Tag Archives: PME

I Enjoy A Good Bollocking, But Let’s Think Broader

         CGS Fires Both Barrels

 CGS bollocked us last week. As bollockings went it wasn’t too bad; I have had better –  (Graeme Lamb was a master at communicating rage through the medium of paper, albeit the paper often had puncture wounds), and I have had worse. I agreed entirely with the sentiments, but do wonder about the things unsaid.

On Twitter some have commented as to whether the it was addressed fairly or unfairly, while across at The Wavell Room, David Calder (@drjcalder81) in my opinion came closest to hitting the mark. But hitting the mark on what?

CGS’s 3.5 minutes of steely eyed ire was based on allegations of sexual assault carried out by soldiers on a soldier.  Clearly if proven this would be a significant breach of the Army’s Values and Standards, and in particular ‘Respect for Others’. 

CGS mentioned “Values and Standards”, an “honest sense of decency” and that a “higher level of behaviour” is expected of us.  But in considering the allegations I am struck by the fact that from the society we are drawn, and to society  we will return.

One of the contributing  factors in the background of many sexual assaults is exposure to pornography. Pornography with its objectification of people as a means (vehicle) to an end (sexual satisfaction) and not as an end in themselves, would seem to be the antithesis of the Army’s Values and standards. I have written before about pornography, and that a society that accepts pornography such as ours does, should not be surprised when members of society increasingly behave in a manner that has been socialised as acceptable through pornography. The fact that pornography is acceptable and that the yet the behaviour is unacceptable, is one of the many contradictions in our society. This contradiction of society is mirrored within the British Army, we preach respect for others and yet fail to condemn pornography.

Social cohesion and individual liberty, like religion and science, are in a state of conflict or uneasy compromise throughout the whole period.

I want to encourage us, the military, to think both broader and deeper. We spend much time and effort thinking about Hybrid Warfare and Information Confrontation;  we recognise too that the character of war is changing in composition and balance from the kinetic to the cognitive. We spill ink more freely than blood on the Somme, in talking about AI, PME and Mission Command. We discuss all these and recognise intuitively that the character of war reflects the character of the societies waging war, indeed war is a social mechanism.  Information confrontation too, seeks to exploit the fissures in our societies and we are faced with the strategic implications of this daily, and yet how much time and effort do we spend looking at ourselves? How much time do we spend considering the strategic implications of our evolving sociology? 

To understand an age or a nation, we must understand its philosophy, and to understand its philosophy we must ourselves be in some degree philosophers.  There is here a reciprocal causation:  the circumstances of men’s lives do much to determine their philosophy, but, conversely, their philosophy does much to determine their circumstances.

The quotes in bold were all taken from the introduction to Bertrand Russell’s seminal work ‘The History of Western Philosophy”.  Many may discount the relevance of philosophy to the profession of arms, but as we consider CGS’s exhortation to do better by ourselves, we should take a moment to consider what tools we have to see ourselves for what we are. Philosophy gives us many of these tools. Lastly, and with a nod at PME and Mission Command, consider this: 

To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralysed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.

Form Follows Function: Entering The PME Debate

Gerhard Von Scharnhorst: not The Dead Prussian that most are familiar with.

Up front I will say that I agree with Barney in his  post that I would like to see increased PME opportunities across all ranks, and especially for non-commissioned soldiers; but the devil is in the detail and in the spirit of Scharnhorst’s Militarische Gesellschaft I would like to challenge some of his assumptions and provide some fuel to the debate on Twitter.

It seems to me that the basic argument being made in the post is:

  1. The character of war has changed fundamentally, with increased precision and lethality.
  2. Increased precision and lethality demand greater dispersion and therefore use of initiative across all ranks.
  3. Initiative is not latent, but taught through education and training.
  4. SNCOs therefore need to be as educated as their officer counterparts at every level of command.

It is undeniable that the character of war has changed, but arguably not yet the nature. The character of conflict has changed because the character directly reflects the character of the societies engaged in conflict and their commitment to the fight. I agree that precision and lethality are indicative of a changing character of warfare as applied by the West, but would simply caution that to my mind, the primary drivers of a changing character of war are human factors and not technological.

Has the character has changed to such an extent that the role of soldiers has changed fundamentally. I would disagree with this. From my particular foxhole I would note that the job of my SNCOs commanding multiples and patrol bases in N Ireland in the early 1990s was not radically dissimilar to the role they played in Helmand in 2011/12. They controlled a broader range of assets, the fight was more intense, but a multiple commander in 1993 would have grasped immediately the fundamentals of commanding a small PB in 2011 and the range of assets employed was broadly similar (although to be fair, we used fewer RAF fast jets in Northern Ireland then some might have wanted).  Indeed when I think of increased dispersion and lethality, I think of the lessons of the Boer War, and the demands placed on combat arm SNCOs in the Edwardian Army (see Spencer Jones’ excellent book ‘From Boer War To World War: Tactical Reform Of The British Army, 1902-1914‘), and despite the changes and reforms here, the roles of SNCOs did not change fundamentally.

Herein lies the nub of the problem. I think we are conflating two separate issues in the debates we are having. The first I see is: what is the correct form of professional education needed to equip the soldiers of today for the fight of today and tomorrow? This is the debate we are having.  The debate we are not having however, is what is the role of the soldier (Other Ranks) in today’s fight and tomorrow’s wars and then how best should they be educated to enable this? The form of soldiers’ PME should follow on naturally from the function that the fulfill.

So what is the role of SNCOs on today’s and, more importantly, tomorrow’s battlefield?  Barney’s post cites both Matthew Reed’s excellent WOTR contribution on SNCO PME and the experience of the German Reichswehr in the inter-war period as pointers for the requirement. Reed’s article focuses on the role and education of US SNCOs, and in particular looks at how to prepare Other Ranks for Command Sergeant Major appointments. Currently a command sergeant major, at any level and whether British or American, is an advisor and doesn’t not have any direct command authority vested in the appointment. It seems intuitive to me, that  the quality of any advice given will reflect both on the capability and experience of the individual, and on the education and training they have received. So there is definitely an argument to be had that SNCOs should be educated to the same level as their corresponding commissioned command cohort. If we expect our SNCOs to act as advisors at increasingly senior levels of command, then we should educate them effectively to carry out that role.  My experience of US command sergeant majors is that they ‘stay in lane’ with the advice they give, limiting themselves largely to training and battlefield discipline and acting as the Commanding General’s additional eyes and ears for battlefield circulation and allowing him to gain a better Fingerspitzengefühl for the battlefield. The question to ask is, if as Matthew Reed suggests, SNCO education was changed, would SNCOs be used more as a senior General Staff advisor capable of giving operational and strategic advice?

Here I note that the role of the US SNCO corps differs from that of the British military’s in that’s they have very clearly defined training responsibilities. We have introduced command sergeant majors in the British Army, but we have not fundamentally changed the role of our SNCO corps, we have adopted the form but not the function of the US system; this is worthy of debate in itself. Have we missed an opportunity?

The other example cited in Barney’s post was that of the interwar German Reichswehr. This is an interesting example in a number of regards.  The German Reichswehr did not possess Command Sergeant Majors as we recognise them, but SNCOs were common as platoon/troop commanders and trained to do that role.  German training was geared towards enabling the tactical commander to operate one up (unlike British training which is geared towards understanding the tactical context one up, but not operating a technique that level) for sound strategic and tactical reasons. Strategically, the Reichswehr anticipated to expand in wartime and this investment in Human Resources gave them this ability to do so rapidly. Tactically this meant that not only were tactical commanders cognisant of their tactically environment one up, they were competent in it too, and could step up as the situation (and casualties) demanded. It was a necessary precondition for the German practice of Mission Command.

Strategically, I do not see the same imperative or capability for expansion in the British Army as there’s existed in the Reichswehr, not least because of our lack of a defence industrial base or war maintenance reserve.  No one has yet managed to satisfactorily explain to me how a British Army could rapidly expand and equip…  Tactically the imperative remains, and I have been singularly disappointed throughout my career, by our unwillingness to resource training to allow our people to operate competently one up. A recent article on Nexus has opened my eyes to a further consideration when training one up; the future.

Much debate on Nexus has focused recently on the impact of Artifical Intelligence (AI) and Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS).  It does not seem to me inconceivable, that the combination of AI and RAS will blur the current distinction between commissioned and non-commissioned commanders in terms of capability under command and mission sets expected. All this in a operating environment that is expected to grow in physical, informational and quite possibly moral complexity. If this is not inconceivable, and if the only sure thing we do know about the next conflict is that it will not be like the last conflict, then surely investing early in educating and training  our personnel will give them the agile edge to help enable us to prevail in the future?

PME: The Form

My views on PME are straight forward. PME encompasses training and education. In terms of function we train for technical competency and educate for agility and those things which are difficult to train effectively for.

  • Training encompasses the ‘what‘ and ‘how‘;
  • Education encompasses the ‘why‘ and the ‘high‘.

I say ‘the high‘ because I note that training is generally focused on tactical skills whereas education (in my experience) is better suited to imparting the the operational and strategic level skill sets.

A necessary skill set for all ranks, and one that in my experience needs to be instilled early and encouraged throughout, is critical thinking; it is not something I think we do very well as an organisation but I see encouraging signs that we are movingly in the right direction. In the modern and future operating environment I think critical thinking will become an essential skill set for all ranks and with the narrow focus of PME for other ranks almost exclusively focused on what to do and how to do it, the why, of which critical thinking is such an essential component , is noticeably lacking. Maj Gen Mick Ryan (@WarintheFuture) stated it well in his talk on ‘Future Joint Officer 2040‘ (see Nexus) when he noted that as we lose our technical advantages and no longer operate at mass, that we must out-think in order to out manoeuvre and out fight. To me, this demands an investment into our intellectual capital, and we would be remiss not to invest broadly across the spectrum of our personnel, recognising the the force and rank structures of today may be increasingly anachronistic for the fights of tomorrow.

Lastly I would also recognise that it is a valid argument that PME plays a role in meeting the expectations, professional and personal, of those who join today. When I joined the British Army was seen as a way of gaining a trade and getting ahead. Joining the military was seen as a good thing. While operational effectiveness underpins all that we do, it is ostensibly the primary, but not exclusive, driver for what we do. We would do well to remember this and not discount options because they are not of immediate and tangible operational worth; investing in the long game means investing in our people.

In conclusion I will quote von Scharnhorst, but proffer the thought that where he says ‘officers‘ we should substitute ‘leaders‘, for is this not what we should aspire to for our future generations of soldiers?

If a young man, who is destined for a military career, does not learn to use his mind right, to judge correctly and conclusively, the mathematics and theory of war, then no experience will help him. One has to give young people, destined to become officers, the early opportunity to think about their profession, to use other’s insights and experiences; to do that they need to have the right basic notions.

Keep up the good work Barney!

Further Reading

For further reading on the subject of PME and training the books that have influenced my thoughts the most are:

The Enlightened Soldier: Scharnhorst and the Militarische Gesellschaft in Berlin, 1801-1805‘ by Charles Edward White.

The Path To Blitzkrieg: Doctrine and Training in the German Army, 1920 – 39by Robert Citino

Transforming Command: The Pursuit of Mission Command in the US, British, and Israeli Armiesby Eitan Shamir

To Reason Whyby Denis Foreman

Command Cultureby Jörg Muth