How can the DoD stay competitive in the Information Age?

War in the Information Age will be decided by human capital. If the US wants to stay competitive, this is what we need to focus on:

• Attract and retain people likely to excel in a wartime environment where the cost of failure is high. Retention will require bilateral negotiation between the Armed Services and service members pursuing a career change.
• Train core skills (no more than three per unit type). Units should practice at least one of these every week and all three at least once a month. All other activities are secondary.
• Reform the up-or-out career progression system. Brad Carson’s Force of the Future needs to be revived, and leaders (both NCOs and Commissioned Officers) put in positions most suited to their abilities.

This may seem counterintuitive given the seemingly unlimited potential for computerization, automation, and networking in defense technology. But the fact remains that war in all its forms is a human activity and inherently chaotic. No matter how advanced, the tools of war are still subject to the capabilities and limitations of their users. More importantly, wars start and end when the humans decide, not the machines. Efficient management of human capital is therefore the fundamental issue and must prioritize recruiting, training, and retaining the highest quality personnel at every level.

Military personnel from the individual rifleman to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff are the end users of defense technology. War in the Information Age will require these users to be proficient in increasingly complex systems. Furthermore, the rise of hybrid warfare blurs the lines between combat and support roles. These conditions require each individual service member to be skilled in the fundamentals of combat (marksmanship, maneuver, and battlefield communication) as well as the operation of technically demanding hardware.

This necessitates service members who are physically fit, intelligent, and above all, driven to master the many skills of their profession. These service members must also be well trained, with the majority of training focused solely on core skills, namely marksmanship and operations at the company level and below. Supplemental training should be designed to expand on core skills with instruction on enabling systems. These more complicated systems (e.g. vehicles, communication, and signaling systems, medical devices, etc.) need repeated training to be useful, but should not receive priority over the fundamentals.

The human challenges will increase geometrically up the chain of command. As assets are integrated into combined arms, self-sustaining joint task forces, the complexities of each element will synergize to create units that demand the utmost from leaders at the battalion level and above. These senior leaders should earn their position by clearly demonstrating the skill to orchestrate subordinates with widely varying capabilities to achieve a unified vision. Junior leaders from both the noncommissioned and commissioned officer corps with the potential to perform highly at senior levels of command should be identified and trained for senior leadership positions early in their careers. Furthermore, these high performers ought to be incentivized to continue to serve in the military in order to ensure that senior leadership positions are filled by the best personnel.

Those whose talents lie outside of the command track must also be given an opportunity to progress in their careers and contribute according to their best aptitudes. These service members should be formed into a professional corps of staff officers and NCOs, with promotion requirements that are tied to effectiveness and not time in command positions. This change to leader progression, along with the extended time in both command and staff positions it would allow, would improve the performance of commanders and staffs alike at all levels.

Reforming the current military culture to empower subordinate leaders is fundamental both to training the best service members and to developing high quality senior leaders. Enormous resources are devoted to procedures, like frequent mandatory online safety training, that centralize authority but distribute responsibility.

Administrative programs of this type demand disproportionate resources and must be replaced by command philosophies that empower junior leaders and support training on key skills. Operational requirements for continuous updates from subordinate units, especially for data that has no impact on mission or resourcing for the higher headquarters, must go. No matter how sophisticated our battle tracking systems are, we will never be able to achieve perfect intelligence on ourselves or our adversaries. We must teach service members at all levels that this is acceptable, and even desirable once we learn how to thrive in chaos. Subordinate leaders at all levels must be supported to act with flexibility and initiative in all aspects of military operations, including administration and training.

Optimizing human capital means mastering the fundamentals of war. As much as it is tempting to rush to the capabilities of new technology, we must remember that the bottom line in war is human. Regardless of the technology we have, our troops must be able to use it expertly, our senior leaders must be able to orchestrate it effectively, and we must be comfortable operating with ambiguity. This is no small task. But if we are up to the challenge we will be able to meet any threat even without technological dominance. If we can add even a modest technological edge, American military preeminence will continue to underpin a peaceful world order for the foreseeable future.

This article was originally published as an entry in an essay contest hosted by Tom Ricks and his Best Defense blog at Foreign Policy.