Steve,

The dynamic I advocate is parallel structural improvements in NCO ranks. It is not a question of over supervision. It is a question of experienced leadership that adds to the unit's collective experience. We suffer from a leader development model that keys on the individual; in consequence we develp very experienced leaders--who never (almost anyway) do the same job again. In contrast our units continually go through a cycle that brings in new leaders (officer and NCO). The unit learns and improves overtime and peaks at a certain stage--usually about the time the leadership starts preparing to move on. The cycle starts again. Unit stability efforts have helped somewhat but the cycle is still there.

We have compounded this cycle because we have altered the career paths of NCOs to where (unfortunately in my mind) the days of the platoon daddy with several years in that role is no more; they get 18 months or so and that's it. When you throw into that issue, the problems of NCO shortages--using fresh out of advanced training specialists as team leaders and even squad leaders we are back to the era of breaking the NCO corps.

But getting back to Nagl and ideas of adaptive leadership, the key to adaptive leadership is experience. You cannot train experience; you can train from experience. Adaptive leadership for inexperienced soldiers is a certain part smarts and a large part guessing. Adaptive leadership based on experience is infinitely preferable and certainly more survivable.

Much of our modeling of unit leadership requirements is industrial age thinking in that we structured our forces on a draftee military (or a huge influx of volunteers) and we expected largely to gain our experience the hard way by taking casualties. With certain exceptions (the airborne for one) infantry soldiers came from the pool of those without key skills.

We don't do that anymore; the very reason for the creation of the combat training center program was to gain our combat experience in training. It works but it still suffers from keeping the same model of leadership requirements that we had under the industrial age parameters.

We have to get past that---and current operations are driving us that way. There are limits to what you can train into a young soldier and expect him to retain. We hear the calls for language skills, cultural awareness, etc. None of those obviate the needs of tactical reality--like understanding how to best use an machine gun or operate an ever growing assortment of communications hardware and software.

Infantry soldiers are no longer "those not selected for something else." They and the other combat arms soldiers are the reason the Army and the Marines exist. if we are to truly achieve the concept of the "strategic corporal," we have to start reinforcing small unit leadership with greater experience levels.

Now I am gonna give my pet rock a rest

best
Tom