on arrival in the rest-and-refit area in Kilcoran, Co Tipperary, we got to work. As exercise platoon commander I went straight into a brief with the company commander and received a 'frago' (fragmentary order) for a company-in-attack at night. Within the hour I was off on the company commander's recce while our platoon got to work building the model for company orders. (Perhaps surprisingly, chalk dust and moss were highly important tools throughout the course, as we rehearsed preparation and delivery of orders again and again). In Kilcoran, we could see just how important a good model was to the delivery of orders, as it made the task of describing how a full company would move by TCV (Truck) and by foot to capture an objective in darkness. From my perspective, participating in the company commander's orders was a great experience as I got to see how the various company-level appointments, from company sergeant to company 2/ic to company commander worked together to co-ordinate operations and accomplish the mission. For the attack itself, we reinforced the main assault group and the weapons platoon, while platoon HQ was involved in shadowing company HQ, which was another great learning experience. As soon as the last company objective had been taken the company transitioned into defensive operations and began digging in for a perimeter-in-defence. The RDF platoon was given its own sector to defend and here we got to apply the knowledge we had gained about higher echelons and CSS as we had to deal with the issuing of defensive stores, Raising the Standard Raising the Standard RDF Young Officers Course by Lt David Fitzgerald 00-An Cos-NOV-10 (p11-17) 08/12/2010 12:32 Page 14 An Cosantóir January / February 2025 www.military.ie/magazine FROM THE ARCHIVES AN COSANTÓIR VOLUME 70 ISSUE 09, NOV/DEC 2010

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