A Certain Detachment of the Information Support Force Leverages Backbone Personnel to Improve Training Organization Effectiveness
Not long ago, an intensive professional skills training course for non-commissioned officers at a certain detachment of the Information Support Force came to a close. Watching the several soldiers he had personally instructed all meet the standard, instructor Squad Leader Li could not conceal his satisfaction: "In the past, for a soldier to master a professional skill proficiently, the squad leader often had to guide him hands-on for a considerable period of time; now, these professional skills have a unified teaching standard, training objectives are clearer, and everyone can master them by following the procedures and practicing more."
The detachment's leadership told reporters that the NCOs in many of the detachment's specialized positions have their own "signature skills" (看家本领): a field communications technical expert can identify the cause of a fault just from the sound produced by a rotating antenna; an optical cable repair specialist can strip fiber bare-handed and perform rapid fusion splicing. The hard-won skills they possess are a precious asset to the unit.
To that end, the detachment specifically increased training duration and frequency for professional skills training, and arranged for experienced specialist backbone personnel to share their technical expertise, passing on their experience and techniques to younger soldiers hands-on. During that period, scenes of personnel putting in extra hours to painstakingly drill professional skills were visible everywhere on the training ground.
However, an assessment conducted some time later threw cold water on their efforts—in the assessment, the veteran backbone personnel performed with practiced ease, while the new soldiers struggled to get started; for the same subject, many soldiers followed different operating procedures, and errors occurred repeatedly.
Why had the extra hours of hard training failed to produce the expected results? The detachment's training supervision team conducted an in-depth investigation and found that although the training syllabus set out clear assessment standards and training objectives for each specialty, it imposed no unified requirements on specific instructional methods. Backbone personnel conducted instruction by "fighting their own battles" (各自为战), relying primarily on personal experience, and phenomena such as "inconsistent instructional pacing" and "varying operating methods" occurred frequently.
To change this situation, the detachment went through each position across different specialties—including networks, communications, surveying and mapping, and meteorology—one by one, systematically sorting out 12 categories of professional skills. They collected and compiled the experience and techniques of backbone personnel across specialties, distilling and summarizing them into highly practical teaching standards. Instructors within the same specialty conduct instruction according to the same standard, ensuring consistent procedures and uniform criteria. They also compiled training manuals in accordance with the teaching standards and distributed them to the grassroots level, so that everyone could understand them at a glance and learn them immediately.
For fault identification in field communications, the three-step determination method of "status assessment—point location—elimination and verification" can be applied; for the "rapid fiber connection" (光纤快接) operating method, a complete set of standard procedures and detailed tool-use guidelines has been compiled and formalized… With unified teaching standards in place, backbone personnel organizing training across specialties work more scientifically and efficiently, freeing up more time to provide targeted explanations of technical difficulties.
When the reporter entered a simulated equipment room, instructors were flexibly setting up a variety of combat-realistic scenarios, with personnel practicing assessment and coordination under complex conditions while relevant data was displayed in real time on electronic screens. Instructors then used the data readouts to make timely corrections. After one round of simulated training, a soldier told the reporter: "Thanks to the unified teaching standards, our practical skill levels and training results have improved markedly."
During a recent phased assessment, Sergeant Li Yang and Corporal Wu Hao competed head-to-head in the same group on fault elimination, finishing neck and neck. After the assessment, Li Yang could not help but reflect upon seeing the results: "A few months ago, Wu Hao was still making frequent operational errors—I never expected he would progress this fast." Wu Hao told the reporter that thanks to the standardized instruction the unit had implemented, he had successfully corrected his "old bad habits" and his training results had steadily improved.
"In practice, we have cumulatively refined more than 100 lesson plans, corrected more than 50 non-standard operating procedures, and established unified teaching standards," the detachment's leadership explained. At present, they are improving the existing teaching standards in light of new problems and new situations arising in training, and are continuously driving upgrades in the capability and quality of the NCO specialist backbone force.