Military and students? A reflection on the initial formation of Army officers

In December 2017, the Strategic Studies Institute the US Army War College has published a last volume¹, a series of monographs focused on the examination of the development of the formation of Army officers that lays the foundation for a profound revision of the basic and advanced training program, in order to respond to changing needs.

There is no doubt that the subject is very topical not only for the US Armed Forces but also for the national ones. In fact, if the question to be answered remains: "how to train officers able to operate in future operational scenarios?", The answer must take into account the changing characteristics of these contexts.

The training need

From this point of view, while taking into account the uncertainty that characterizes the future, we have some interesting references to the doctrinal publications and the development of defense capabilities that can help us to establish certain points.

The first document that helps us to determine the characteristics of future operational scenarios is the SMD - CID Capstone Concept 001: "Military Implications of the Future Operating Environment"² which defines, in part II, the operating environments as complex, congested and connected and which in the annexes provides more details regarding both the future shocks (understood as strategic accelerators) both in terms of the concept of cross domain synergy, prefiguring the complementary rather than additive use of certain capacities in different domains (terrestrial, maritime, air, space and cybernetic), in such a way as to increase the overall capacity and compensate for the weaknesses of the others.

The second document of great interest is the PID / S1 Publication of the SMD - CID: "The Italian Military Doctrine"³ that to Chapter V in defining the Armed Forces as a "system", highlights the need for the Cultural and Learning sub-system (deputy, therefore, also for the development of the Identified Lectures / Learned Lessons cycle) to play its role with particular emphasis to the development of the Military Force of the future.

The combination of the characteristics of the "possible future" with the productive features of the Cultural and Learning subsystem leads us to be able to say that future Army officers will have to know how to operate within complexes of forces joint distinguished by a high technological level, in complex contexts in which there are no solutions prefigured even from a doctrinal point of view. The officers of the future will therefore have to be able to identify solutions to military problems (of action and not) that not only do not have standardizable features, but, on the contrary, will be strongly evolving, in hybrid contexts in which the military activities will be increasingly mixed with those of multiple players in the international strategic scene.

Which selection to adopt?

In light of what has just been said, even before identifying a possible structuring of training, we must ask ourselves what are the characteristics to be sought in the aspiring officers. The training, in fact, will have to exploit the potentials of each individual aspirant, channeling them into the process of forming the official future, but in order to do so it needs to start from a hard core in terms of cultural base and individual cognitive abilities.

In particular, the basic cultural level to be ascertained must be aimed primarily at the sector that the Anglo-Saxons call STEM, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. A preparation that is not only predominantly scientific but with an aptitude for research and experimentation.

Why is the preparation and the STEM approach so important? It is because any officer, abandoned the desks of the Basic Training Institutes, will find himself operating in highly digitalized units equipped with technologically advanced means. Until ten years ago, to find such a level of technological complexity it was necessary to climb up to the Division or Army Corps level. Now it's not like that anymore. The officers will have to operate more and more in environments decentralized and dispersed, in which the enemy is also connected and knows / uses advanced means of contrasting the electromagnetic and cybernetic space. The officer also at the level of minor units must be able to interact with the specialists under his control. Personnel who by definition of specialization is, by definition, able to cope only with standardized problems or in any case related to them. The officer will, in some situations, find himself only in taking operational decisions that require high technical and scientific knowledge.

This type of preparation will then be extremely useful also during the performance of staff functions that - in fact - constitute the predominant part of an officer's career. For this reason, it is also necessary to define the minimum level of STEM preparation that the aspiring officers will have to possess. Is that provided by the Higher Middle Schools sufficient? In light of the evolution of the national scholastic world, the answer could be negative.

The second element to be sought out in the aspirants are cognitive abilities⁴, in order to select those people in possession, not only of an excellent STEM preparation, but also with greater ability to problem solving and the adaptive spirit, the only one that will ultimately allow to operate in the complex operating environment of the future (uncertain by definition), when, in other words, the possible future (long-term capacity planning hypothesis) will be transformed into the present.

Which training to choose?

The initial formation of an officer (Academy and School of Application, for the Army) aims to build the hard core of military skills that must allow the officer to be included in the military world and face the continuation of his career, with reference not only to the lower grades, given that the advanced and higher training provides additional packages of skills that, among other things, are not intended for everyone (see preparation at ISSMI and IASD).

Having introduced the need to develop military "attitudes", it is necessary to recall the so-called pyramid of competence as developed during the late Renaissance. In particular, the three fundamental areas that make up the vertices of the aforementioned pyramid are:

• know (savoir): this is the area that is easier to define because to the individual knowledge it is necessary to add further useful notions to allow its insertion into the military life and in the functions that it will have to perform after passing the initial training cycle;

• know-how (savoir faire): as in all professions, the acquisition of skills in this specific sector will not be easy, since the official student must not only acquire skills in carrying out the tasks as a military, but also those relating to his future status as commander of men. For this reason, and to avoid breakdowns in the chain of trust existing between captains and employees, it seems appropriate to rethink the placement of the officer just released by the Training Institutes. To become good commanders you need to be able to build your own progressively expertise. The step of the Command of unity at the platoon level is certainly an excellent way to build, on a solid basis, the future classes of commanders, focusing on the construction of the leadership and not on management which primary function;

• know how to be (savoir êtking): it is another area of ​​difficult development but it is also fundamental for the development of individuals destined to make choices that affect the lives of thousands of people, in the final analysis, both in operations and in activities in operational stasis. Knowing how to be is seen as the ability to develop actions and / or reactions appropriate to the context in which we find ourselves. It assumes, of course, excellent skills in the two areas mentioned above, but also an extraordinary understanding of the environment in which you are immersed, operating or not. The development of this area is fundamental during the initial training if you do not want to run the risk of undermining the validity of the whole training. For this reason, the publication of the SMD PID-O8 (Military Training - Vol. I) cites this area as vital for a correct training process.

In this sense, during the initial training, it is necessary:

• increase the STEM preparation with particular reference to the specialized sector in which the officer must express his professionalism. To think that an artillery, genius or infantry officer must attend the same training process and acquire, roughly, the same skills is devoid of logic. Weapons and specialties exist in all armies as they are designed to express highly specialized sectors in the tactical field (and now also strategic / operational). In the light of the choices made in the past in terms of eliminating the peculiarities provided by the Consolidated Law on Higher Education⁵ in favor of the Weapons Application Schools, the initial training cycle must lead to the acquisition of an enabling qualification for the purpose of developing their skills, taking into account that further objectives can be achieved through advanced training;

• increase cognitive skills with particular reference, but not only, to the solution of non-standardized problems. In operations, the intervention of the officer will prove conclusive only if he / she will be able to face the events even with solutions not referable to predefined tactical or technical schemes. In analogy with what happens in the world of civil work, the standardized problems fall within the skills and professional profiles of the experts or of the three-year degree holders. The problems that can not be standardized can only be tackled by those with higher technical-scientific skills, that is, by master's degree holders. An officer, during his career must be able to count on similar skills and not for the mere access to the management;

• instilling in the future officers a "push and tray" mentality that favors and rewards those who assume, in operations such as in life in "operational stasis", the responsibilities and risks calculated for the accomplishment of the mission. It is absolutely necessary to deny any space to people "devoted" to zero-defects mentality⁶ which tends to block and entangle every action following interpretations in a restrictive sense of the law or of the tactical / working situation;

• teach the "Mission Command" methodology⁷ (in parallel with the Battle Command) highlighting its validity in ensuring the execution of the mission in the modern operational scenarios. At the same time, the negativity of the "Detailed Command" approach that has been so successful and has had in the most bureaucratic staff must be highlighted;

• provide the tools to ensure the correct management of human resources that are certainly the most precious component of the FA. It is also necessary to approach the methodology of the talent management to highlight the importance of the proper development and enhancement of the skills and specializations of the personnel that future officers will have to their dependences, without forgetting, obviously, those notions that will allow the officer to work well in positions immediately after leaving the institutes initial formation but that must be seen as a sort of "complement" and not the core of the formation.

Conclusions

In short, there are:

• considerable room for maneuver to select among the aspiring officers people with greater potential not only in technical and scientific terms but above all on the basis of the predisposition to adapt to situations and contexts that are, at the time of recruitment, largely unforeseeable. In the 2018 will be selected those who will command the regiment in the decade 2040 - 2050. Despite all the hypotheses that continue to develop about possible future, no one is able to say exactly what will be a regiment in the 2050, which weapons systems will have and which combat techniques will be used. One thing, however, is certain, only those who know how to adapt, following trends, and will have a strong innovative spirit will know how to operate correctly in that context;

• also of certainties. Whatever the characteristics of the scenarios and the society of the future, the official students who successfully pass the initial training iter will have enormous responsibilities towards both the personnel employed by them - as commanders - and the decision makers of the moment, in how much staff officers. The competence that they will have to express, together with the trust and charism that they will have to emanate, begins to be created through a selection and an educational process that are exclusively dedicated to the formation of future Leaders and not merely to the research of abstract qualifications or the same abstract rankings of merit.

Much has been done over the years to go against the needs of the FA to have leaders in step with the times, but much remains to be done. Obviously, the rethinking of the Initial Formation must be accompanied by a similar process in favor of the superior / advanced formation, without omitting a profound reflection on the selection and characteristics of the tutors and of military and civil teachers. Even in disciplines that we could consider "mature" it is far from easy to find teachers who can transmit the right "knowledge" and the right "know how" applied to combat, where conditions are determined that are much more burdensome than those conceivable in the development of activities. labor / industrial.

With this reflection we wanted to focus on some of the aspects of the selection and the formative process that should be taken into account to equip the commanders of the future with the tools that will allow them to be well represented in the complex national and international panorama in which they will operate, with the hope of being able to integrate these initial elements with further reflections on the whole training system.

Gen. Mario Ruggiero