The Army is adjusting its 2008 Human Dimension Concept looking for better ways to understand and develop soldiers and leaders to be agile, adaptive and resilient for full spectrum operations as called for by the new Strategic Guidance in the face of increasingly complex environments, according to a top officer.
“The central question is how to use the human dimension to enhance the Army’s ability to provide combat effective, trained and resilient forces to meet the nation’s needs in 2020 as an all-volunteer force,” said Lt. Gen. Keith Walker, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC), part of Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).
More than 60 Army, Navy and Air Force personnel and interagency, think tank and academic representatives met at Fort Bragg, N.C., April 17-20 to consider refining a new version of the concept, ahead of a December publication date.
This is an opportune time to reexamine the issues as the Army transitions away from more than a decade of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, incorporates lessons learned, and considers how best to cope with force structure and budget reductions into the future.
Broadly, the group examined questions centered on “how to improve mental and physical fitness of soldiers, strengthen organizational values and promote the Army profession,” Walker said.
Specific questions concerned such things as how to take advantage of current technology and synchronize it with research community work to improve recruiting, soldier development and professionalism and the assessment of soldier performance, how to adjust current policy to ensure proper force manning and retaining high quality soldiers and how to optimize training and leader development to achieve soldiers who are able to think critically and can adapt to dynamic operating environment.
The previous concept, TRADOC PAM 525-3-7, defines the human dimension as: “That which encompasses the moral, intellectual, and physical components of soldier, leader, and organizational development and performance essential to raise, prepare, and employ the Army in full spectrum operations.”
Walker determined there was a need for more involvement by other stakeholders and initiated an integrated development team to address the concept and key issues, and rechartered the human dimension team, leading to a broader inclusion of stakeholders.
Brig. Gen. Robert Dyess, director of the Requirements Integration Directorate within ARCIC, said former TRADOC Commander, retired Gen. Scott Wallace addressed the group saying he wants to see continued action so future combatant commanders receive operationally resilient units.
The “best investments we could make is in training and leader development,” he said. “We’re already working on it.”
The new Strategic Guidance also envisions a technologically advanced Army, and technology could advance human dimension efforts.
Walker said technology may help the service better train and educate soldiers to ensure they have the qualities and attributes the Army believes they should have. For example, in the future the Army could use science and technology with screening–so the service could learn what specialties soldiers might be best suited for, and to improve the way they learn.
Col. Kevin Felix, chief of the Future Warfare Division at ARCIC, said improving assessment tools is an area where they are moving forward. There is a pilot project to assess and leverage technology that exists in labs to see if it could help soldiers develop a better baseline of where they are, and how they see themselves, then mix science and technology toward desired outcomes.
Labs working in such areas include Carnegie Mellon, the University of North Carolina, and Harvard Decision Science Lab at the Kennedy School of Government, he said.
Sgt. Maj. David Stewart, Center for Army Profession and Ethics, said the human dimension “absolutely” includes medical issues–Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post-Traumatic Stress (PTSD) among them. Science and technology could help the service better understand “how to get in front of it.”
For Maj. Gen. Rodney Anderson, deputy commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, the human dimension shape soldiers in two areas: performance and resilience, and he is very interested in how this work might be used to “set (soldiers) on the path for good success for performance of duties.”
Stewart said the group has “left the concept broad enough to accept new ideas and changing environments that might affect what soldiers look like in 2020.”
Terry Johnson, ARCIC Human Dimension Task Force, one of the writers of the original 2008 concept, said, “If the future changes and assumptions change, then we adjust in that revision” of the concept.
The result of the concept work is to produce an understanding of the many pieces and complexities of the human dimension so the Army can make the changes necessary to man, train, equip, and employ the future force.