What the Army Taught Me About Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting in the Army wasn’t optional, it was mission critical. Downtime on a weapons system or comms meant someone else had to cover down for you, everyone has to pull their weight for the plan to work. From my time as a M240 gunner, a RTO, and even my TL and SL time, the way I handled problems in the field shaped how I now approach troubleshooting in IT.
First, I learned to stay calm under pressure. Breathe. Go through your checklist. For radios like the AN/PRC-158 and AN/PRC-163, I was taught to go through the “ABCs”, or check the Antenna/signal, check the Battery and TX power, and check all your Cables. A similar method works well for weapon malfunctions too; each weapon has a series of steps you can take to clear a malfunction, and the faster you can systematically identify and remedy it the faster you can get that 240 rocking. I learned to trust the process. Whether it was verifying power, checking cables, or clearing out links from the feed tray, we followed a method, not just a hunch. Today, I apply that same structured thinking when diagnosing IT issues. Skip steps, and you miss the fix.
Second, I understood the importance of baselines. You can’t fix what you don’t understand, so I always made a habit of knowing what “normal” looked like. Humans like patterns, and if a pattern is broken it’s extremely obvious. This is exactly why camouflage works so well when used correctly, anything that blends into the environment around it is easy to miss. If you can figure out what the pattern is supposed to be, any irregularities will literally jump out at you.
Finally, I valued documentation. We had AARs after every exercise. Now, I write everything down. What broke, how I fixed it, and what I learned. It builds a personal knowledge base and saves time down the road. As a leader these AARs are incredibly crucial to your development, I’ve learned more about myself and my role as an infantry leader during AARs than I would’ve in front of any whiteboard or projector. There’s just something about going out and getting after it, laying scunion, and iterating over and over until you have a comprehensive grasp of how best to solve a problem.
The Army didn’t teach me CLI commands or subnetting, but it gave me something even more powerful: the mindset to troubleshoot with discipline, clarity, and purpose. That’s what makes all the difference in IT.
