Sam's post is also great and he's correct in that the Army has a tendency to adhere to "crawl, walk, run" at all costs without considering the fact that some can walk when they get there and some can even run (and that is particularly true at levels above entry -- how many in your Advanced course had already commanded companies...).

Addressing your comments in order of your two latest posts:

Yes, the training plates (plural) are only so big. The question to me is what is allocated to which plate. I suggest, for Officers, that the Basic courses are far too short and the Advanced courses (and CGSC) are far too long *. The same applies to NCOES which is largely seen a as a joke by most NCOs (that may have changed recently, I know they're trying to change it); initial entry training is too short and the levels of NCOES are all too long (and too garrison oriented). So the total plate allocation doesn't need to increase, nor do we need to pile much else on -- rather, we need to take some esoterica off -- we just need to tune the allocation between the plates.

* Shy Meyer tried to fix thatin the late 70s, the bureaucracy won.

Stability operations may or may not need to be on a par with other operations (whatever that means) the fact remains that the Army's primary mission is land warfare and keeping said Huns away from the gate. If the Army can do that, it is more than capable of adapting to other minor missions. As you say, predicting the future is a virtual impossibility and we should not waste time and effort trying to do so.

You say -- and I totally agree -- that we need to get comfortable accepting risk. That is a profound and important statement and our failure in ever increasing amounts over the last 30 plus years to be willing to do that is a large part of the problem. We have become a comfortable bureaucracy and we like it. That needs to change.

You correctly illustrate the conflicting demands of time in the unit versus time spent away in education or training -- and that is a knotty problem. I think there is no one answer or 'typical' set of answers. People vary; all do not absorb knowledge or skills at the same rate and thus each individual's path must vary. That is very difficult to accommodate but we should at least try; good leaders and commanders do that for their people -- but the institution does not try. It should.

Allied to that though is another time impact -- length of tours. If I had a nickel for every senior Officer I've heard say "...just about the time I learned what the job entailed and became effective, I moved..." I'd send you a whopping check to take the entire Kansas chapter of SWJ to KC for steaks and buckets of beer...

That needs a hard look. I've often said DOPMA is dangerous and I really believe that. A lot of congressionally imposed stuff to achieve "fairness" in promotions is antithetical to best military practice.

That brings up an aside of our penchant for adopting civilian education, training and management practices which should be totally stopped...

You say:
"I believe we can and should do better – there is room to be doing things smarter – but I also believe things are not as simple as identifying which things to make longer, or do away with – goes back to understanding the complex nature of war and the men and women we send to wage it in the ends/ways/means equation."
Couldn't agree more.

Going on to your next post, you suggest using contractors for training -- I agree that their use could and probably should be expanded but with the caveat that the majority need to be old retired heads and in uniform, ala Junior ROTC instructors.

Doctrine writers should be serving folks, period -- do not let a civilian, even one who's retired, anywhere near that. The folks that write it need to be the folks who are going to execute it, period.

You also said:
"The same can be said about levels of training – we were having a discussion the other day about levels of training for advisors. A sharp SNCO here said that what we might be wise to do is establish different levels of capability based on the amount of training or experiences an advisor had – and that by doing so we’d be capable of knowing what that guy could do. I thought it was a great idea – and its one we do in other areas. Another reason I thought it was great is I could see its utility to managing the training base and for planners trying to decide if a COA was feasible."
I thought that's what we did?

and:
"we’re back to tough choices."
Always been true and we have a bad tendency not to make those because we don't think it through and tend to take the easiest solutions. We like to avoid risk...