FORT RUCKER, Ala. — Fort Rucker’s U.S. Army Warrant Officer Career College hosted a U.S. Army Combined Arms Center mobile training team for a train-the-trainer event Dec. 2 on the Army’s new Field Manual 3-0 Operations.
The newest version of FM 3-0, published in October, establishes multidomain operations as the Army’s operational concept, according to Lt. Col. James Chester, Mission Command Center of Excellence Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Chester was one of the authors of the document and provided the training to USAWOCC and U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence personnel.
“We do introduce a new operational concept for the Army, multidomain operations, so that is a big change, but there is also a lot that is a deliberate carryover from previous doctrine,” Chester said. “If it was working and still applies, we kept it in there on purpose.”
Col. Kevin McHugh, USAWOCC commandant, described the event as a “phenomenal opportunity” for the college staff.
CAC’s MTTs have been conducting the training Army-wide via Teams and in-person sessions, and Fort Rucker is around the twentieth site the teams have spoken with so far. Chester emphasized that the training is important to ensuring Soldiers understand what FM 3-0 means to them and the Army.
“The chance to be able to dialogue and to have an actual conversation with the people who are going to implement this — the teachers, the training developers, the instructors — it’s an invaluable opportunity to have that actual discussion to make sure that we can answer their questions, to make sure that we can share the background things that they don’t necessarily get to if they’re only looking at a slide deck or reading an information paper,” Chester said. “The dialogue we have today will enable them to have that dialogue (with their students) when they need to — that is what makes this important.”
The CAC sending the team to Fort Rucker is invaluable, McHugh said, especially since the college is currently working on changing its curriculum throughout its various courses — from the warrant officer candidate school to intermediate, senior and master training for warrant officers.
“Warrant officers represent the technical experts, the subject matter experts, the integrators of systems, so we’re focusing in on five key core competencies,” the commandant said. “We’re focused on ensuring that our warrant officers for 2030 can effectively integrate, communicate, operate, lead and advise. We have to have these conversations about how doctrine is changing because it is evolving the changes that are in the operating force and how the Army is going to fight.”
This training is not the first step for USAWOCC in making adjustments for FM 3-0, McHugh said. The college launched its WOCS Version 19.2 curriculum, which includes some of what is in FM 3-0 even though the classes started prior to the document’s publication.
“We pulled from the draft because knew we were going that way, so (19.2) introduces some of the fundamentals,” he said. “This training today will now build on that. The next step for WOCS specifically is Version 20, which we will implement Oct. 1 for fiscal year 2024. We’re out to increase the academic rigor across all of the (programs of instruction) that we’re responsible for, and FM 3-0 is the foundational piece across all of them.”
FM 3-0 is a great example of a common core topic that applies to the entire Army, the commandant added.
“USAWOCC is working by, with and through all of the centers of excellence to establish the right common core at the right grade that is complimentary to the technical training that the COEs are responsible for,” McHugh said. “We’re focused on providing the Army with the most capable, technically trained and well-rounded warrant officer for the Army of 2030.”
Army FM 3-0 Operations is available through the Army Publishing Directorate.
Learn more about the Army of 2030.
Social Sharing