IN THEIR WORDS – (05 OCT) AUSA Panel: Building Resilient Soldiers, Families & Civilians
Posted by tradoclive in Initial Military Training on October 6th, 2009
Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) is building an Army of balanced, healthy, self-confident Soldiers, Families, and Army Civilians whose resilience and total fitness enables them to excel in an era of high operational tempo and persistent conflict. A holistic approach, CSF works through five dimensions: Physical, Emotional, Social, Spiritual, and Family.
LTG Mark Hertling, DCG for Initial Military Training, represented TRADOC. In his words:
“CSF is focused on building up our soldiers, families, and Army Civilians to give them the strength to deal with trauma before the event.”
“We’re currently training our drill sergeants and platoon sergeants in the techniques of building resiliency in our new soldiers, which will both contribute to the way our recruits learn in training and the quality of life of our cadres’ families.”
IN THEIR WORDS – (05 OCT) AUSA Panel: Army Modernization Post FCS
Posted by tradoclive in ARFORGEN, Future Capabilities Integration, Uncategorized on October 6th, 2009
The Army’s Modernization Strategy defines the resource-informed balance of capabilities required to win the current fight while ensuring the versatility to adapt to the future operational environment. As the Army’s lead for concepts and DOTMLPF integration, TRADOC will continue to provide the blueprint for a balanced and versatile force using incremental delivery of key technologies fully synchronized to the Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) process.
LTG Michael Vane, Deputy Commanding General, Futures Director, Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC), represented TRADOC. In his words:
“We’re planning on [advances in] technology, but not creating a single dependency on technology for a complex solution.”
“Strategy and risk assessments must drive procurement, not the other way around. Buy less, but more often.”
“Capability packages [will come] in two year increments.”
Gen. Dempsey’s post to Small Wars Journal TSLC Discussion
Posted by tradoclive in Leader Development, Uncategorized on August 13th, 2009
I first want to thank you for the opportunity to discuss the important issues facing us and to gain your perspectives and insights on the critical task of adapting our institution to more effectively support the nation’s national security interests. I view Small Wars Journal as an important gathering place for strategic thought, and I appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with some of the most thoughtful minds in our country.
The upcoming TRADOC Senior Leader Conference (TSLC) in Gettysburg comes at an important time for Training and Doctrine Command and for our Army. We continue to transform TRADOC while simultaneously supporting transitions in both OIF and OEF. Let me offer some thoughts and considerations as we put our shoulders behind these challenges and opportunities over the next 2 years.
If our experience over the last eight years has taught us anything, it’s that war and conflict will continue to increase in complexity. We know that conflict will be waged among the population and for influence on the population, and we know our leaders and their soldiers will operate among a diverse set of actors along blurred military, political, economic, religious and ethnic lines with the potential for escalation and spillover in a variety of unpredictable ways.
Hybrid threats–combinations of regular military forces and irregular threats often in collaboration with criminal and terrorist elements–will migrate among operational themes to seek advantage. The operating environment will become more competitive as our adversaries decentralize, network, and gain technological capabilities formerly found only in the hands of nation states.
The challenge confronting us is building balance and versatility into the force by developing our leaders, by designing our organizations, and by adapting the institution. The outcomes we seek are flexibility and resilience to hedge against future uncertainty. Three imperatives are guiding our efforts to align the operational and institutional Army to meet demands and support the Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) model:
. Develop our military and civilian leaders
. Provide trained and ready forces to support current operations
. Integrate current and emerging capabilities
These imperatives will remain in tension for the foreseeable future, but there are things we can do to bring them into better balance. The TRADOC Campaign Plan (TCP) describes how we’ll achieve balance across our priority lines of operation: Human Capital, Initial Military Training, Leader Development, and Capabilities Integration.
The focus of our discussions during the TSLC will be on the TRADOC Campaign Plan (TCP). We will also examine how TRADOC’s TCP aligns with and complements the Human Capital Enterprise. We’ll demonstrate how the Central Training Database will become the “Training Brain” for TRADOC and provide us the opportunity to enhance training in the institutional schoolhouse.
As you may know, we’ve asked ourselves how we can replicate the complexity our leaders experience while they are deployed, and we will discuss some emerging opportunities to do just that. I’d like this to generate discussion about how TRADOC can lead innovation in training and education to account for the speed of change in the contemporary operating environment.
I look forward in the coming weeks to a lively, thoughtful discussion with the Small Wars Journal community.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, TRADOC Commanding General
To join in the discussion, go to
How do we harness the collective power of NCOs?
Posted by tradoclive in Leader Development on June 1st, 2009
“It makes no difference what men think of war…. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.”
—Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
The Army recognizes the power that comes from our Noncommissioned Officer Corps, which is why this is “The Year of the NCO.” As the TRADOC Command Sergeant Major, I spend much of my time thinking of ways that we can better harness the collective power of the NCO Corps to train our forces and win our wars—present and future, along the full spectrum of conflict. I would like to share some of my thoughts with you here and I hope to hear your comments.
As all of you know, war is an ugly thing. It is also a fact of our lives as professional Soldiers. No matter your MOS, you are expected to prepare yourself and your Soldiers to fight and win on the battlefield. In Afghanistan and Iraq we have tough, hard fights against a skilled and resourceful enemy. We have a major resource in these fights: the professionalism of the Noncommissioned Officer.
The need to empower junior NCOs is highlighted when we discuss concepts like ‘the strategic corporal’ or the ‘three block war.’ I like to consider that statement from the other angle: just how much young Corporals and Sergeants empower us as leaders and how much we can learn from you.
Without you, Noncommissioned Officers, nothing would get done. You bridge the gap between goal and reality. We ask you to do difficult things and expect you to figure out how to do them. You are the main effort in the fight. You are the person on the ground. You train your Soldiers and execute your Commander’s intent. The strength of the Army and the nation lies with you, but how great that strength is depends on how much you develop it and how much we assist you in that goal.
So now, I would like to consider two questions:
1. How can you do better as leaders?
2. How are we supporting you in your growth as leaders?
The simple answer to both of these questions is education. Never underestimate your ability to learn and resolve to never stop trying to learn. That is your responsibility to yourself, your Soldiers and your Commanders. Whether you are in the Army for one enlistment or planning to stay in until you retire, take full advantage of the education the Army offers you. Use tuition assistance and attend classes on your spare time. Go to whatever military schools you can. Do your best in NCOES courses.
Do not underestimate the value of informal education, either. Your Soldiers, your peers, your Leaders are all invaluable sources of knowledge. Make reading a habit, but don’t limit yourself to strictly military literature. There are many sources of good ideas and it is to your advantage to have breadth as well as depth to you knowledge. Ensure your Soldiers understand the value of education and consider their input.
The Army is working every day to bring you the highest quality educational opportunities we can, as early as we can. Rosetta stone language software on AKO, the College of the American Soldier and a restructuring of NCOES all have the potential to expand your mind and contribute to your success on the battlefield. Take advantage of them, so that the ultimate trade can have its ultimate practitioner: you, the American Noncommissioned Officer.
CSM David Bruner, TRADOC Command Sergeant Major
Developing Leaders in Persistent Conflict
Posted by tradoclive in Future Capabilities Integration, Leader Development on May 27th, 2009
Recently, we began cross walking attributes defined in the Army’s FM 3.0 with those described in the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO). As we translate them into concrete and measurable attributes, we will design a strategy that delivers them as outcomes in the three pillars of leader development: training, education, and experience. It is clear that there are both current and emerging opportunities to enrich the learning experience both within the institutional schoolhouse and in home station training.
Consider this….
In the not-too-distant past, we developed leaders by challenging them with mass and compressed timelines. We arrayed ourselves against a Soviet threat, and we challenged the training commander with another rifle regiment, a greater artillery threat, or less time to plan and prepare.
To develop leaders today, we must challenge them with increasing complexity and extended time. We must array ourselves against a hybrid threat, and we must challenge the training commander with the complexities of military operations among the people, the competing priorities of offense-defense-stability operations, accessibility to massive amounts of information and intelligence, an enemy that adapts over the course of a campaign—extended time—and an enemy who may use traditional forms of contact and “mass” if he finds them to his advantage.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates summed it up during a speech at West Point in April 2008 when he said, “…our Army will require leaders of uncommon agility, resourcefulness and imagination; leaders willing and able to think and act creatively and decisively in a different kind of world, in a different kind of conflict than we have prepared for the last six decades.”
I look forward to your insights to help advance this priority effort. The Combined Arms Center is moving our Leader Development Strategy forward, and we expect to complete the initial draft by early June.
Thanks for all you do to support institutional adaptation for our great Army.
“Victory Starts Here”
Gen. Martin Dempsey, TRADOC Commanding General
Versatility as Institutional Imperative
Posted by tradoclive in Leader Development on May 27th, 2009
Future conflicts will introduce an array of threats that defy simple categorization. We have at times tried to categorize threats in discrete operational themes such as conventional or unconventional, regular or irregular, high intensity or low intensity, traditional, terrorist, or criminal. However, the world is just not that accommodating. The security challenges we face are complex, and we have every reason to believe—based on our own experiences and on other conflicts we have recently observed—that our enemies will seek to employ a variety of threats in confronting us. Our model of the spectrum of conflict in FM 3-0 can be somewhat misleading in that it implies gaps among the different operational themes. What our model does not portray is the affect that time has on conflict and the likelihood that our enemies will seek to migrate among these themes. We cannot expect that we will have the option of selecting a category of conflict and then implementing a strategy confined to that category—the enemy gets a “vote.”
Hybrid, networked threats further blur the space among operational themes adding even greater complexity to the current and future operating environment. In response, our units and leaders in theater adapt from one theme to another frequently, sometimes day by day, often mission by mission and location by location. This occurs at all levels from the tactical to the strategic.
The hybrid threats we face are also increasingly decentralized in execution. Their objective is to exploit us by decentralizing operations and employing information operations as a weapon. In the book The Starfish and the Spider by Rod Beckstrom and Ori Brafman, the authors examine business models that provide insights into how open and decentralized systems operate: “when attacked, a decentralized organization becomes even more open and decentralized….open systems can easily mutate.”
The point is that the threat doesn’t confine itself to a single operational theme. The enemy adapts to leverage their strengths and to exploit our vulnerabilities. I believe LTG Stan McChrystal—one of our truly innovative senior leaders—had it right when he said, “to defeat a network, you have to be a network.” So our challenge is to adapt our institutions and develop our leaders to confront the complexity and decentralization inherent in the future operational environment.
We must avoid either-or constructs about conflict and how we organize, train, and equip ourselves in anticipation of conflict. When we commit our “campaign-quality” Army to a sustained operation in the future operating environment, it will need to be versatile enough to respond to all forms of contact. Even more important, it will need to be led by leaders agile enough to deal with complexity and anticipate the changes inherent in an extended campaign.
General Martin E. Dempsey is Commanding General of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command.
Security Force Assistance
Posted by tradoclive in Uncategorized on May 27th, 2009
Recently we published Army Field Manual 3-07.1: Security Force Assistance. In it, we seek to capture in doctrine our many years of experience in building partner security forces. Security Force Assistance is derivative of the broader mission of Stability Operations which we have documented in doctrine in FM 3-07.
It’s important to note that Security Force Assistance occurs under a variety of conditions, and it is the conditions that will determine how and with what organizations we use to accomplish the mission.
We have military cooperation agreements with more than 125 nations around the world and often provide security force assistance in response to host nation requests. This assistance is generally delivered by Offices of Security Cooperation, always under the control of the US Embassy Country Team, and is accomplished by a mixture of assigned military and civilian personnel, contractors, and mobile training teams. These mobile training teams come from either the General Purpose Forces -– perhaps more appropriately described as Multi-Purpose Forces -– or from the Special Forces depending on the type of training requested.
Under conditions of active conflict where we have direct responsibility for security — as in Iraq and Afghanistan — tactical commanders will have a security force assistance mission to train, advise, and assist tactical host nation forces. This mission is accomplished using the resources of the modular brigade augmented as necessary based, again, on conditions. The conditions include the “state” of security — described in doctrine as Initial Stage, Transforming Stage, and Sustaining Phase — as well as the capacity and capability of the host nation security forces. Security Force Assistance at the Institutional Level will be accomplished by a Security Transition Headquarters organized under the Joint Task Force. This Security Transition Headquarters partners with the US Embassy Country Team and evolves over time into an Office of Security Cooperation as described above.
Finally, we have security relationships with some nations facing significant internal security challenges but which, for many reasons, may not accept a large, visible US military presence within their borders. If they request Security Force Assistance under these conditions, the mission is generally assigned to US Special Operations Forces, potentially augmented by regionally-oriented General-Purpose Forces.
Clearly, the future operational environment will require us to demonstrate as much versatility in Stability Operations as we have in Offense and Defense Operations. Understanding the variety of conditions under which Security Force Assistance occurs is an important first step.
General Martin E. Dempsey is Commanding General of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command.
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