Tasks, Conditions and Standards--How to Do Everything!

Tasks, Conditions and Standards is how we learn to do everything in the Army.  If you are assigned to be the machine gunner in a rifle squad, the first thing you will do is get to know your machine gun:  the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW).

Before you fire the SAW in combat, you will go through many different Tasks, Conditions and Standards blocks of instruction to learn the weapon, maintain the weapon, fire the weapon and fix the weapon.

Are you an Army cook and you need to fry eggs?  There are Tasks, Conditions and Standards for that. A scientist friend pointed that in the computer world this is algorithm thinking.  Break down every task into steps, clearly define the steps, evaluate.

A complex operation pulls together dozens and dozens of different Tasks, Conditions and Standards and turns that into one smooth operation.  The posts I did recently on Tank Gunnery represented hundreds of individual bits of training from how to zero each of the three weapons on the tank, how to drive with the hatches open and closed, how to determine range, how to maintain the tracks on the vehicle, etc.

When we pass the tests at the end of Tasks, Conditions and Standards, the Army says, "We got Skillz!"