New Fighting Skills in a War - Essay Sample

Introduction

Evolution in people and technology has brought about new fighting skills in a war. There is a difference in information and skills between the new Noncommissioned Officers (NCO), and its future wants. The paper will attempt to define the NCO Strategy and how it is crucial. It will seek to explain why NCO Strategy was formed, the results, and the duty the NCO Strategy has to achieve. This paper focuses on the entire work and the intentions before focusing on the three lines of effort. The three lines of effort are; development, talent management, and stewardship of the profession. This review will expound on the Future Operational Environment (OE) and identify the cognitive strengths required to equip the Noncommission officer corps for 2020 and the future.

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Noncommissioned Officer Education System

It seeks to model the Noncommissioned Officer Education System (NCOs) to be analyzed based on the educational model, against current Army concepts, frameworks, and a change to a modernized Noncommission (NCO) professional development system (Calton, 2018). Strategic choices decided by the NCOs may, at times, influence the strategic planning, in which the education systems do not offer NCOs to think strategically. The new Army model should provide soldiers with adaptive skills, upgrade the professionalism of the NCOs, and upgrade the training and the competency in NCO leader development.

A review of the Army strategy pictured the operation environment and the future compact defined how to prepare the Noncommissions for 2020 and the future. The next task was to understand how to prepare them. The center of army leadership seeks to develop the new learning model by incorporating technology on it without living the set measures that can produce trusted, demanding, and necessary education for all soldiers (Bourque et al., 2014). It plans to provide continuous learning from when the soldier joins the force to the time of retirement. For a more positive outcome, the Army should make sure that it gives education to all personnel or the Noncommission officers (NCOs) in the right program at a particular time.

Hardship Areas

Hardship areas are shaped by various actors, threats, and challenging circumstances. It is driven by technology in an information century where adversaries are equipped with good communication and can adjust their planning. The presence of new technology will reduce soldiers’ advantage over the enemy in communication and weapons. Technological advances have made the Army make investments in research and developments to stay ahead of the enemy. The Army needs to invest heavily to overcome the challenges.

The saying that the pen is mightier than the sword is not an excuse for reduced training. Still, it means that there should be increased tactics through training, agile, flexible, and creative thinking NCOs can work under the Army mission command philosophy. The current military systems focus on training and achieving lower levels of cognition. To ensure more prepared NCOs that can blend with environments and conflicts, the Army should increase education’s cognitive rigor.

The military has made it sure that the NCOs attend educational courses at a certain point in a career; they created the Select, Train, Educate, and Promote (STEP) program. This program makes it mandatory for forces leaders to ensure that all NCOs undergo training at a particular time for a specific course. The new NCOER is divided into three categories based on ranks. Sergeants receive a direct report, Staff Sergeants through a Master Sergeant receive an organizational level report, and the Sergeant Major receives a strategic level report. The Noncommission officers (NCOs)’ critical thinking skills (NCOs), the New Noncommission Evaluation Report (NCOER) do not emphasize its importance. The reports are different based on what it is contained on it and who it is addressed to. The best and essential place to make education and critical thinking skills is the NCOER. The structure level report is an organizational system regarding the Army leadership Doctrine, without thinking strategically.

Comprehensive Future Development

The new comprehensive future development provides an adaptable and resilient Noncommission Corps with training and leading soldiers in an unknown and hostile environment. It incorporates the Army’s Human Dimension Concept, which illustrates Human Dimension as the cognitive, physical, and social components of a soldier, Army civilian, leader, and organizational development and functions to nature, prepare, and deploy the Army differently land missions (Prewitt, 2020). Besides, the Non-commission Officer professional development seeks to improve soldier efficiency by applying knowledge, skills, and new technologies to improve the fighting capability.

Professional military training, development, and education of the Army personnel are created to instill military men’s leadership skills. It builds leaders based on education and training before achieving any rank or duty that needs specific knowledge. Noncommissioned officers go through training and education before they are given leadership positions. Education enhances them with goals and readiness for NCOs to win future battles with new technological skills.

The Non-commission Officer should be able to understand the present and future operating areas. Environments are dynamic, and so should the NCOs be. NCOs should be ready to operate in an unfriendly environment and improve their existing environmental abilities (Calton, 2018). For better combat results, it needs proper schooling to think strategically and understand the existing challenges using different tactics and operation choices, which could have setbacks. Because of the highly volatile and hostile environments, Noncommission Officers should be equipped with the necessary skills to use while in operations and camouflage in that environment. To meet these demands, the Army Human Dimension Concept clearly illustrates the importance of army leaders to receive special education in a future war.

To ensure that the Army produces well-rounded personnel, it can cultivate the new generation familiarizing themselves with computers. They could deliver a well-structured format allowing the institution to increase the quality of instructions while reducing the cost. To be a soldier, it has to participate in teamwork, problem-solving, negotiation skills, facilitators, and mentors, not in virtual reality (Robinson et al., 2014). As the Army progress forward, it should invest in education. Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan give a good expel of how the Noncommissioned soldiers applied strategic thinking skills. Also, in extremely hostile places like Somalia, Panama, and Kosovo, the NCOs used school skills to improve their operation and adapt quickly based on the area’s shortcomings. The certainty of tomorrow requires leaders who can think strategically, innovate, and operate and strive in a strange and chaotic environment.

Recommendation

The military needs a well-defined foundation to school the Noncommissioned Officers (NCOs) to think strategically. The framework of the Noncommissioned Officers clearly states professional skills of how the NCOs should think strategically. The professional military education structure also depicts the overall desired duties for each course undertaken, considering Bloom’s Taxonomy. Thirdly, within the professional military course work, each cognition level is well defined and the necessary cognition regarding Bloom’s cognitive levels.

The recommendations are acceptable by the senior military leaders, specifically the army chief of staff and the sergeant major, giving timely and explicit instruction on the way forward. Lack of clear proper guidelines will lead to the poor performance of the NCOs’ corps. The critical factor, therefore, lies with critical and competency skills in the military. Any misunderstanding of the framework can result in low Army culture. Also, if the NCO corp’s critical thinking and innovation skills are required, the evaluation test for every NCO should be considered to ascertain its progress (Wisecarver et al., 2020). Human Resource command can help to recommend through taking a survey on NCOER. The survey will require participation from all military members. Once the survey is concluded, the Human Resource Command will analyze and give the Sergeant Major information and solutions.

Channeling professional education through the new Non-commission Officer Report (NCOER) is crucial because it needs a small team and a given amount of time to look at the information and make a recommendation to an Army Sergeant Major. It is the best way for the Army to serve the present and the future NCO corps. Once it is adapted, merging it with the competencies will be natural and necessary. Instructions to the promotion boards can influence this by looking at the importance of professional education and the demand for NCOs who can thrive in any complex environment.

Conclusions

Therefore, focusing on development, talent management, and stewardship will result in an efficient military workforce. The military should make sure that it educates the NCOs to think strategically throughout the professional developments. Currently, NCOs have proven to be useful in a war when making critical decisions. For much more knowledgeable NCOs, they should be impacted by skills and think strategically to ensure progress in current and future battles. The Army should make essential changes because it will affect its future. Leadership should be instilled to fit the current changing world, remove complexities, and create strategic thinking and adapt quickly in harsh environments.

References

Bourque, A. G., Butts, A. G., Dorsett, L., & Dailey, D. (2014). The pen and the sword: The new noncommissioned officer professional development system-NCO 2020. Military Review, 94(6), 36. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20141231_art009.pdf

Calton, M. A. (2018). Shared Understanding of the US Army as a Learning Organization. Consortium Of Universities Washington Dc, Washington Dc United States, 6(8).
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1064441.pdf

Prewitt, D. A. (2020). Shaping the Enlisted Force for the Joint All-Domain Task Force. NCO Journal, 23(6). https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/NCO-Journal/Archives/2020/May/Shaping-the-Enlisted-Force/

Robinson, J., & Davis, B. (2014). Army Learning Concept 2015 Is under Way. Military Review, 94(6), 42. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/NCO-Journal/Archives/2020/May/Shaping-the-Enlisted-Force/

Wisecarver, M., Raber, C., Keyton, J., Stothart, C., Karrasch, A., & Hope, T. (2020). Productive discourse to enhance army strategic planning. Personnel decisions research Inst Inc Arlington Va Arlington United States, 35(5). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344405821_Productive_Discourse_to_Enhance_Army_Strategic_Planning.