ENFOR in the Advance to Contact

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Aug 23

A few points regarding the employment of an enemy force (ENFOR) on an advance to contact exercise.

If a completely dry exercise employs no ENFOR and the troops just go through the motions, then the weaker the ENFOR and the less ammunition they have, the drier the exercise becomes.  A well-supplied and well-equipped ENFOR can always be told to tone down the violence and sophistication of resistance; but lacking means, they cannot ramp it up.  The tougher the ENFOR, the more the friendly troops – and their commanders – will learn on the exercise; and learning, they gain more satisfaction from what they accomplished.

ENFOR will probably kick butt the first few engagements; but towards the end, the friendly forces, through those bad experiences, will become more cohesive and aware of what they must do, and then they will start to win.  Win legitimately.  There is more satisfaction in knowing you beat a tough opponent in the end than there is in just beating up on an enemy that was too weak to resist in the first place.

ENFOR should be appropriate to the situation.  In an advance to contact, the enemy in a real war would put out a covering force of recce troops, snipers, and sited machine gun nexts.  Recce troops, if found, will try to run away rather than fight to the death.  They won’t engage.  Snipers are an appropriate enemy, and should be dealt with by a section.  Sited machine guns are a platoon objective.  That means that the enemy force should be equipped with machine guns!  In a real war, the defense has a much higher proportion of machine guns in the front line than is normal in a standard ORBAT.  It would be great if ENFOR had a C-6, and even better if it had a couple of C-9s as well.  Now there is some real capability that can be tuned by EXCON.

Smoke grenades can be used to help the friendly forces identify quickly where the fire is coming from.

ENFOR is always outnumbered and always in the front line.  The individual enemy trooper should be expected to fire between three and five times the average amount of ammunition fired on a weekend by a friendly trooper, who, two thirds of the time, is in reserve.  The math is simple.  The less ammunition allotted, the drier the exercise.

If the friendly forces are tasked with clearing a trace of enemy, the trace shouldn’t be wider than a normal company frontage in an advance to contact.  That means no wider than 500 to 1000 m, depending on the terrain.  Given that realistic width and the other requirements of EXCON, ENFOR should be allowed to defend anywhere within that trace.  This means the following: the ENFOR commander on the ground should have the friendly trace in his possession, and within that trace be allowed defend that which is realistically defensible, not just so many bumps per kilometer.  If lots of separate contacts are desired, the terrain that encourages it should be selected, if possible.  These are the beginnings of a force on force exercise.

There is training value also in exercising the tactical sense the of the ENFOR commander, a young lieutenant (perhaps advised by a patient and mature Warrant Officer) who next year will have valuable experience to apply to the defense phase of war.

The last point is communications. Good communications between the ENFOR commander and EXCON is important. ENFOR can adapt quickly if it knows what’s going on, and its logistics needs can be attended to. Enhancing ENFOR effectiveness enhances the training value, to the friendly forces.

An effective advance to contact exercise needs an ENFOR.  That means it needs to be well armed, well equipped, and well supplied.  It needs machine guns, lots of ammunition, good communications, and organic transport.  ENFOR need not be large, but a weak, blind, deaf, and dumb enemy does not offer realistic training to friendly troops.

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