By Ann Roosevelt
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.–Today’s operating environment has inverted the traditional pyramidal of information flowing up to senior leaders, in favor of pushing more information to non-commissioned officers and enlisted soldiers who make game-changing decisions in the battlespace, said Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli.
At the Association of the United States Army winter symposium here Wednesday, Chiarelli said the small unit, the squad, and platoon have “become the decisive element of our formations” in the presence of what Army Training and Doctrine Commander Gen. Martin Dempsey calls the “transparent, complex and decentralized environment” of today.
“The reality is the Army success in the future requires us to empower our leaders and soldiers at the small unit level,” Chiarelli said.
The acquisition, logistics, and technology community is making strides in that area, he said. Army acquisition chief Malcolm O’Neill told the audience earlier in the day that systems are now being designed around soldiers.
“This represents significant progress,” Chiarelli said.
The work is to provide a decisive advantage to soldiers “by reinforcing their needs, providing the tools and capabilities they need to do their jobs individually and as part of tactical small units,” he said.
However, providing that decisive edge leads to second and third order effects, he said. New capabilities can provide increased data of remarkable quantity and quality, but the service also has a responsibility to train soldiers how to handle and analyze those vast amounts of information and data they’re receiving.
The challenge is to produce and reward versatile, adaptive leaders who can deal with the unexpected, prticularly since no one can predict the future. “The Army’s been trying to predict the future for 235 years and hasn’t been successful yet,” Chiarelli said.
For example, the Army general carries a “failed assumptions” chart in his notebook. It lists all the assumptions made by senior leaders since the start of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and nearly every one of them “has proven untrue,” he told the audience of mainly defense-industry officials.
To train for every contingency and all scenarios is “futile if not foolish,” he said, because the service can’t do everything. The goal should be preparing soldiers and leaders by replicating the complexity of the environment, and being proficient in a small number of core competencies, Chiarelli said, reinforcing what Dempsey has been saying.
Dempsey has been nominated as the next Army chief of staff and soon faces Senate confirmation hearings.
Chiarelli said a soldier’s ability to conduct realistic training at home is critical.
The network should not be just a tactical asset, he said. “It must also encompass networks and (U.S. installations) and training centers…The intent is to provide all soldiers with the ability to get whatever information they need anytime, anywhere in the world.”
The service is going to get there, using the strategy developed by the Chief Information Officer G6 ??, of moving LandWarNet and loosely affiliated networks into “a truly global capability, designed, deployed and managed as a single integrated enterprise,” Chiarelli said.
“I’m for pushing as much (information) as we can down” to soldiers, Chiarelli said in response to a question from the audience. Some have criticized such actions, saying only certain soldiers should get information about, for example, where an adversary sniper is located.
“I really believe if we set soldiers up for success in this area, we will have success,” Chiarelli said.