Quote Originally Posted by Bill Jakola View Post
however, leadership is within our grasp; and, well developed leaders can overcome systemic short commings.
Bill, isn't that shortcutting the system? Yes, good leaders will essentially circumvent a system that is not working properly but at their risk, not the organisation's and in fact have done so for decades. Surely if TRADOC recognises that there are things that desperately need fixing, then it should be looking to fix them and not be slapping on a band-aid?

I've only just downloaded the ALDS document and had a quick read through it. My first reaction is that this has come from the side of TRADOC that specialises in buzzword bingo and not simple soldier speak - that same folks who brought us the draft ACC and Pam 525-5-500 to name a couple - great ideas in them but they have to be sifted out of wordy and cumbersome prose.

It's been my experience that leadership is not something you develop in a classroom - it is something that is developed and nutured but getting out and doing. This includes, as has already been mentioned, senior staff getting out and doing as well - possibly at the expense of their doctoral studies. There are some good points on this raised in the PME thread. There is a danger than in trying to learn and adapt we are leaning way to far towards corporate structures that might be all very nice in peacetime, save bucks, and look great in doctoral theses but which actually do little to develop and maintain capabilities.

Twenty years ago, we had an Army where the soldiers did not have many tranferable skills, qualifications or certifications (all the stuff that looks good on a CV) but they had an incredibly high level of practical soldier skills. Pretty well every soldier was not just trained but also able to think on their feet, make decisions and assume responsibility if Plan A went a bit awry on their watch. They didn't get this way by sitting in a classroom, or painting rocks - they got that way because they trained, trained and trained, normally under the junior leaders.

In the wave of AARs after the end of the warfighting phase of OIF, I remember reading an extract from a colonel's debrief - of course, Murphy's Law says I could never find it again but it went something like:

“…never again will we do admin moves from our home base to training locations. From now on, when we roll out the gate at home, we will be gunned up, no one sitting back reading their book or focussed on their Walkman or Gameboy, and moving tactically all the way. When we get to a overpass or chokepoint, we’ll dismount, go forward and clear it just as we’ve learned to do here [Iraq]. Sure, it might takes a day or two to make the move, and we’ll have to do a lot of coord with the towns we move through, local police, Highway Patrol, etc but that’s what we need to do anyway. And, every once in a while there’ll be an incident along the way that we’ll have to do deal with – it might not be an attack or an IED, it might be a pregnant lady on the side of the road…”

I think the message was something like training as you fight...if you want to introduce complexity and incertaintly into training, rather than an artifical training environment, as much as possible take the raining out to 'the people' - that'll introduce enough complexity and uncertainty to lay a firm foundation for doing that training that has to be done in a close environment. Get your people out into other environments, the more varied and uncomfortable/challenging the better...

As an outsider looking in, I think that perhaps the US Army has cracked this one more than it realises yet, maybe there is a lag between new doctrine coming onlien and its implementation but the new FM 7-0, -15 and -1 (when it comes out) are great, more so when combined with the frameworks in the SMCT series. Why? Because they focus on the essentials, they are easy to read and they make sense....