Military Times: Army leaders want soldiers to write about the issues facing the force
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Military Times: Army leaders want soldiers to write about the issues facing the force
Yesterday, Military Times’ Todd South reported on how the Army is reviving its focus on professional writing, encouraging all ranks to contribute throughout their careers to the ongoing discourse on soldiering and how the service can adapt to changing times. The article includes great quotes from senior leaders like General Brito, the Commander of Training and Doctrine Command, and Lieutenant General Beagle, the commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth.
Take a look.
I'm glad that we are doing this.
But... how can we expect the current officer and NCO corps, after decades and decades of bureaucratization and managerialism, to write in any serious way on equipment, tactics, and strategy? I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say that a good three-quarters of infantry officers I knew had a sub-par grasp of the basic doctrine they were /expected/ to know, and I wouldn't expect them to be able to contribute meaningfully to a critical-thoughts discussion on the state of modern war.
The Army has a serious problem with its institutional education, both for NCOs and Officers. Unless we get a better handle on how to recruit, select, and train quality NCOs and officers with a focus on merit-based promotions, and escape the corporatized structure of the modern military career, having the best of our NCOs and officers writing and publishing their thoughts won't make much of a difference on the Army as a whole; mostly, that is, because officers and NCOs by-and-large aren't inclined to become scholars of warfare in the first place. Field-grade and general officers writing about these things won't matter if they aren't testing, poking, and prodding their junior officers and company commanders to think in this way. As we've learned recently, the quality and competency of lower leaders will matter more than ever before in the next fight. These lessons will not matter until it becomes a requirement to know them (and to be able to think and write on them at length) in order to get that next promotion.