LEADERSHIP
Today's leaders come out of College with a four degree, are sent to various leadership development schools and then are given specific instruction on their field of focus, before setting foot on the ground with soldiers. For the past 100 years of the Army this has existed and worked well, but to fully acquire an operational environment that meets and exceeds the future combat environments in the battle spaces that we, as a nation, will be engaging, the education and training needs to transform.
AMERICA'S SOLDIER
Family's from across our country have been sending their sons and daughters to the Armed Forces to train and then protect our National interests for longer than I can remember, but, basically, since 1775. The understanding is that the soldier will learn a skill set and either take that skill set outside of the military and further their education in the private sector, or become a career soldier. Either way, the individual has the opportunity to find their niche and propel into a future. That was then, and this is now.
The current soldier can no longer fully qualify for the employment in the Armed Forces unless they further engage themselves in professional and personal development, through Military and Civilian education, and by utilizing the multitude of College courses offered on each and every post in each of the Posts, Bases, and Detachments.
THE S.F. PHENOMENA
Since the beginning of the Special Forces mission, the ability to insert small group fighters into indigenous populations with the ability to move within the population with stealth and knowledge management, has had an amazing effect on the current battle spaces, and with lethal/non-lethal antidotes. The effective placement of these small groups has in large part been due to the specific area training required of the personnel conducting these missions. A group of soldiers is trained for the specific area that they will be operating in, instead of getting a broad set of training skills, relative to the conventional Armed Forces. If the soldier qualifies to learn a certain language, then that soldier is sent to a specific group of operators that are also prone to learning the culture that they qualified for.
TRANSFORMATION OF CONVENTIONAL FORCES
Do more with less. This was the Army that I came into, and our ability to conduct more missions with less money and less logistics meant that we had to truly care for our equipment, and make it work for our operational needs.
The Transformation of Conventional Forces needs to revisit those old years of making the mission happen, with less than what we have had in the past 12 years. A much tighter budget and less logistics is what we are going to see, and we will still need to make the mission a success. So lets take a look at the SF posture and apply it to the conventional forces.
My concept for this program of instruction is to take the Special Forces model and apply it to the Conventional Forces, with the end state of having regional forces within the United States and abroad trained and ready to respond to cultural battles in specific battle spaces. For example, Fort Hood, TX and Fort Bliss, TX would have a large portion of its population trained in speaking Spanish, fully educated on South American cultures, with NCO's and Officers, attending South American schools, utilizing the bottom-up approach. This would put SSG's and Lieutenants in Military Schools across the South American continent. Utilizing the bottoms-up approach would work better than the Top-Down approach, in that you have the soldiers with the boots on the ground relating to their counter parts, creating a working relationship and understanding of TTP's. There isn't a whole lot of armor fighting going on in the South American countries so those assets would get moved to a Regional Force within the Armed Forces where their focus is responding to a USARPAC or USAREUR crisis.
SIMULATIONS
The nay sayers of Simulations in training will tell you that Simulations doesn't give real life reactions to actions, and therefore are not cost effective for training, while the OMB will tell you that, unless you want to spend your own money on logistic support, you will utilize Simulations for training, or lose the asset completely. Simulations does save money, especially for the Armored Force, which is always the biggest loser in budget fights. It's been ten years since we have done a Armor on Armor fight, meaning that when budget committees look for things to cut, the center guide and sprocket are the first to go. Utilizing simulations in training for small arms to convoy security gives the soldier, which also happens to be gaming productive, the ability to see reactions to actions and then to learn from the mistakes and take a better course of action for the next mission. Simulations would also give our NCO Academy's and Officer Schools the ability to train leadership in a hands on approach for leaders, rather than kill our ADHD students with PowerPoint.
THE END STATE
The end state for today's budget controlled Armed Forces would be to have Regionally trained Land forces ready to react to the different crises across the globe, specific to those areas, trained in Simulations, and validated with live ammunition. Enlisted and Commissioned soldiers that have the ability to shoot, move, and communicate with the indigenous population forces within the specific area of assignment, language skills and cultural education complete. Instead of moving soldiers and leadership around the Military machine every three to four years, the education of the Forces would use the money from transitions to further the education of the forces for the Regional areas of operation. All soldiers and leaders would take a language proficiency exam at the onset of the plan, and then move once to their Region of specialty.
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