Page 138 - Journal of Special Operations Medicine - Summer 2015

During the operational advocacy phase, a senior critical Abou Yahaha, and Lt Col Seydou Toure) and several
member expressed reservations because he was unclear subject matter experts (SMEs) invested 40-plus hours
as to the official authorization to proceed. The SOFLE to drafting policy and vital documents that would drive
representative immediately engaged with Niger national ownership and facilitate proficiency, reliability, and sus-
military contacts, and within 48 hours of the mention of tainability. Consultations via e-mail when the military
the reservation of support in our daily SITREP, the hesi- training team was not in country were also notable as a
tant senior member reported having proper approvals. metric of commitment and involvement.

RAND Metric 3: Development of RAND Metric 6: Level of success in
hedging (fallback) options recruiting trainees and conducting training
Program Metric 3: Expectation management offers the Program Metric 6: Niger was extremely successful in re-
best hedging option. Making it clear that this will not cruiting trainees for the direct training and allocating space
be equivalent to a US evacuation system but will be suf- and even providing food for trainees. During the working
ficient for US emergent needs was critical. Additionally, group, the operational leaders allocated training slots to
adhering to the commander’s intent and mission guid- relevant units and issued orders for 30 initial personnel
ance was key in discussions with the partner nation. to be tagged for the program ( CASEVAC crew). One pro-
Allowing the host nation to understand the basic re- gram metric was the percentage of individuals who had
quirements and offer their own plans to meet the intent attended previous block(s) of training. On average, 86%
meant that the host could also develop hedging options. of the students returned and continued the program. For
Program Metric 3 includes three hedging premises: (1) those who did not continue, the leadership provided justi-
Develop four teams with the advanced medical skills to fication for why the person was pulled out of the program.
permit them to fly onboard any aircraft as medical at- Another program metric was the number of students who
tendants; (2) develop 10 medical crews that could be were trained by those who were originally trained by the
informally tasked as needed; and (3) develop a national military training team (MTT). The individuals trained by
casualty evacuation system. These options were devel- the MTT went on to train 295 individuals (indirect train-
oped in consultation with the Niger operational work- ees to the program) as of February 2014.
ing group and acknowledge the range of outcomes that
would be acceptable.
RAND Metric 7: Level of partner performance
Program Metric 7: Partner level of performance was
RAND Metric 4: Level of resource adequacy high at the individual and organizational level. Anec-
to execute effort
dotally, the MTT instructors reported a high degree of
Program Metric 4: From an overall program perspective, enthusiasm and effort on the part of the partner nation
the level of resources were sufficient. However, at the tac- students. However, the level of performance in some ar-
tical level, there were concerns based on the stipulation eas was lower than desired in regard to training addi-
that the US military training team was to remain as con- tional personnel (indirect trainees) when the MTT was
sistent as possible. Ensuring that the team composition not in country. The program metric was for the partner
remained steady became a metric from mission to mis- nation to conduct nine training sessions with indirect
sion. Another resource adequacy measure was the avail- students in our absence. The Niger CASEVAC crew
ability of airframes to complete the course of instruction members only held five classes during the designated
on the designed timeline. Committing the aircraft from time frames; this might be attributed to the short time
the limited fleet of two available Cessna aircraft to train- line in between missions. The intent of this metric was to
ing came at an opportunity cost for the host nation. But drive greater proficiency and experience of the primary
they provided the aircraft 95% of the time requested. CASEVAC crewmembers in the advanced skills and de-
livery of training. Another performance-level program
metric was the signing of an official policy document
RAND Metric 5: Adequacy of contact points and that created the capacity formally within the military.
regular consultations
The US expectation for this performance item was not
Program Metric 5: A key concern was whether the appro- realistic at first and required multiple consultations to
priate operational leaders would be available. To achieve confirm progress toward the goal was being made and
the primary program objective of partner ownership of to adjust the expectation that a policy document that
a national program, operational leaders were needed to reorganized aspects of the Niger military and created
design the Niger program and create a national policy. a whole new division could be done in merely 3 to 6
Over the course of the program and numerous missions, months. The policy documented was completed in April
the operational leadership (Col Boubacar Bako, Col 2015 (an expedited 8 months).

128 Journal of Special Operations Medicine Volume 15, Edition 2/Summer 2015