Transformation: A Commander’s Perspective

Over the past decade, senior leaders have done a great job transforming a cold war-based Army into a lethal and relevant organization. Both the public we serve and our elected officials hold the U. S. Army in the highest esteem. We have, by and large, begun the transformation process in all of our warfighting outfits. However, we need to equally transform the Title X and institutional armies. Transforming several key areas immediately and challenging traditional thought processes is vital to this intricate transformation process. In the past, we have enjoyed long periods of garrison duty interspersed with brief periods of war. Today, we face an enemy that will continue to fight against us for well beyond the foreseeable future. Our Army will be one that is deployed at war with interspersed periods of garrison duty. The Army I grew up in was a good outfit. It overcame strategic defeat and public blame after Vietnam and was generally a trained and ready force. It was, however, a garrison-based army — strictly regulated and arguably overcontrolled. It followed the model of its time and was an Army that was expected to alert, mobilize, train, and then deploy — a model that is no longer valid. In the past, only 20 percent of our Army was expected to maintain immediate readiness standards and be prepared for instant deployment. We are now an organization that must follow the train-alert-deploy model if we are to remain relevant. The new model seems simple, but in reality, it is a significant change requiring several major culture changes within the Army. Today, our units rotate back from a combat zone, rest, refit and begin training immediately for future deployments. In the near future, we will have a combat-experienced Army, a phenomenon we have not had since Vietnam. As an Army, we tend to be bipolar when it comes to training and readying our line units. We know that combat is the most decentralized and chaotic experience man can confront and junior-leader initiative is the most valued commodity to control chaos, but in the garrison environment, we tend to overcontrol all aspects of our soldiers and stifle the initiative of junior leaders. For this combat-experienced Army to continue to serve the Nation and remain the world’s best land force, we must find creative solutions to complex problems and be prepared to make some very tough calls. Our leaders and soldiers face daily challenges in the current operating environment — there are solutions to these challenges.

This article is not intended to be negative in nature, but is intended to challenge us to be better tomorrow than we are today. The U. S. Army is challenged with multiple, simultaneous mission sets, yet each and every day our great soldiers continue to impress the world with their pride and professionalism. Focus on Warfighting, Not Housekeeping Housekeeping. While serving as a commander, I found my number one garrison enemy was “housekeeping.” It was all things that were either self-imposed or were imposed by higher headquarters, which diverted my focus away from the primary purposes of training, materiel, and soldier readiness. Housekeeping also includes the mental and physical energy we place on sustaining the organization for the sake of sustaining the organization — a compilation of training distracters that keep us from focusing on preparing for war. However, while deployed to Kuwait for Operation Desert Spring (prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom), we did not face the “housekeeping phenomena” because the vast majority of tasks not directly related to war were ignored. Do not misread this statement, all units must execute some critical housekeeping tasks or they will fall apart and soldiers will suffer. Actions, such as ensuring soldiers are paid and executing the first sergeant’s duty roster, must be completed to standard. Internal regulations. Commanders are paid to command, not manage. In the current garrison environment, it has become increasingly more difficult for commanders to maintain a trained and ready force due to the myriad of daily housekeeping chores. The administrative and mandatory training burden on my company commanders was approximately three times the amount I faced while commanding a company in 1989. We do have technology and enhancements and units do have systems that mitigate housekeeping’s impact, but in the near future, we will face a generation of officers and senior noncommissioned (NCOs) who will return from combat and simply not tolerate the needless administrative burdens placed on them. They will argue that commanders must determine priorities, which is a legitimate point. When the Army changes the model from alert-train-deploy to train-alert-deploy, we must either be rid of housekeeping overload or forget about training standards. Mandatory training requirements company commanders are expected to accomplish, coupled with mandatory training guidance from higher headquarters, and added to overwhelming administrative requirements, are not functional and provide constant challenges. Each and every proponent (for everything) has weaseled its way into our 350-1 regulation series. We know that leader presence and leader interaction with soldiers is an absolute necessity in building combat-ready units. When commanders personally train soldiers, we have increased performance, higher collective discipline, and drastically fewer incidents. We all want our company commanders to be out and about, and we want them as primary trainers on as many applicable subjects as practical, but this is tough to accomplish given the administrative burdens we place at their level. In good units, we build systems that account for as much housekeeping as we can, but units rotating from combat zones soon come to the stark realization that we really did not need to be encumbered with these requirements in the first place. Nobody wants to depart from standards, such as equal opportunity, because we know these areas enhance our Army and society, but we must make some hard calls when it comes to the precious time available between rotations back to the combat zone. We must determine our collective priorities and provide some white space for company commanders to train based on their needs. Staff training. One of my most daunting challenges in garrison was staff training — garrison staffs have enormous housekeeping responsibilities. I was bringing in my staff at 0400 hours to execute military decisionmaking process (MDMP) drills — training and preparing for war — to allow them time during the afternoon to manage housekeeping challenges. All commanders determine priorities and many argue that it is simply an issue of priorities. We can do much better than that for an Army at war. We must develop and fund a plan that better supports our line units under the train-alert-deploy methodology. We routinely have a difficult time training our staffs. Staff training (at all levels) is paramount to success. The collective ability to receive input, analyze and collate data, plan combat operations, and disseminate plans and orders is complex business. It is very complex now, and we have yet to fully digitize the force. Digital staff training adds a whole new degree of difficulty — because our staffs are tied up with critical housekeeping duties, such as unit status reports and quarterly training briefs, and only train efficiently when they are not in garrison. Solution: Integrate civilians into the Army formation. Many units have used internal funding to hire contractors who live and become apart of the unit. They manage the cumbersome ammunition accounts and schedule ranges, which allow staffs the time to train on increasingly complex mission essential task lists (METL) as opposed to becoming the land, ammo, and range headquarters. We need to go beyond this and hire employees, such as contractors or civil servants, to manage a whole host of housekeeping issues, which require countless staff hours and are recurring themes in our warfighting organizations. Our ammu- “We are taught at combat training center rotations that steel rules the battlefield, every leader must know and understand safety danger zones, and risk assessment conducted to platoon level must be completed before each and every mission. These are good standards, and when inculcated in home station training events, will mitigate safety risks. These standards exist to ensure commanders are primary trainers, not range control, or other housekeeping relics that constrain training.” 8 — nition management system is so broken that we routinely reward those who are proficient at the workarounds. It takes countless man hours to manage this cumbersome and complex system and it is even more complex when we ask for anything out of the ordinary to enhance training such as special effects small arms marking system (SESAMS). There are a major roles for civilians in warfighting units, such as each battalion having civilians to manage land, ammunition, and ranges; a civilian who manages military personnel issues and finance accounts; a civilian who keeps critical unit movement books; and potentially a civilian who complies and maintains readiness and quarterly training brief data. Imagine a company commander contacting a civilian located at battalion headquarters to coordinate alive-fire range, complete with concurrent training aides, and discuss the exact location and time his unit will meet the ammunition truck. At this point, we will have realized our full training potential. Before old soldiers mount their counterattack against this, this does not include decision authority for these civilian-type employees, only coordinating authority. I am not convinced our training aids support centers have a viable role in this war; I am an advocate of placing dedicated civilians in line units to routinely manage housekeeping duties, which will allow staffs time to train. Decentralizing existing organizations to chains of command to which they are directly accountable provides afar better service to our warriors than what we have now. Training Safely to a Higher Live-Fire Standard Realistic live fire. Losing a soldier is painful. No training event exists that is worth losing a soldier over — not even acceptable training-loss rates. That said, it is time to challenge the Holy Grail of safety. We are engaged in along war, one that we may very well pass to our children. Soldiers will execute in combat what we teach them to execute in training. We cannot afford to be risk-aversive. We cannot afford any “hokieness in training.” Solution: Immediately review peacetime standards. We must be increasingly challenged through a thorough study of our normal peacetime constraints. These constraints include not placing aiming stakes on trucks during convoy live-fire training because they will not be used in combat; training overhead fires for mounted units because they will be used during combat; not using range safeties to clear tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles as they exit the range because vehicle commanders are responsible for fire distribution and control, as well as weapons safety during combat; vehicle commanders or squad leaders determining safety danger zones and fully understanding weapons effects; understanding there are no course roads or range flags in combat; realizing there are civilians on the battlefield; and increasing weapons pro ficiency by decentralizing safety requirements. Discipline and safety are the same word — we must train discipline to be safe. We must also decentralize safety authority to those who will successfully execute tasks in combat. Most accidents occur due to a lack of discipline and a leader’s failure to enforce standards. Again, if soldiers are expected to fight as they train, then we must drastically raise standards. Soldiers trained under limitations of safety constraints cannot afford to face combat because they are not trained to combat standards. At this point in war, we must take along look at mandatory training safety regulations and determine what is relevant for an Army that now follows the train-alert-deploy methodology. Another issue is mentality change — we need range support, not range control. Commanders must continue to be primary trainers of their outfits without constantly fighting the bureaucracy of organizations designed for cold war service. We simply do not have 20 hours in current unit lifecycles for company commanders to waste on the bureaucracy it takes to execute a nonstandard reflexive fire range. Combat is about fire distribution and control, the most critical of all combat lessons, which cannot be constrained to the point of extinction due to cold war regulatory requirements. Combat is live fire, and live fire is very, very dangerous. Initiatives, such as issuing rifles and blank ammunition to infantry soldiers on day one of basic training, will greatly enhance lethality, as well as overall safety. We are taught at combat training center rotations that steel rules the battlefield, every leader must know and understand safety danger zones, and risk assessment conducted to platoon level must be completed before each and every mission. These are good standards, and when inculcated in home station training events, will mitigate safety risks. These standards exist to ensure commanders are primary trainers, not range control, or other housekeeping relics that constrain training. Developing Flexible and Adaptive Leaders U. S. Special Forces soldiers are the most flexible and adaptive leaders in our Army. I have never served in their ranks but have worked with them in war — they are trained. The Army invests time and money in these soldiers to provide them with broad-based training and educational opportunities during strenuous and challenging processes. They do not have problems getting ammunition and keep housekeeping to a minimal acceptable level. They are decentralized in garrison and are therefore trained to operate decentralized in war. Special Forces units are the models for the rest of our Army in terms of building adap- “It is counterintuitive that we continue to quibble over the precious resource of training time in professional schools while engaged in a war where knowledge is the most valued commodity. I would even argue that subjects, such as stability operations and support operations, which I was taught at the U. S. Army Command and General Staff College, are particularly relevant to our lieutenants and captains today. In stability operations, every soldier and every leader is an ambassador — at times, a very lethal ambassador, but nonetheless an ambassador.” — 9 tive and flexible leaders. It is an expensive proposition, but if we want the highest quality leader on the ground, we must be willing to pay the price. Building captains for company command centric warfare. The U. S. Army is the best in the world because of its training base and institutionalization, but are we really training adaptive leaders? Based on experience with graduates of the captain’s career courses (primarily the infantry and armor courses), we are doing good work in training combined arms fire and maneuver. However, in this new age, where nearly every company-grade leader in Iraq operates dismounted at some point, we must train a multitude of skills. We want junior leaders to thoroughly understand combined arms fire and maneuver, and we want them to have a thorough understanding of the second and third order political effects associated with stability operations and support operations. As a military historian, I cannot predict the future, but like the weatherman, I can forecast prevailing winds and make informed judgments on future conditions. I am willing to bet that the vast majority of our future wars will be increasingly more company command and captain centric. If this is the case, then are we doing all we can to institutionally train at this level? Our institutional schools (again, my experience is primarily with armor and infantry) are doing great work, but are limited by time in what they can achieve. It is counterintuitive that we continue to quibble over the precious resource of training time in professional schools while engaged in a war where knowledge is the most valued commodity. I would even argue that subjects, such as stability operations and support operations, which I was taught at the U. S. Army Command and General Staff College, are particularly relevant to our lieutenants and captains today. In stability operations, every soldier and every leader is an ambassador — at times, a very lethal ambassador, but nonetheless an ambassador. Learning when not to engage in direct fire is as equally important as knowing when to engage. Junior officers in Iraq and Afghanistan are conducting negotiations daily. Our S2 shops are asked to manage informants and conduct link and association diagrams to conduct cell-based counterinsurgent intelligence preparation of the battlefield. Line units are struggling with training the “strategic corporal” and are going to great lengths to ensure soldiers understand tactical decisions in this media age, which greatly influences strategic thinking. Current institutional training models are doing the best they can, but are not producing officers with sufficient skills in combined arms fire and maneuver operations, and stability and support operations. As the war continues, we will ask more and more of junior leaders, and the institutional army must make time to train a multitude of tasks. Leader development programs in line units are the strongest I have seen during my career. However, even the best commanders struggle with making time to consistently execute leader-development programs against the reconstitution, refit, and prepare-to-go-again world in which we live. In the world of leader development, line units are doing the best they can, institutions are doing the best they can; however, this combined effort of best intentions may not be enough. Solution: Training mental models and school length. Historically, we can make a strong case that our World War II senior leaders were the product of long and demanding courses. They worked tactical problem after tactical problem and built a series of mental models based on terrain board games. There were no absolute right or wrong solutions in these exercises, just varying degrees of success. I doubt they were challenged by post-conflict operations and am confident they did not work on a digital battlefield. Doctrine is the basis for all we do in our Army — without it we waste valuable training time. Having said that, we have to get beyond doctrine and develop experiences in our institutions. In my view, the study of tactics is the study of mental models. Each tactical experience is forever mentally recorded. It makes little difference where or how the tactical learning experience occurred — on a terrain board, studied in military histories, executed in a high-speed simulation center, on the ground at home station, or during a combat training center rotation. The experience enters our brain and is locked into our memory banks. Given this, lieutenants would be expected to have only those mental models they experienced during basic courses and what they take away from their first units, while captains have considerably more and field grade officers even more mental models. Couple this process with the theory that the mind cannot immediately comprehend anything new, and that all experiences are matched against past experiences, and the conclusion would be that with each new tactical experience, our brain reacts like a computer. It immediately (consciously or subconsciously) de-faults to the closest tactical experience we have had as a mental or cognitive starting point for developing and executing various courses of action to solve current tactical problems. The most efficient and effective way to develop agile and adaptive leaders is to provide them with more and more low-cost experiences. We tend to want to spend millions on simulations, but we get the same endstate from a creative terrain board exercise held in the battalion classroom. We must lengthen courses and not only train future leaders, but also provide them with a brain full of mental models. Lieutenants, captains, and majors require a strong, solid foundation in basic employment doctrine and technical proficiency before proceeding to tactics training. The future is in low-cost tactical decision games. These games must require leaders to expend tremendous amounts of mental energy with multiple variables — very similar to the current operating environment in Iraq and Afghanistan. The game may start with a raid and end with ne- “Learning when not to engage in direct fire is as equally important as knowing when to engage. Junior officers in Iraq and Afghanistan are conducting negotiations daily. Our S2 shops are asked to manage informants and conduct link and association diagrams to conduct cell-based counterinsurgent intelligence preparation of the battlefield. Line units are struggling with training the “strategic corporal” and are going to great lengths to ensure soldiers understand tactical decisions in this media age, which greatly influences strategic thinking.” 10 — gotiations with a tribal leader. Leaders and soldiers are leaving training bases and going directly to combat operations. U. S. Army institutions are, by and large, providing leaders with the right skill sets in terms of doctrinal education and strong technical skills, but our institutions lack the critical resource of time to train tactical decision games on a consistent basis. High repetitions are the key component, as they store more and more memories and build mental models. We need leaders who leave institutions with a strong set of mental models, ranging from establishing direct fire dominance in a high-density urban environment to the myriad of tasks associated with stability operations such as cell-based intelligence preparation of the battlefield and negotiation skills. Tactical leader development must be centered on providing future leaders with enough mental models to anticipate future events and the art of improvisation. Anticipation and improvisation are the cornerstones of success, but they require time and a tremendous effort to develop. Again, numerous repetitions yield the highest return. The digital world adds an even greater importance to leader-development programs. In days gone by, executive officers would sit in the tactical operations center (TOC) and recommend decisions to the commander based on limited information on hand. Today we are inundated with information. Situational awareness is the technology used to determine the situation within 50 meters, more or less, of your battlefield position; however, transferring huge amounts of raw data into useful decisionmaking information and developing situational understanding remains difficult. Transferring situational awareness to situational understanding requires lots and lots of experience. It requires combining individual and collective staff training, and we cannot expect to get it right on the first attempt. Most of all, digits require training time and lots of it — multiple repetitions count. Given the propagation of digital systems directly to our company commanders, we are now asking commanders to sift through the data (in a command vehicle or under a poncho) without the aide of a TOC. The real challenge is separating the critical data from the important data, and the important data from the fluff. This requires training, and just by way of subtle reminder, these warrior leaders are receiving these digits directly into their track or headset, and probably digesting all of this while on the move. We have long stated that technical proficiency and the ability to master command and control environments (turret) were absolute paramount skills for company commanders — we have since added a whole new degree of difficulty. Judging by the successes of junior leaders in current combat operations, we are doing well; however, the future battlefield will become more complex and our enemies will continue to learn. Going back to the original premise that future wars will be increasingly company commander and captain centric, we must drastically lengthen our courses and train a multitude of skills. Under our current model, we wait until an officer attains the rank of major before investing in the yearlong command and general staff officer course. We are missing the mark — we must teach knowledge, skills, and attributes early in the career model. Captain-level courses are the institutional army’s center of gravity in this prolonged war, yet we continually want to reduce course lengths. We must take the time and expend resources to build future leaders. Future commanders must arrive at line units with experience in hardware and software digitization, and with a series of strong mental models enabling sound and timely decisions based on too much information. If we want Special Forces-type performance from future leaders, we must invest the training time and funding associated with gaining that level of performance. “Although all urban operations are combined arms operations, urban operations conducted by an Abrams/Bradley-equipped infantry force is decidedly different from a Stryker-based or light infantry force. Urban operations are complex and require a trained force in which each leader and team member inherently knows the capabilities and limitations of supporting direct and indirect fires.”

Transforming Institutions How to build the multifaceted combined arms warrior of 2010 in an Army of branches. Leaders have finally made the decision to train as we fight. They have created modular brigades and combined arms battalions — the best decision the Army has made during my career. Now that we have a well-structured organization, it is time to build leaders explicitly for these organizations. Line units are living combined arms daily, but the Title X and institutional armies remain bogged down in separate branches, schools, and proponents — each declaring its own supremacy and fighting for market share and relevancy. Some would argue that we have a strong winning tradition with current branch systems — why change? Basically, because warfare has changed — the future battlefield victor is a combined arms officer with the tactical ability to win wars decisively and enough savvy to win peace. In the past, leaders have focused on winning either war or peace, and as both Iraq and Afghanistan have proven, they are not mutually exclusive, but require the utmost in agile, flexible, and adaptive leaders who are trained and equipped to execute both combined arms warfare and support and stability operations. In the past, it was possible to effect an on-the-fly task organization change in a 25km by 25km box, and be proud of our flexibility once the task was accomplished successfully. Today, units in Iraq are routinely responsible for over five times that distance. In the future, we will be even more distributed — marching divided and fighting united. The theory of the empty battlefield is today’s reality. The branches are stovepipes that came together at brigade level in the past, but come together today at the combined arms battalion level. The branches worked for the cold war; perhaps they are no longer relevant. With history as our teacher (combining lessons learned from current operations with lessons from the Normandy invasion during World War II), we go back yet again to combined arms at the lowest level as a proven winner. In the captain-centric future, combined arms at the company level (and potentially at the platoon level), provide leaders with the tools required to win decisively. The absolute requirement to have the finest infantry fighting force in the world remains constant. However, getting infantry forces to a decisive point on the battlefield is the toughest mission (an absolute combined arms fight) any tactical commander faces. Most futurists agree that urban operations are the new norm and open desert battles are the past. Urban operations require combined arms at the lowest level and also require multiple training repetitions from stabilized forces. Although all urban operations are combined arms operations, urban operations conducted by an Abrams/Bradley-equipped infantry force is decidedly different from a Stryker-based or light infantry force. Urban operations are complex and require a trained force in which each leader and team member inherently knows the capabilities and limitations of supporting direct and indirect fires. Warfare has changed. The future is combined arms at the lowest level, unified with flexible, agile, and adaptive leaders. This future concept is however inconsistent with current branch systems. We talk a good game and, on occasion, true combined arms leaders rise to positions where they make a significant difference, but their successors always seem to take us back to square one. We are raised and retire in our parochial world. We are forced by both failure and senior leader vision to accept the goodness of joint warfare, but the biggest enemy is within our ranks —branch parochialism. If we are going to transform, then raise the next generation of leaders as combined arms officers. Solution: Collapse the branches. Basic officer leader courses are a good start; however, we must branch officers into two distinct categories: combat arms and combat support. Many current combat service support functions can be civilianized or contracted. By 2020, a brigade commander will hopefully have the ability to select Captain Jones to command an infantry company, a tank company, or even afield artillery battery. Captain Jones must be trained and ready to accept any of these challenges, which requires drastically lengthening our institutional cours- “In the past, the toughest job in the Army was a Bradley Fighting Vehicle-equipped infantry platoon leader. This young officer was responsible for a multitude of direct fire weapons systems. Today, the toughest job in our Army is a Stryker rifle company commander. This officer currently maneuvers nine rifle squads, three weapons squads, internal snipers, internal mortars, 14 combat carriers, and in the near future, will incorporate a mobile gun system platoon into the fight. It takes training time and multiple repetitions to get good at maneuvering this force.” 12 — es. Special Forces soldiers serve as ideal models — deliberately trained on multiple skill sets for long periods and sent to units. An eight to ten month basic course followed by a yearlong career course would be a good starting point. By 2020, an officer would complete a significant and challenging basic course, complete a series of demanding positions, such as platoon leader, company executive officer, specialty platoon leader, and primary staff officer, then attend a challenging and significant career course prior to returning to a unit. During the first seven years, an officer would have completed roughly two years of professional schooling, combined with five years in line units. The current model of waiting until the 10- to 12-year mark to invest in our officers is not the solution to winning along-term war. The critical component of Army aviation somehow fits into this model, and with some mental energy, we can figure it out. Combat support officers must all be multifunctional logisticians, capable of executing complex fuel, ammunition, and repair parts operations, and METL focused on training logistics soldiers the complex task of safely and securely moving supplies across large distances under hostile fire. Both branches must produce future officers who are physically tough, adaptive under stress, and flexible whether mounted or dismounted. They must be trained in combined arms warfare, multifunctional logistics, and support and stability operations. Solution: Specialize in a unit. The argument that a multitude of skill sets are required for future victories only complements the argument that leaders must obtain some degree of specialization to gain mastery over the complex business of combined arms warfare. Soldier technology will continue to increase; however, some constants must remain in our system. We have the finest infantry force in the world, but as previously discussed, getting it to where it can prove decisive is the hallmark of great tacticians. In the past, the toughest job in the Army was a Bradley Fighting Vehicle-equipped infantry platoon leader. This young officer was responsible for a multitude of direct fire weapons systems. Today, the toughest job in our Army is a Stryker rifle company commander. This officer currently maneuvers nine rifle squads, three weapons squads, internal snipers, internal mortars, 14 combat carriers, and in the near future, will incorporate a mobile gun system platoon into the fight. It takes training time and multiple repetitions to get good at maneuvering this force. When we changed the model to one of train-alert-deploy, we now expect these young officers to be proficient much sooner. We need all forms of infantry in our Army. All are unique, all require a commitment from both the officer and the institutional Army to master the advanced skill sets resident in each. Mastering resident skill sets takes time, and we no longer have time to broaden career paths or experiment by moving infantry officers from platform to platform all in the name of professional development. That model worked well for a garrison-based army; however, it will not work in the future. We have always provided infantry forces with strong leaders, but strong leaders alone may not be enough on the increasingly complex future battlefield. Combining the complexity of the urban fight with unique digital command and control systems increases the need to raise future leaders in the same organization. The Army will soon have three distinct types of brigades, heavy, infantry, and Stryker. We need three distinct schools: one that trains primarily mounted soldiers; one that trains light infantry skills; and one that trains digital, mobile infantry such as in the Stryker brigades. Some might argue that Stryker is too small to warrant this, but Stryker will eventually mold into the magical future force. Some may argue that we are creating three branches of combat arms officers, and that the parochialism will simply be narrowed down to three. I cannot fix the parochialism problem in our Army, I can only hope that maturity will eventually prevail, but the skills we require of future leaders are very organizationally specific. The best course of action would be to match officers with the types of brigades in which they will be serving. If an officer begins his career in Stryker organizations as a lieutenant, he should then command and serve as afield grade in Stryker organizations. We are at war and must stop experimenting with leaders. If we continue on our broad-based assignments trail, we will eventually find our Army with superior organizations and suboptimal leaders. This is a very dangerous combination during peacetime, not to mention how poorly it would perform in combat. There is a limit on learning and performing, especially with the overwhelming amount of new technologies we are constantly introducing to leaders. The concept of specialization among leaders causes emotions to rise. We are now asking a great deal from junior leaders and will ask even more in the future. We must provide future leaders with the opportunity to personally master systems. In theory, we must master a crew or squad before we can master a platoon, and must master a platoon before we can master a company. Personally mastering a vehicle or system and subsequently successfully employing that vehicle or system, during high-intensity combat operations, is the desired endstate. When we add in the complexities of the real world, such as high-density urban environments, digitization, and long-term stability operations, it appears we want junior leaders to master vehicles or systems, both for their survival and mission success. If we tie leader development to the brigades, then we build better brigades and better long-term officers by providing a sense of personal mastery to vehicles and systems. There is a great deal to be said for multifunctional leaders, who have had multiple and varying assignments, but we do not have time during this war to retrain inexperienced leaders. We are doing a good job of training and educating junior leaders for the near term, but the near term is not good enough. Junior leaders are performing well in combat zones across the globe, and given this, we tend to resist change. The war on terrorism, by all accounts, will last a very long time, regardless of who occupies the White House. To better serve our soldiers and produce leaders who are trained and ready to carry out this war, we need to initiate change now. To win this war, we must be substance, not style. Building substance takes time and money, but more importantly, it requires a strong mental shift in how we execute missions. Future Army leaders will make tough calls and those calls will hurt feelings and cost jobs, but this is not about hurt feelings, it is about winning a war. Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey R. Sanderson is currently chief, Stryker Brigade Combat Team Transformation Team, TRADOC Systems Manager-Stryker, U. S. Army Infantry Center, Fort Benning, GA. He received a B. S. from Western Carolina University, an M. S. from Western Kentucky University, and an M. M. A. S. from the School of Advanced Military Studies. His military education includes Armor Officer Basic Course, Armor Officer Advanced Course, U. S. Army Command and General Staff College, and School of Advanced Military Studies. He has served in various command and staff positions, including commander, 2d Battalion, 69th Armor, 3d Brigade, 3d Infantry Division (ID), Operation Iraqi Freedom; S3, 1st Brigade, 1st ID (M), Fort Riley, KS; S3, 2d Battalion, 34th Armor, 1st Brigade, 1st ID, Fort Riley; small group instructor, Armor Officer Advanced Course, Fort Knox, KY; commander, C Company, 3d Battalion, 7th Infantry, 1st Brigade, 24th ID (M), Operation Desert Storm; and commander, D Company, 3d Battalion, 69th Armor, 1st Brigade, 24th ID (M). — 13