To help leaders train their units, the Army has developed a valuable resource. The Leader’s Guide to Unit Training Management assists leaders at every step of the training management process. It helps leaders develop training plans, conduct training meetings and prepare after action reviews. The Leader’s Guide is available on the Army Training Network at: http://bit.ly/1yVF6CM
“There is no one more professional than I. I am a noncommissioned officer, a leader of Soldiers.” The opening words of the NCO creed are also the foundation of a new U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command initiative.
U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s Institute for Noncommissioned Officer Professional Development created the Instructor Development and Recognition Program, or IDRP, to coach, mentor and train Army instructors who teach at noncommissioned officer academies. The IDRP program awards Army Instructor Badges to Noncommissioned Officer Education System instructors who have completed certification and training requirements that lead to increased proficiency levels as instructors.
What has the Army done?
As a first step in recognizing Army instructors, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) developed the Army Instructor Badge. TRADOC also authored the secretary of the Army directive that advises personnel proponent offices to select the highest caliber Soldiers for instructor duty for a period of 36 months.
What continued efforts does the Army have planned for the future?
Noncommissioned officers who serve as NCOA instructors and participate in the IDRP will be eligible for the badges based on their primary instructor time and by meeting training requirements. Basic, senior and master level badges will be used to recognize levels of achievement for instructors. TRADOC Regulation (TR) 600-21 outlines the requirements and administrative actions necessary to award instructors with badges, promotion points and personnel development skill identifiers associated with each level. The badges should be available in Army clothing sales stores as early as June 2014.
Why is this important to the Army?
Noncommissioned officers are the backbone of the U.S. Army, and NCO academies are critical in the development of Soldiers’ leadership skills. NCOA instructors provide standardized training across the Army, regardless of the students’ occupational specialty. This change in instructor development is a critical part of improving the NCO Education System, or NCOES. The IDRP supports the Army Learning Model, or ALM, by transitioning instructors away from an overreliance on direct instruction methods for all types of learning.
The IDRP goal is to incorporate the use of more learner-centric instruction and facilitator skills that are aligned with internationally recognized standards for master facilitators and instructors. This is a change from direct-instructional methods, which do not support collaboration and guided discussion between learners and the facilitator/instructor. The IDRP puts the principals and concepts of ALM into practice at every level of the NCOES. It also facilitates structured developmental tools and training for NCOs to succeed in their learning environment. This program provides added value to unit training when the instructor returns to the operational Army.
Resources:
Photo Credit: David Vergun
The Army is a Common Access Card-enabled, Windows-based operating environment. That means Soldiers can’t access a lot of education content from home or other places when they’re using mobile devices.
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, July 3, 2014) — Eighteen months ago, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command began migrating education content to the dotcom cloud, a commercially operated bank of servers.
This is a significant step for several reasons.
The Army is currently a Common Access Card-enabled, Windows-based devices operating environment. That means Soldiers can’t access much of the training and education content from home or other places when they’re using non Windows-based mobile devices, said Helen A. Remily, Training and Doctrine Command’s, or TRADOC’s, capability manager for the Army Distributed Learning Program, at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia.
The commercial cloud allows them a broader capability to access content via their personally owned devices, such as Apple iOS and Android mobile devices, she added.
“Given information-technology advances, Soldiers expect the ability to access learning content regardless of the type of mobile device they own,” she said. “Today’s generation of Soldiers and leaders have a high expectation of persistent access to learning content from a reliable network, independent of their location.”
Gen. David Perkins, TRADOC commander, is behind the program.
“During the downsizing of our force, it is critical to develop our leadership effectively,” he said after assuming command in March.
Leadership development and technical training are at the heart of TRADOC’s mission, and delivering learning content to develop leadership competencies in the most efficient and effective way is critical, said Remily.
That delivery just got a whole lot better.
MIGRATING TO CLOUD
Remily laid out the timeline:
After conducting a 12-month proof of concept, which concluded in December 2013, TRADOC created a commercial cloud learning environment and migrated all of the non-sensitive distributed learning content for the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to the commercial cloud. This has been a highly successful endeavor with approximately 5,000 students attending annually as part of their professional military education. This has also produced significant savings for the Army.
Within the next three months, the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, will also migrate their learning content to the commercial cloud, and by the end of this calendar year, the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York, will also migrate content.
The future plan is for other Army schools to migrate learning content to the commercial cloud learning environment, Remily said, with discussions underway with the Army School of Music, Army Chaplain Center and School, the Defense Language Institute, and the Army Management Staff College, which oversees the Army’s civilian education system. More will follow.
Students at the Command and General Staff College have already provided very positive feedback, she noted. They value the flexibility of distributed learning and being able to use their personal mobile devices. They also like the social learning aspect of having a dotcom learning environment with peer to peer interactions through threaded discussions, blogs, etc.
Many students who previously did not have a reach-back capability to access relevant content after graduation now do, she added.
For example, Soldiers in the Individual Ready Reserve don’t have CACs. Also, foreign nationals who attend schools often receive temporary CACs, however, they must return them after graduation from Command and General Staff College and the War College. Before going to the commercial cloud, they did not have reach-back access to the content.
BALANCING SECURITY, ACCESS
Remily spent most of her 32 years government career with military intelligence and counter-terrorism fields before coming to TRADOC, so she has an abiding appreciation for information technology, known as IT, security concerns.
TRADOC “is working very closely with the [Army’s Chief Information Office] community to help design and field an Army-persistent learning capability that doesn’t compromise the network,” she said.
The Army Chief Information Office’s “primary mission is protecting the Army’s network, so they are risk-averse, as they should be,” she continued. “Many of our adversaries are tech-savvy and use technology against us as they don’t have the regulations and laws that we must follow.”
On the other hand, Remily said content should be protected only at the level that’s necessary and no more.
“There’s no need to over-protect our content as this leads to challenges with accessibility of training and education products and material. It comes down to balancing accessibility and that of security and risk mitigation,
Moving education content to the cloud is actually good news for the Chief Information Office.
“Migrating content off of the Army’s network automatically increases the operational network bandwidth because you don’t have large packets of training and education information flowing back and forth across that network,” she explained.
There’s a lot of sensitive military occupational specialty-type training that won’t go to the cloud, but in the future, it may be possible to do so as commercial cloud-computing has provisions for CAC-enabled authentication
Despite a tight budget, the future for cloud migration looks promising.
Currently, the TRADOC Project Office for Mobile Devices, which is managing the integration of mobile computing throughout TRADOC, is only temporary.
Recently, TRADOC gained approval for a permanent office to manage the effort. It will be known as TRADOC’s Capability Manager for Mobile and it will fall under the Army’s Distributed Learning Program.
The new office, she said, will address policy, governance, infrastructure and devices. More importantly it will assist us in identifying mobile content (to include mobile apps) that should migrate and better enable accessibility via personally owned mobile devices.
Because of the resource issues, “we’re re-purposing current positions” to establish the new organization, meaning no new hires.
“This is a big move for the Army,” she said. “We’ll start with TRADOC to get this right and then support other Army organizations.”
In a concluding remark, Col. Charles Harris, TRADOC G-6 deputy chief of staff, said last week that the Army chief of staff’s strategic priority is developing adaptive leaders for a complex world.
“The Army must seek solutions balancing national defense information security and the need for Soldiers’ unlimited access to training and education content, products and services through mobile devices and adaptive wireless networks,” Harris said.
(For more ARNEWS stories, visit http://www.army.mil/ARNEWS, or Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ArmyNewsService)
Photo Credit: Melissa K. Buckley, Fort Leonard Wood
Second Lt. Lindsey Potter, MP Basic Officer Leader Course student, adjusts her helmet after packing up sleeping gear. Students in the Military Police Basic Officer Leader Course are testing training that goes back to the basics, which means spending the night in the woods during expeditionary operations training.
FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. (July 22, 2014) — Students in the Military Police Basic Officer Leader Course here are testing a type of training that is taking the Soldiers back to the basics by incorporating expeditionary operations into their class.
The back-to-basics training initiative is stemming from guidance set forth by the Chief of Staff of the Army saying that the Army should be able to rapidly deploy, fight, sustain itself and win in austere environments and rugged terrain.
“The purpose of this style of training is to get away from the traditional model of training used to prepare leaders to deploy to later phases of Iraq and Afghanistan where infrastructure was in place, and Soldiers live and operate out of secured forward operating bases or combat outposts,” said Capt. Josh Trulock, MP Basic Officer Leader Course, or BOLC, small group leader.
“We want to develop critical thinkers and problem solvers who have to think through the variables of not only running missions, but also sustaining and surviving with only their organic assets,” he added.
During a routine field training exercise, which ran from July 8 to Tuesday, the MP BOLC students spent three of those nights practicing expeditionary style training.
The class prepared for the exercise by conducting field training for a week to rehearse the basic tasks, including patrol bases that are to be evaluated during their final field training exercise.
Second Lt. Ryan Tyre, an MP BOLC student, described the experience like camping, but in a large triangle to offer some security.
“Instead of heading into a [forward operating base] or [combat outpost] set-up, we had to establish a patrol base in the woods. It was a mounted operation, which for most of us is brand new. It was quite the experience,” Tyre said.
First, students performed reconnaissance on the site with a couple of trucks and then placed the heavier weapons.
As platoon leader, Tyre said security was his highest priority.
“My night was long. We took some fire from a four-to-five-man element right after we established the patrol base,” Tyre said.
“After we established security, we maintained our weapons, ate some Meals Ready to Eat, had a little personal hygiene time, and sleeping came last,” he added.
The students took turns sleeping, so that each of the trucks were manned during the night.
“This training forces the students to learn and apply basic-field craft to learn how to live out of their ruck sack and combat platform for prolonged periods of time. It also teaches them how to find a location suitable for established security, to conduct basic maintenance and plan for future missions with strict time constraints and under adverse conditions, such as heat and rain,” Trulock said.
Currently the MP BOLC is only testing this form of field training to assess both what it adds to training realism and what gains are achieved in lieutenants’ development as officers, according to Trulock.
“After completing the training for the first time, I think that this was a great success. Not only did the students get a chance to see and learn the complexities and difficulties in running operations daily without some of the comforts afforded in recent theaters, but we as instructors took away many lessons learned to both incorporate into future training and improve upon it,” Trulock said.
Photo Credit: David Vergun
Capt. David Spencer and Capt. Kerney Perlik discuss their team’s education ideas and solutions just prior to presenting them to Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Ray Odierno, during Solarium 2014, July 11, 2014, at the Lewis and Clark Center on Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (Army News Service, July 18, 2014) — It was to be a panacea. It could save money and reduce the carbon footprint by eliminating travel costs, decrease the need for infrastructure and perhaps even instructors, while allowing students to learn on their own time, in their own spaces, on their own devices.
In its rush to embrace progress and technology, the Army, the Defense Department and organizations across America adopted distance learning, at least as far back as the 1990s, when computing power and the Internet promised to connect people and institutions in virtual ways that were previously unimaginable.
Now, captains across the Army are telling their chief of staff that distance learning can be a powerful tool, but its be-all-promise may be a stretch, and its method of delivery may need some re-tooling.
The captains were participating in Solarium 2014. Seven teams, each with about 15 members, discussed issues that included education, training, talent management, culture, mission command, and vision and branding. The teams discussed issues for a month online and then during two days at Fort Leavenworth before providing their findings to Gen. Ray Odierno, July 11.
The Army is over-reliant on distance learning and “it’s a growing trend of being the sole method of education” delivery, said Capt. David Spencer of the education team.
Part of the problem, he said, is a perception that “millennials only learn through social media and IT devices” like smartphones and tablets, “but that’s an incorrect assumption.”
Soldiers completing online courses are “not mastering the subject,” Spencer pointed out, citing several examples of Soldiers he knows who didn’t get much out of their distance learning experience, including one who’d completed a Reserve captains career course online.
The solution, he said, is to “integrate distance learning with brick and mortar institutions.” That could mean meeting periodically in a classroom to reinforce the distance-learning experience. The formal classroom setting involves valuable collaborative learning and human-to-human interaction that distance learning doesn’t offer.
Distance learning by itself, though, does have its place, he conceded, but for it to be successful, “you’ve got to tie an educator on the back side to answer Soldiers’ questions, guide and facilitate.”
The educators don’t have to man phone banks 24/7, he added, but they do need to be available at least at certain times so Soldiers have someone to turn to, rather than just being left out on a limb when they are wrestling with a concept or theoretical construct.
Spencer said Solarium 2014 could have been set up as a conference call event, but he and the other captains agreed that the human interactions were the most valuable.
“Your thoughts mirror studies and feedback we’ve been receiving on distance learning across the board,” Odierno replied.
The Army is beginning to address the distance-learning gap, he continued, beginning here at the Command and General Staff College, where instructors are now facilitating distance-learning courses. “This is a first-ever. Now we’ve got to put that in all the distance learning courses.”
Odierno added that access to distance learning courses shouldn’t have roadblocks, such as requiring Common Access Cards. Soldiers should be able to access coursework on their own tablets and other devices.
Capt. Jayson Williams of the training team said overall content and structure of training, whether distance learning or classroom, is good — and would improve given the points Spencer made — but format could be a lot more user-friendly.
For example the Army Training Management System is currently using an analog delivery format, but version 7.0, which is coming soon, “will be digital and sharable,” he said, adding that he likes it that the system’s leaders are soliciting feedback from Soldiers.
However good classroom or distance learning might be, though, there’s no better training than live, hands-on, Williams said. “All of us were impressed with the realism and quality of the combat training centers, which are very good at preparing Soldiers” for real-world contingencies.
Williams added that he was a skeptic of the Army’s increasing use of virtual and constructive simulation training, but after he experienced what it can do and how it can better prepare Soldiers for the live experience, he became a convert.
Capt. Adam Malaty-Uhr said that while all those suggestions are good, Soldiers are often confused about what type of coursework or training they need to take for self-improvement, to increase their combat readiness or improve their chances for promotions.
“There needs to be a central place to go for identifying opportunities,” he said, explaining that information is spread out across Human Resources Command and centers of excellence websites, All Army Activities and Military Personnel Messages, and so on, none of which are particularly user-friendly.
There are some “80 content repositories” out there, he added, but their “search functionality is essentially beyond our capabilities. Soldiers need to see at a glance what types of training and education opportunities are available to them and which are required at any given time.
Another idea, Malaty-Uhr offered, is that the Army could come up with a Pandora-type search engine that could suggest training or education opportunities that might interest them based on their needs and preferences.
Odierno said the problem of not knowing what training and education are required is even bigger for company commanders because they must also know what their Soldiers need, so they can better advise them.
He said the issue is even more challenging for Malaty-Uhr, since the captain commands a National Guard company that’s dispersed across the entire state of Illinois.
“I’m frustrated by our inability to integrate technology, especially in terms of access and search,” Odierno acknowledged. “We have some self-limiting factors bureaucratically. We tend to classify everything and that make it impossible to access.
“We need to build apps that are easy to download and integrate and do many of these things you mentioned,” he continued, “so yes, I’ve got it. I’ve got to get some innovative IT people who want to think out of the box to help us solve these problems.”
The private enterprise needs to get involved in developing these technologies, Malaty-Uhr replied, because “frankly sir, we don’t trust the Army to execute this appropriately, to develop something that is really meaningful and really changes the dynamic of how we learn as individuals and how we learn as leaders.”
Odierno said he was impressed by all of the captains’ recommendations and conceded that a lot of work still needed to be done.
But the captains were not yet finished offering the chief their thoughts and recommendations and Odierno said he was eager to hear them, even if they differed from his own.
The wealth of formal educational opportunities needs to be spread around better throughout the Army, Capt. Kerney Perlik told the chief.
Officers come into the Army with the advantage of having a university degree, she said. There are opportunities throughout an officer’s career to get advanced degrees.
“As officers, we have so many opportunities,” Perlik said. “For my next assignment, I’m going to graduate school and then back to West Point to teach.”
Perlik said that as an aviator, she feels bad for her squadron where half of the leaders are warrant officers who don’t have the same opportunities she has, not to mention the many non-commissioned officers who are in the same boat.
“Educated leaders are force multipliers,” Perlik said. Without a good civilian education, “we have a gap in our ability to produce adaptive leaders.”
The form that education takes doesn’t necessarily need to be traditional degree programs at universities, she said. Vocational programs would work too.
For example a vocational certificate for aircraft mechanics would not only make them more proficient in their specialty, it would make them more marketable in the civilian world, she said. Similarly warrant officers should be given the chance to attend courses at Sikorsky or training offered at other companies.
Also, “our team loved the idea of warrant officers or NCOs getting their teaching certificates and teaching at an inner-city schools.”
All good suggestions, Odierno replied, adding that while teaching inner-city kids is admirable, the Army needs to protect its own investments as the forces and budget downsize. So teaching at the Advanced Leader Course or Senior Leader Course might be preferable.
“But the thought process you have is on target,” he added. “It’s about incentivizing really good NCOs and also incentivizing certain assignments that I believe are really important for us. The problem for the Army is every time you take people out, it creates a readiness issue, so how many you take out needs to be looked at. But it can be done.”
Williams said the Army needs to be more creative and resourceful in its training and education efforts.
The Army does a pretty good job of training, he said, but more focus needs to be on how to train and manage training. Also, more training needs to focus on developing critical thinking skills. And, training should be as practical as possible so it can be readily transferred to real-world situations.
A lot of good training-with-partners opportunities are being missed, he continued.
For instance there are National Guard units near Fort Drum, N.Y., that could train with the 10th Mountain Division. Also, there are police units and SWAT teams who sometimes use Army ranges. Why not integrate training with them and encourage building relationships.
To make that happen, he said would require “breaking away all the restrictions and impediments” that prevent the Army from doing that.
The Army is beginning to move in that direction, Odierno replied. U.S. Army Forces Command just published policy “that aligns each division with National Guard units” for training purposes, and it “does exactly what you’re saying, so you should start to see more of that.”
Odierno added that training should also include multinational partners, although that’s getting harder to do because they’re reducing their military investments, just as the U.S. is.
The chief said Solarium 2014 was productive and that he’d take all their suggestions with him, implement as many as are feasible, and provide the captains with follow-ups on their recommendations.
(Editor’s note: This is the final article in a four-part series on Solarium 2014. For more ARNEWS stories, visit http://www.army.mil/ARNEWS, or Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ArmyNewsService)
Photo Credit: Harrison Hill, USACC Public Affairs Office
Gen. David Perkins, TRADOC CG, ate lunch and talked with ROTC cadets attending the Leader Development and Assessment Course (LDAC) during his July 22 visit to Fort Knox, Kentucky.
FORT KNOX, Ky. (July 22, 2014) — Gen. David Perkins is quite the decorated officer. A 1980 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, the New Hampshire native has dedicated 34 years of his life to his country. He earned the Silver Star — the nation’s third highest award for valor — after serving as the Brigade Commander for the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq and commanding the unit’s “Thunder Run” into Baghdad. In March of this year, he assumed duties as Commander, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).
He oversees all of the doctrine the Army publishes, and has a hand in every aspect of training.
He spent July 22 in the field with cadets, touring training sites like the rappel tower, machine gun familiarization course and cultural awareness. At the culmination of his visit, Perkins spoke for an hour with Army ROTC cadets in the 9th and 13th Regiments of the Leader Development and Assessment Course (LDAC).
The presentation served more as a motivational talk than a speech. Cadets listened with rapt attention as Perkins talked about leadership and the concept of “Mission Command.”
As he spoke about Mission Command, he stressed the importance of “exploiting the initiative.” He also stressed that effective leaders will “drive the operational process, build teams, and inform and influence people.”
“TRADOC is the general contractor and builder of the Army,” Perkins said. “Cadets, you all, are the raw material. You’re in the initial phase. You’re the 2-by-4s and plywood.”
Cadets in the front row scribbled furiously in their notebooks, writing down as much of what the general said as possible. Heads swiveled throughout the auditorium as Perkins paced back and forth.
“All things in life are relative,” Perkins said. “And the reason we put that word ‘relative’ in there is that it comes to grips with the fact that the future is always changing. So what could be a position of advantage today could be a position of disadvantage tomorrow.”
The general shared anecdotes and metaphors, continually referencing the symbolic rucksack that each cadet carried and the huge rocks TRADOC and the Army kept throwing in them.
Topics drifted from leadership to judgment, from prudent risk-taking to decisive action.
He spoke of an Iraqi leader who told him that he took his position as a U. S. Army general for granted. As a matter of fact, he realized, Americans took their Army for granted.
“‘You take for granted that once you make a decision, they’re going to go do it,'” the Iraqi leader told Perkins.
“Quite honestly, I told him, ‘You’re absolutely right.’ I take it for granted. When I want stuff to be done, it just gets done.”
And that, according the Perkins, is an amazing thing. The fact that American citizens can sleep worry-free each night knowing that the Army will do what it says it will do and keep its people safe is something the rest of the world’s armies wishes they could deliver to their people.
On the Army’s worst day, Perkins told the cadets, we are the envy of the world. He knows that, because he is absolutely certain that every single general in the Army would go back and do it all over again.
Cadet David Wieland of the University of Memphis happened to be sitting in the corner seat of the front row, directly in front of Perkins, when the general decided to prove his point.
Perkins had Wieland stand up. he then pulled the four-star rank insignia from his own Army combat uniform and placed it in the middle of the cadet’s chest.
“I would trade places with this cadet, right now,” Perkins said beside a visibly nervous Wieland. “But, I’m gonna need that back.”
Wieland said the experience was eye-opening, terrifying and exhilarating.
“I just thought, ‘everybody in this room is jealous,'” he said afterward, laughing. “But could you see how nervous I was?”
The cadet found Perkins’ visit to be interesting and impactful.
“He shows that when you ask a genuine person a thought-out question, you’ll get a genuine response,” Wieland said. “His attention to us and his words carried a lot of weight.
“The ‘adaptiveness’ of the Army is extremely important,” Wieland said. “It’s important for us to understand and it’s important that the general was able to come here and explain it to us in his terms.”
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (July 25, 2014) — Seven Soldiers made Army history when they became the first instructors to receive the Army Instructor Badge during a recognition ceremony in Alexandria, July 17.
The instructors were recognized by the Army chief of staff and sergeant major of the Army for their participation in U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s Instructor Development and Recognition Program.
The purpose of the IDRP, designed by TRADOC’s Institute for Non-commissioned Officer Professional Development, is to coach, mentor and train instructors who teach at non-commissioned officer academies throughout the Army.
“Our Soldiers are the best at what they do because of the training they receive from world-class instructors,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Daniel Dailey, TRADOC’s command sergeant major and narrator for the IDRP ceremony. “These first seven Army Instructor Badge recipients represent the thousands of dedicated professionals in our Army who teach, coach and mentor tomorrow’s future leaders.”
In addition to recognizing the first Soldiers to participate in the IDRP, the ceremony served as a foundation on which the Army can promote instructor achievement through personal and professional growth, inspiring others to do the same, said Master Sgt. Elsi Inoa-Santos, IDRP manager.
“This award codifies and recognizes hard work,” said Sgt. 1st Class Brian Ditzler, an Army Instructor Badge recipient from the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Ditzler, who currently has 16 years of service with two years as an instructor at the Henry Caro NCO Academy, said the badge is more than the individual recognition; it symbolizes the team effort of developing the backbone of America’s Army.
“This is not just for me, but for my team and all the hard work they have been putting in to develop NCOs who come through the NCO academy,” he said.
The first seven instructors to receive the Army Instructor badge are:
– Sgt. 1st Class Michael Brown, U.S. Army Quarter Master Corps, Fort Lee, Virginia
– Sgt. 1st Class Brian Ditzler, U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, Fort Benning, Georgia
– Sgt. 1st Class Kevin Johnson, U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence, Fort Eustis, Virginia
– Staff Sgt. Justin Scott Ross, U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, National Guard, Starke, Florida
– Sgt. 1st Class Jacqueline Sauve, U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, Fort Huachuca, Arizona
– Sgt. 1st Class Adrian Villareal, U.S. Army Fires Center of Excellence, Fort Sill, Oklahoma
– Sgt. 1st Class Bryan Vann, U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence Fort Gordon, Georgia
Gen. David G. Perkins, commanding general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, talks to Israel Defense Forces soldiers during inspection of the troops at Latrun. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Ken Foringer)
TEL AVIV, Israel — Gen. David G. Perkins, commanding general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, led a delegation to Israel to participate in the 23rd Future Battlefield Annual Talks, or FBAT, May 11-15, 2014.
Although TRADOC’s relationship with the Israel Defense Forces began in 1973 following the Yom Kippur War, the FBAT was formally initiated in 1988 as an annual event conducted alternately between locations in the U.S. and Israel.
In addition to the TRADOC commanding general, who has served as U.S. head of delegation since 1990, this year’s U.S. delegation also included Command Sgt. Maj. Daniel Dailey, TRADOC command sergeant major; Lt. Gen. Robert Brown, Combined Arms Center commanding general; Maj. Gen. Bill Hix, TRADOC’s deputy director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center and Thomas Greco, TRADOC G-2 deputy chief of staff. The delegation also included leadership from the Maneuver, Fires, Sustainment, Maneuver Support, Aviation, Intelligence and Mission Command Centers of Excellence and selected school commandants.
Maj. Gen. Guy Zur, chief of the IDF Ground Forces, served as the Israeli head of delegation.
During his visit, Perkins conducted terrain walks in the Golan Heights, near the Lebanon and Syrian borders. The highlight was the historical brief by retired Brig. Gen. Avigdor Kahalani, one of the IDF’s most decorated heroes during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, who described the “Valley of Tears” tank battle against superior Syrian forces. Perkins noted the similar approaches both armies are pursuing in terms of anticipating the future operating environment and adapting and improvising in the face of asymmetric adversaries.
The IDF leaders also echoed during their briefings that these adversaries have not only learned to exploit tactical weakness, but operational and strategic weakness as well.
They see a combination of regular and irregular forces operating in complex terrain and leveraging innovative weapons and strategic communications to frustrate conventional armies. The human aspects of the operational environment give focus to leader development and mission command programs. Despite scope and scale, both armies will have to operate with fewer resources as they face similar challenges.
During discussions, Perkins defined the problem both armies have to address.
“How do you get better with fewer resources? And, if we have less, we need to identify what is essential and at what echelon we can accept the most risk,” he added.
Other key events included a field visit to the Gaza Division and a recently discovered tunnel complex. According to IDF leaders, the Gaza experience reinforces the need to address the challenge of operating in complex urban terrain.
During the visit, the “counterpart days” included tailored itineraries for center of excellence commanders and commandants, where counterparts shared their army’s respective approaches and lessons on a wide range of warfighting themes.
Perkins emphasized during the discussions that TRADOC values the partnership with IDF Ground Forces, and he believes the visit is valuable to the U.S. Army because it provides learning opportunities for commanders. For example, the lessons of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 helped shape thinking in doctrine and concepts then as the IDF’s lessons learned from current conflicts continue to shape thinking today.
The culminating plenary session focused on terrorism and guerilla warfare. IDF Ground Forces highlighted lessons learned on terrorism during briefings from Dr. Boaz Ganor, deputy dean of the Lauder School of Government and Diplomacy at the Interdisciplinary Center, and Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, IDF deputy chief of staff. Maj. Gen. William Hix, deputy director for ARCIC, focused his discussion on the U.S. Army’s Force 2025 and Beyond initiatives. The plenary session included mixed U.S. and IDF working group discussions on confronting combat challenges in 2025.
The session concluded with Perkins presenting the Meritorious Service Medal to Col. Amnon Meir for his service as the IDF liaison to TRADOC since 2011. Perkins highlighted Meir’s role in facilitating meaningful discussions on complex issues between the armies during his tenure. Meir’s replacement, Col. Guy Bitton, will arrive as the new IDF liaison officer to TRADOC in mid-July.
Perkins and Zur co-signed a memorandum codifying the next FBAT and the 2014-2015 CoE military-to-military agreed-to actions. The FBAT concluded with Perkins and Zur conducting wreath-laying ceremonies at the 9-11 Memorial and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.
Perkins said he looks forward to hosting his IDF Ground Forces counterpart in the U.S. next year for the 24th FBAT.
Lt. Gen. Robert B. Brown said training and educating Soldiers will be the keys to the Army’s future.
Brown, commanding general of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, delivered the keynote speech at the Training and Education 2025 and Beyond Industry Forum. The forum was held Wednesday and Thursday, here.
The forum provided industry representatives with an opportunity to understand the Army’s future needs so industry can provide the Army with the right tools to train and educate Soldiers. The event was hosted by the Combined Arms Center-Training, Fort Leavenworth.
Brown contrasted how the Army benefited in Desert Storm from the fielding of the Bradley, Abrams and Apache with the qualities the Army will need in 2025 and beyond.
“The majority of that (Desert Storm) effort was a revolution in big-ticket items,” Brown said. He acknowledged that development of network and cyber systems will be important, but not as critical as past materiel programs.
“They will not lead us,” he said. “What will lead us is the human dimension: how we train Soldiers, how we educate Soldiers and how we assess Soldiers to really optimize the human performance. Those areas will be absolutely keys for our revolution in the future.”
Yet some imperatives will remain constant.
“We need tough, realistic training,” Brown said. “That’s what saves lives.”
To prepare Soldiers, the Army is improving home station training through exercises that combine live, virtual and constructive training, Brown said. Panelists at the forum discussed how the Army is moving to enhance this type of training.
He said the Army must learn how to deliver training and educational materials at the point of need, which means making them accessible on mobile devices.
Brown compared how he learned as a young Soldier with how young Soldiers learn today. Brown said he relied on reading doctrine and field manuals.
To train and develop the next generation of Army leaders, the force has to use videos, podcasts, simulations, gaming and other innovations, he said.
At the forum, panelists discussed the Army’s efforts to deliver materials to Soldiers when and wherever they need them.
Brown urged industry representatives to design new systems that are easy to learn and easy to operate, which will allow Soldiers to focus on accomplishing the mission. This issue of trainability was the subject of another forum panel.
“If we work together,” Brown told the industry representatives. “We will get the right training and educational tools to remain the best Army in the world.”
TRADOC News 