Training Balance: Full Spectrum Operations for 21st Century Challenges

The purpose of this monograph is to evaluate training balance in the United States Army at the brigade combat team level in order to determine if our current training strategy is properly balanced. The work began by examining the National Security Strategy and supporting primary source documents to determine if the Army's training strategy was adequately preparing it for all of the potential requirements. Second this study examined the doctrine of full spectrum operations in order to fully understand it as a lens to measure training balance. Third this paper examined the current and projected Army force levels to determine the impact on the ability to balance training. Finally, this study examined the Army's training strategy focusing primarily on post 9-11 operations at the National Training Center to determine if it adequately trained full spectrum operations. The monograph provides a synthesis of multiple types of references in order to accurately analyze training balance in the Army. Government sources include the major security strategies of the United States to include the 2006 National Security Strategy, 2004 National Military Strategy, and 2005 National Defense Strategy. Additionally this study incorporated relevant data from the Army's 2007 Posture Statement, and 2007 Army Modernization Plan. The work relied heavily on articles written by senior leaders in military journals. These articles provided key insights from the Army senior leader perspective on the status and future of training at the BCT level. An interview with a former senior observer controller from the National Training Center was conducted to receive insight from an experienced senior leader recently assigned to the NTC. This paper concludes that the Army's training strategy is not balanced. Deployment cycles for brigade combat teams (BCTs) coupled with current force structure shortages caused an imbalance in Army training. Brigade combat teams are forced to weight training heavily in favor of stability and reconstruction operations. The BCTs weight training in favor of stability and reconstruction operations because these are the missions they are required to execute in Iraq and Afghanistan. The NTC focuses primarily on stability and reconstruction missions in order to prepare BCTs for the rigor of stability and reconstruction operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This weighting at the lower end of the spectrum of conflict comes at the cost of training in the traditional areas of offensive and defensive operations. Without being fully trained in offensive and defensive missions BCT training is unbalanced.