There are few things more challenging for the Army than being ready to fight today while simultaneously preparing for an unpredictable, constantly changing future. The evidence of these two competing requirements is all around us, as the Army works to regain combined arms maneuver proficiency after its focus on counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the while remaining heavily engaged in both of those places and several others besides. The inherent tension between present requirements and future demands is very real. We continue to fight with aging equipment while technology rapidly advances and declining budgets hamper our attempts to modernize. While we balance future requirements against current readiness, the world gets more unstable as our competitors focus on ways to develop regional advantages by increasing their own military capabilities. In a world filled with risk, however, our fellow citizens expect their Army to be ready to fight and win at any time, whether today or 25 years from now. Meeting these expectations is TRADOC's primary mission.
THE FUTURE
TRADOC thinks about the future in ways informed by past experience, but is not captive to it. Moreover, knowing that any unwise investments in our people, organizations, or material are not easily reversed requires that we expend tremendous time and effort on better understanding the future environment, so as to clearly identify the myriad challenges we will one-day confront. TRADOC's unique capacity to provide context and perspective on these challenges gives us a crucial role in thinking through the long term effects of today's decisions, as well as helping the CSA and Army Staff balance current readiness with future force requirements.
TRADOC takes a balanced approach to the demands of today and tomorrow, continuing to provide readiness today while preparing the future Army to win decades from now. We do this job in the full realization that any moment our Army must be ready to act anywhere on the globe, across the entire range of military operations. Our perspective, therefore, must be equally broad. Getting the big issues 'about right' prevents us from making mistakes from which we cannot easily recover. Our approach maximizes options and flexibility for our civilian leadership, ensuring we can adapt for success in a world full of surprises. There are many ways TRADOC does this right now. One of these is by ensuring we have the right doctrine for the operational environments in which we expect to fight.
TRADOC is revising ADP 3-0, and FM 3-0 to ensure the Army is prepared to win in an unpredictable, constantly changing world. One of the big ideas we are exploring is the operational concept of Multi-Domain Battle, which recognizes the inherently joint requirements of the interconnected air, land, maritime, space, and cyber domains. The Army must aggressively operate in all of those domains if we are going to play a significant role enabling joint combined arms maneuver. Put simply, Army forces will maneuver to positions of relative advantage and project power across all domains to ensure Joint Force freedom of action. We will do this by integrating joint, inter-organizational, and multi-national capabilities to create windows of domain superiority to enable Joint Force freedom of maneuver. Joint Force Commanders will then exploit those windows of superiority by synchronizing cross domain fires and maneuver to achieve physical, temporal, positional, and psychological advantages.
Army forces serving as part of the land component will set conditions for air, maritime, space, and cyber operations, while operators in those domains will do the same for land forces. The interconnected nature of the world demands interconnected, joint solutions that create multiple dilemmas for enemies focused on single solutions like anti-access area denial (A2AD) or elaborate integrated air defense systems (IADS). While no other armed forces 'do joint' like we do, there is always room for improvement. Multi-Domain Battle will make us even more effective, with the added benefit of increasing our ability to deliver deterrence with conventional forces. In the long run, we'll need to design a force optimized for such operations.
DESIGN THE FUTURE ARMY
As the architect of the Army, TRADOC is tasked with envisaging the future environment so as to identify capability gaps, analyze potential solutions, and then determine requirements. To assist in this task we introduced the Army Warfighting Challenges (AWFC) as part of the Army Operating Concept (AOC) in 2014. The AWFC provides an analytical starting point that acts as a forcing mechanism for an integrated, broad based approach to our future force development. As such, the AWFC is helping us focus on the "big" problems the Army needs to solve.
To ensure we are developing coordinated and effective solutions, we are also employing every part of our army - across all three components -- to help solve them. As leaders take on the task working through issues affecting readiness, modernization, and leader development we are encouraging them to use the Think -- Learn -- Analyze -- Implement paradigm. Such an approach helps structure our thinking and make the best use of scarce resources - particularly time. As a result of this methodology, and by placing an emphasis on completing the learning and analysis well before implementation, we are finding out what works and will not work early in the development process. In effect, the Army is learning that if something is not going to work it is best to "fail fast and cheap." By avoiding the slow, expensive failures of the past we are saving money and time, but most importantly hastening the process whereupon improved systems and doctrine are finding their way to the field.
To help us build the future Army, TRADOC is managing a collaborative effort across the operating and generating forces, the joint community, industry, and academia. Together, we are moving forward on overcoming the capabilities gaps already revealed by ongoing analysis of the warfighting challenges. This is, of course, a dynamic process, and TRADOC is continuously updating force development plans as resources, threats, and technologies change. Moreover, we are employing new learning activities, such as the Army Warfighting Assessment (AWA), Pacific Pathways, and the New Generation Warfare Study, as well as previously existing events like Unified Quest, Unified Challenge, and the Network Integration Evaluation to generate analysis informed by realistic environments.
The AWA provides a demanding environment in which Army units can test proposed solutions to the Army Warfighting Challenges on a scale not easily replicated anywhere else. Pacific Pathways, an extension of the AWA conducted by US Army Pacific, assesses our capabilities within the framework of the AOC in the PACOM area of responsibility. Future AWAs will continue to develop solutions to the Army Warfighting Challenges, as well as the concerns of our Army Service Component Commands.
To lend structure to this enterprise, the capabilities required by the future force are being binned into categories -- The Big 6 Plus 1 Capabilities. It is crucial to note that these proposed capabilities enhancements are not centered on materiel or the acquisition of new systems. Rather, they require input from across the DOTMLPF as part of a comprehensive strategy. Two recent examples of our new approach are our ongoing collaboration with joint partners on the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Strategy, and the Combat Vehicle Modernization Strategy (CVMS). It is important to remember, however, that balancing readiness and building the future force requires more than good equipment. It requires the right people.
ACCESS THE ARMY
U.S Army Recruiting Command and U.S. Army Cadet Command continue to provide the Army its most precious resource -- people. To ensure that this invaluable resource is prepared for the challenges ahead, as well as to adapt the force to the opening of all combat arms jobs to women, TRADOC instituted the Soldier 2020 initiative. The cornerstone of this initiative is a gender neutral "Occupational Physical Assessment Test" (OPAT) developed by TRADOC's Center for Initial Military Training (CIMT). This test assesses a recruit's physical fitness prior to initial military training and, when coupled with a recruit or candidate's General Technical (GT) score, allows the Army to "best match" the right person to the right job. Our goal is to reduce attrition, as well as improve the success rate of new Soldiers - regardless of gender - by ensuring they can perform the physical and mental tasks associated with their job.
This year the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) celebrated its 100th birthday. During the century of its existence ROTC has commissioned over one million officers for the US Armed Forces. As ROTC continues to evolve, Cadet Command is enacting initiatives that are improving officer quality, while strengthening our partnerships with the 275 colleges and universities that host ROTC programs. In the forefront of its evolution is the Cadet Character Leader Development Strategy. This strategy is based on a new curriculum and a revised Cadet Summer Training methodology, which employs advanced educational methods designed to prepare cadets for the challenges of an increasingly complex world.
TRAIN AND EDUCATE THE ARMY
All Soldiers and officers entering the Army attend initial military training at one of eight centers of excellence across the Army under the direction of CIMT. Here they undergo CIMT's recently revised (2015) Basic Combat Training Program. While all that was good in the original training program remains, CIMT has placed additional focus on Army Values, the Profession of Arms, adaptability, and the employment of a more holistic approach to health and fitness. Not resting on its laurels, CIMT is also in the developmental stage of a Combat Readiness Test (CRT) that will assess Soldiers' physical ability to execute the mission essential tasks associated with their duty position.
CIMT is also dealing with the fact that the already significant cognitive demands placed on Soldiers is increasing across the range of military operations. Unfortunately, training methods and experiences from previous conflicts alone will not adequately prepare the Army for success in the emerging security environment. As such we are concentrating on three items to mitigate future risk: leader development, institutional agility, and realistic training.
Leader Development -- If people are going to continue as our asymmetrical advantage, then leader development must remain the Army's core task. Through the Army Leader Development Strategy and Army Leadership Requirements Model, TRADOC has charted the course. To make it work we all must take passionate ownership of leader development at every level from general officer to sergeant. To help leaders, who remain responsible for subordinate development, the Center for Army Leadership (CAL) is exploring ways to improve the tools associated with the Leader360, Unit360, and the Leader Behavior Scale 2.0. The results from this study will be used to enhance the quality of feedback provided through the Multi Source Assessment and Feedback (MSAF) model.
Institutional Agility - In addition to changes in training and education programs, we are also making Army Doctrine more dynamic. By sharing knowledge between the Army's operating and generating forces, particularly through our centers of excellence, TRADOC is accelerating the incorporation into doctrine of lessons learned, changes in the operational environment, force structure modifications, technology advancements, and changing social mores. Moreover, as a result of improvements in our mechanisms for refinement and feedback we are also getting better at capturing the essential information necessary for keeping our doctrine relevant.
Realistic Training -- TRADOC will continue to make training across the Total Army more realistic, using organizations designed for that very purpose. The Center for Army Lessons Learned and the Asymmetric Warfare Group collect the most recent information available from operations around the world and share them rapidly across the Force as individual products and through the Centers of Excellence that touch all parts of the Army. TRADOC, via the Combined Arms Center-Training Directorate, will continue to provide the training aids, simulations, and other forms of support to the operational force necessary for the kind of training necessary to win in the unforgiving crucible of land combat. Much, if not most of TRADOC is engaged in generating realistic training every single day.
Contributing readiness and preparing the Army for the future is what TRADOC is for. By designing, accessing, training, and constantly improving our Army, TRADOC is purpose built to create readiness today while preparing our Army for the unpredictable, and constantly changing future.
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