Military aims to ensure recruits become thinking, as well as fighting machines

Army and Air Force leaders are teaming up to engineer training methods that can turn out more-adaptable leaders who can develop creative solutions to complex challenges.

Gen. David Perkins, commanding general of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), traveled to Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama late last week to brainstorm with leaders at USAF’s Air Education and Training Command (AETC). Perkins met with the AETC's commander, Lt. Gen. Darryl Roberson, and Air University officials to discuss how to leverage educational programs and new technology.

“As you deal with a very fast-changing world, everybody wants to innovate, so you want to be at the cutting edge,” Perkins said. “One of the keys to innovation is a wide level of collaboration. Those units that collaborate a lot tend to innovate a lot.”

TRADOC, the Army's equivalent of AETC, recently followed in the Air Force's footsteps by establishing Army University. The initiative, which was launched in July, combined 70 different TRADOC educational programs under one university system. The move is based on the same model as Air University. The goal is to develop intelligent and quick-minded leaders to lead future generations of Army and Air Force service members.

“What we need are adaptive leaders who are critical thinkers and can exploit the initiative,” Perkins said. “We not only have to train them to do certain tasks, but we have to educate them on how to learn because the world is changing so quickly. Great organizations are learning organizations.”

To that end, Perkins and Roberson discussed a number of ways to adopt new learning methods.

“We talked about things like leveraging the cloud and personal devices,” Perkins said. “The generation of airmen and soldiers we’re recruiting are very comfortable in doing things on their personal devices. They want the information right there in front of them. They want to be able to customize how they receive information, so we have to change our education systems to facilitate that.”