Back to the Future: Managing Training to "Win in a Complex World"

Training and leader development form the cornerstone of operational success.-Army Doctrine Reference Publication (ADRP) 7-0The importance of training-including training management-to the profession of arms is well established. Less clear is whether company and field grade officers, having served in regular deployments since 2001, can effectively plan, prepare, execute, and assess training using new information technology tools such as the Integrated Training Environment-a combination of live, virtual, constructive, and gaming training enablers that should create a realistic training environment.1 This system, expected to be fielded to all Army installations by 2020, provides an architecture that reduces the need for large, expensive, one-time field exercises. It helps commanders use their systems effectively and efficiently to conduct training.2 It also represents a cost-effective solution to replicate the complexity of future operations and achieve sustained readiness.Consistent with the Army's training heritage, platoon leaders through brigade training and operations officers must focus training on conducting mission-essential tasks in an environment characterized by innumerable threats and vulnerabilities. These officers must go back to the future and inculcate the counsel of past master trainers such as Gen. George C. Marshall. After serving as the assistant commandant of the Infantry School from 1927 to 1932, Marshall reflected that training officers must get down to the essentials, make clear the real difficulties, and expunge the bunk, complications, and ponderosities.3Given the undisputed importance of effective training, the purpose of this paper is to show that training management is as much a lost art as it will be the wave of the future. The 2014 Tl.S. Tirmy Operating Concept: Tl Win in a Complex did rid (U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command [TRADOC] Pamphlet 525-3-1) is predicated on striking the right balance between readiness and the pursuit of future capabilities.4 It is training and the management thereof, however, that senior leaders consistently say will ensure 'Army forces thrive in chaotic environments to prevent, shape, and win.5This discussion begins with an overview of how Army leaders conceive of training management and how training practitioners are conducting training amid austerity. Next, it addresses three factors contributing to a loss of training expertise among members of the company and field grade cohorts. Such introspection is difficult but necessary before Army leaders can address this problem. Finally, the article argues that it is up to senior leaders to set the conditions for company and field grade officers to gain training expertise. Through leader development, senior leaders can restore training management competency across a generation of subordinate Army leaders and align resources against requirements.How Does the Army Manage Training During Austerity?Because of sequestration, as well as a concurrent loss of training management expertise, planners are investigating how to achieve sustained readiness using fewer resources. Such study is increasingly important given that Army force generation (ARFORGEN) has outlasted its usefulness, according to senior leaders such as Maj. Gen. Terry Ferrell, commander of the 7th Infantry Division at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM).6The ARFORGEN rotational cycle represents a byproduct of the Army's counterinsurgency strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan. It facilitated unit readiness over time, resulting in recurring periods of availability of trained, ready, and cohesive units.7 Deploying units were certified through exercises at one of three combat training centers (CTCs): the Joint Multinational Readiness Center (Hohenfels, Germany), the Joint Readiness Center (Fort Polk, La.), and the National Training Center (Fort Irwin, Calif.). Spending caps, the reduction in force, and an international landscape fraught with human security challenges-such as Japan's triple disaster in 2011-have influenced innovative approaches to home-station training during a time of ARFORGEN's waning relevance. …