by Captain Tyler J. Sweatt
Download the full article: The "Tactical" Leaders of Tomorrow
The Army must relook how it trains junior leaders for tactical decision making in combat by first redefining what tactical decision making entails. No longer are junior leaders solely responsible for executing battle drills and maneuvering squads and fire teams. We must stop training them to this limited scope. Junior leaders must not only understand, but also display competency at fusing traditional tactical decision making, troop leading procedures, American foreign policy, and the culture of the region in their area of operations. This is no small task and as such requires a significant amount of attention in the training and development programs currently in place today. This must start at the commissioning source and continue throughout the career path of today's Army officer.
Download the full article: The "Tactical" Leaders of Tomorrow
Captain Tyler J Sweatt is currently assigned as the BN Operations Officer (S3) of 554th Engineer Battalion at Fort Leonard Wood, MO. He has served as Civil Military Operations Officer, Plans Officer, Executive Officer, Platoon Leader, and Battle Captain with the 3rd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team 10th Mountain Division (LI) during two deployments to eastern Afghanistan.
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I agree with all of the comments from the first response to this article and have a few of my own:
"The current gap between national policy and theater strategy no longer exists, and we must address this in our education of tactics to junior leaders, at the commissioning source as well as the Basic Officer Leader Course."
Commissioning sources and the basic course should continue to concentrate on teaching Army leadership and small unit tactics. The only exception might be to add a block of instruction on how to incorporate information operations and civil affairs (generically) at the platoon and company level by a branch qualified IO and CA officer at the basic course. The training of American foreign policy and the culture of the region should be implemented and supervised by battalion commanders at the platoon level and the brigade commanders at the company level as part of their train up plan and mission-training exercises as the unit prepares for their deployment to any given region.
"... the daunting task of delivering and explaining that policy to those whose nation we are providing support to, exists solely at the tactical level of warfare."
The population, except in the rarest cases, will receive their information from a myriad of sources at every level of war, not just at the tactical level. Most populations have access to televisions, radios, smart phones and word of mouth, to name a few and these outlets can and are used to both deliver and explain US policy.
"By limiting the scope of tactics and the tactical level of war to simple maneuver and use of force, the Army fails to fully employ its greatest asset, the junior leader."
As it currently stands, every brigade combat team that deploys has an information operations (S7) and civil affairs (S9) on its staff. Most BCTs have learned to incorporate IO and CA as a normal part of their tactical planning and operations. In addition, there are civil affairs teams (CAT A, CAT B) that work at the brigade and down to the platoon level. I do not dispute that we can always improve incorporating IO and CA, but I believe that the Army has moved beyond just maneuver and use of force at the tactical level.
There are a lot of assertions thrown out there in this article, very few of which I agree with and, even if I did, the proposals in response to those issues seem a bit overzealous. I'll just hit on some, briefly.
<em>"Tactical leaders are no longer solely executing maneuver independent of strategic policy."</em>
I'm not sure what this means. Has there been a conflict in which tactical leaders <em>were</em> executing maneuver independent of "strategic policy"? I thought that the whole point of sending forces into theater was for them to achieve some objective in support of "strategic policy."
<em>"By limiting the scope of tactics and the tactical level of war to simple maneuver and use of force..."</em>
Where is this occurring?
<em>"... the daunting task of delivering and explaining that policy to those whose nation we are providing support to, exists solely at the tactical level of warfare."</em>
I guess I just disagree that our tactical leaders are not sufficiently well prepared for this. Prior to OIF or OEF, we were training not just our PLs, but our Riflemen, to be talking heads dishing out talking points and clarifying questions about the goals and intent of SFOR in Bosnia and KFOR in Kosovo. They did it pretty well - in person, on radio, on TV, and even got rather adept at slipping IO themes into casual conversation with locals.
<em>"The current gap between national policy and theater strategy no longer exists..."</em>
Assuming those terms are both defined and appropriate - neither of which I am sure of - I'd be curious to know how that statement is defended. I'm not clear on what the gap is, whether it ever existed, and why it no longer exists.
<em>"By not including things such as civil affairs and information operations within the discussions of tactics and tactical level of warfare, one assumes incorrectly that these types of operations are reserved for the operational level of warfare..."</em>
By reading that passage, I am led to believe that the author assumes, incorrectly, that those types of operations are not included in discussions of tactics.
<em>"Strategic initiatives and tactical orders must be fused within junior leaders as they now implement and represent US foreign policy strategy almost in real time given current media capabilities."</em>
Why not just ensure that each unit nests its mission in that of the higher echelon and ensure that each CO understands the concept of operations two levels up, crafts his guidance accordingly, and clearly conveys this to his subordinate leaders?