I guess overall what I'm concerned with is that the list of skill sets needed by almost every level of leader/soldier to face new enemies on new battlefields points to a significant increase education to help them become the experts we need them to be. These will compete with the many other things we need them to do which cover the gamut of individual, leader and collective tasks. However, the quality of recruit (officer or enlisted) is roughly the same as 6 years ago, he is drawn from basically the same segment of society for whatever reasons he traditionally has been. While POIs/Curricula have been changed to account for changes in the operating environment, and while threats have been prioritized at different levels – from training for a deployment 1 year out to the likelihood of threats outlined in the US National Security Strategy – there is still the issue of time to train/time to prepare in an OPTEMPO that creates rigorous demands on Force Providers.

Much has been said and written about the attributes we need in this era of enemies who seem to come and go as they please in alien cultures, hostile populations who have agendas and desires we can often not comprehend, and operating in environments where subtle hints can save your life and the lives of your men (or women). These skills are not cheap. You either pay to develop them during the deployment, you develop them beforehand, or better yet you have a culture where these skills are inculcated from inception and grown throughout. Somewhere in there you have to apply resources. It is easier if you start with the best talent. It is also easier if you have talent spread throughout the organization allowing for a kind of osmosis effect. Barring that, you have to dedicate the resources to build your own. The buzz phrase is “everyone a Pentathlete”. How many pentathletes do most of us know or have even met? I have personally known some guys that awed me in almost every regard that could either be classified pentathlete, or mutant. I can count them on two hands – they were all either senior E-8s (one was a fantastic E-7) on the enlisted side, or remarkable O5s and above on the officer side. Why is that? What does it take to build an Army of pentathletes? Figure out first what it takes to build one.

I want us to succeed in efforts to realize our vision of the type of leaders & soldiers we need, but I believe the expectations do not match the resources being applied to get us there. My own experience with education is that it does not really become tacit knowledge until I can apply it to future challenges and until I’ve had a chance to pullback and review it while not engaged in some other absorbing tasks with the added responsibilities brought on by leadership. That may be just me, but I think that the reason we’ve had such success with the military’s OES and NCOES is that at different times officers and NCOs would attend their schools, be with peers where they could share experiences that helped them negotiate a POI that prepared them for the next set of responsibilities they would take on with higher rank. Since we are general purpose force that covers the possibilities of HIC to COIN to disaster relief, the POI itself is diffused by virtue of the self imposed requirements to expose leaders to the challenges they will face. Yes we concentrate on providing the context which focuses on building leadership, but you can’t part completely with the specific technical requirements either – how long does it take to learn a language, gain an understanding of local economics, an understanding of agriculture, of local government, of the equipping and training of a foreign security force which mirrors their specific enemy, of dealing with inter-agency types that may not share your goals or drive to name a few? Pentahlete may be an inadequate descritpion.