Conduct Thorough Exercise and Training After-Action Reviews — Never Go to the Battlefield Still Carrying Problems

In recent years, the frequency and intensity of military exercises and training organized at all levels across the entire military have grown ever higher and greater, and greater emphasis is also being placed on after-action reviews (复盘总结) once the smoke has cleared. Through after-action reviews, one can gain deep knowledge of the adversary and achieve a thorough understanding of both the enemy and oneself; one can clarify the many factors that determine victory and optimize the selection of courses of action; at the same time, one can learn where the "traps" lie and avoid repeating mistakes, and learn where the "shortcomings" are so as to better leverage strengths and compensate for weaknesses. However, looking at the actual situation, some individual units conclude their after-action reviews after listing several major items of successful experience and identifying a large pile of contradictions and problems, while putting insufficient effort into how and when those problems will be rectified. The result is that "yesterday's problems" remain unchanged today, and "last year's problems" still exist this year, ultimately leaving behind hidden dangers.

History offers no shortage of lessons in this regard. On the eve of the outbreak of World War II, a French general named Prételat led his forces in an important exercise. The exercise examined the question of whether future German forces would attack France through the Ardennes region, thereby rendering the Maginot Line — in which people had placed great hopes — ineffective. As a result, the tens of thousands of troops in the armored and infantry divisions under Prételat's command successfully broke through French defenses in that region, proving through concrete action that this hypothetical scenario was a genuine possibility. Regrettably, some senior French commanders afterward dismissed this as mere coincidence, paid it no heed, and needless to say took no precautionary measures. Yet the German invasion of May 1940 that led to France's surrender was precisely a replay of Prételat's exercise scenario. This painful lesson — of not treating a problem as a problem before the guns fire, let alone solving it — is truly sobering.

War, in a certain sense, is a philosophy of "exploiting gaps" (钻空子). Once the adversary discovers that you have cracks, loopholes, and weaknesses to exploit, they will seize the opportunity to deliver a fatal blow. Such loopholes and weaknesses arise partly from shifts in the battlefield situation as they occur, but even more from insufficient attention and inadequate resolution during peacetime exercises and training. Military exercises and training, as the pre-practice of war, will inevitably encounter all manner of difficult-to-anticipate and beyond-imagination problems so long as they are conducted with genuine rigor and live-fire conditions — the key lies in how one views them and what one does about them.

Some say "the existence of problems is nothing to fear," but on a battlefield of life and death, the existence of problems is not nothing to fear — it is extremely terrifying, and it will often cause officers and soldiers to pay with their blood and even their lives. It is not terrifying that exercises and training expose problems; what is terrifying is shelving those problems until one goes to the battlefield still carrying them, only to be filled with remorse under the adversary's ruthless and merciless strikes.

The principles of military combat have been handed down since antiquity. Murphy's Law warns us that in war, everything that can happen will sooner or later happen, and the worse the situation, the more likely it is to occur, no matter how inconceivable it may sound. There is truth in the place of life and death; war has the final say. For an army with a strong sense of hardship and vigilance (忧患意识), exercises and training serve both to prove "I am capable" and to reflect on "where I fall short." The more problems discovered during peacetime exercises and training, and the more profound those problems, the more effective the exercises, training, and after-action reviews have been; and the earlier and more thoroughly problems are resolved after exercises and training, the more advantageous it will be for fighting future wars.

In his time, the master of Chinese classical learning (国学大师) Wang Guowei put forward his famous "three realms of human life." Exercises and training differ from human life, yet they also share commonalities. On closer examination, although the problems encountered in exercises and training each have their own particular character, their rectification should also be differentiated into "three levels" (三个层级): The first level is to address problems by fixing the problems themselves. In urgent cases, treat the symptoms; when there is more time, treat the root cause. In advancing combat readiness and training, time waits for no one and problems wait for no one — if one does not start by grasping and correcting specific individual problems, the situation will inevitably become too entrenched to reverse. The second level is to address problems by reforming thinking. At their source, all problems in the world are problems of thinking. If one's thinking and concepts do not conform to the currents of modern warfare, one will make erroneous responses to the early signs of problems and will be led around by the nose by those problems. The third level is to address problems by reforming mechanisms. Systems and mechanisms are fundamental, stable, and long-term in nature. The reason longstanding and difficult problems in exercises and training drag on unresolved is partly due to the objective difficulty involved, but is even more closely related to insufficient supervision and incentivization and inadequate assignment of responsibility and accountability. Practice has proven that by starting from these "three levels," persisting in organically combining "initiative" with "compulsion" and "immediate correction" with "long-term establishment," and applying force simultaneously and in a comprehensive manner, one will certainly be able to do a thorough and solid job of the major undertaking of problem rectification following exercise and training after-action reviews.