Do Mortar FDC personnel still maintain a proficiency with the M16 Plotting Board?

In the USMC they do. Cant speak for any other branch.

You may want to add a tag of 0341 to you original post to include Marine mortarman

If they don't , they should. Our MBCs failed all the time on deployment.

Like many things, keeping old school around is a good thing when technology craps out. Can't think of the number of times when china markers and plastic saved the day. Some things like having to write backwards with vertical plots are not taught anymore because there are no vertical plots on ships. So some old school is the stuff of museums.

One might ask the same question about CBRN NCOs ability to plot hazard area predictions and develop chemical downwind messages using maps and protractors, and (in the case of nuclear), nomograms out of a field manual or GTA overlay.

The answer is the same for both. When everything else fails, I know I can still do a hazard prediction in the dark with a map, protractor and a chem light. Despite having training on CPOF and JWARN, I still run my section with scenarios on old-fashioned maps.

Well first of all its a requirement not an option for FDC sections to maintain proficiency with these systems. Aside from that, being proficient with these systems will help the FDC conceptualize the OE. It allows you to understand what the LHMBC or MFCS is doing whe but does what it does. You cannot replace the first hand knowledge of the environment around you with a computer. I agree with the argument that technology will always fail you at the worst time possible. So yes I believe that FDC must maintain proficiently with the plotting boards.

Unfortunately because of the way our Army is changing, becoming more efficient, more networked and reliable on technology our future leaders are becoming disconnected from these systems. I'm not sure how we do it but we have to find a way to maintain continuity between the knowledge and experience that older soldiers E7s + and the juniors leaders coming up now!!

The Marine Corps does. I'm not going to say every Marine knows how. But a majority of the senior guys in the Mortar Plt do know it.

I am not a fan, at all, of the plotting board. It's tedious, and just frustrating as all get out....however, you cannot replace it's value with any amount of technology.
Rest assured your technology will fail you, and then what? Are you going to be that platoon sergeant or section leader that cannot provide fires for troops in contact because you can't pull out the ol beast?
Yes, it's old. Yes, it sucks. But it is the one piece of equipment that should never be completely neglected.

I learned on it in IMLC, but primarily in the field we used the GameBoys (not sure what they were really called) because they were just faster. Everyone we had in the FDC could use the plotting boards, and I'm confident I still could even though I've been out of the service for about a decade.

I wish we had 81's boards. 60s boards are small and kinda innacurate. 81's were gonna get us some boards because most of us had been 81s, but the line companies needed guys. We never got the new boards and some of us considered just buying them.

hell yea, conventional suits the light infantry too well just because its too much weight for high tech cool guy stuff