Colloquium 2015: Majors Offer Thoughts on Army Operating Concept

Colloquium 2015: Majors Offer Thoughts on Army Operating Concept by David Vergun, US Army

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (March 31, 2015) -- The Army Operating Concept, or AOC, assumes a relatively small all-volunteer force will be up to the task of facing a large, well-equipped foe, Maj. Thomas Root said.

That assumption might be wrong, he said, pointing to a relatively small Army that had to be rapidly expanded after 9/11.

Root was speaking to 83 other majors as well as Gen. David C. Perkins, commander of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, also known as TRADOC, and other senior leaders at Colloquium 2015 here, March 30.

Colloquium provided a forum for majors to offer their candid views and opinions, even if those thoughts went against current Army thinking and doctrine.

Root continued his dissection of the AOC.

The AOC implies being outnumbered, but winning in a complex world, he said, with most of the emphasis being on shaping the environment and preventing conflict from ever taking place.

That strategy focuses on special operations forces and regionally aligned forces working with partner nations to train and build relationships, Root said. Policy makers and academia have bolstered the argument that conflicts can either be avoided or the enemy can be defeated with a small force allied with a broad coalition. This may not pan out.

So far, full-blown war has not happened, for example, with Russia employing a level of force below a threshold of what it would take to invoke a NATO Article 5 response, he said, meaning all-out war.

Can the Army continue to call their bluff with a force that is downsizing and engaged in prevent, shape strategies, he asked.

The drawdown of forces and the fiscally-constrained environment is the new norm, Root continued. "What we've experienced in the last decade or so in reality was a very fiscally generous environment."

The Army has to change its cultural mindset and learn to operate with fewer Soldiers and less money and still work to succeed, but be more realistic about what it's capable of doing, he said.

Perkins said he appreciated Root's perspective of the AOC and it made for a good discussion. He added that he should perhaps have provided more clarity of what the AOC is intending to convey.

The AOC says that even with a full-scale operation, there would be elements of a hybrid threat. Therefore, the AOC provides a more detailed and comprehensive approach moving forward. "We think continuities of the nature of warfare would apply to wars on every scale," Perkins said.

Lt. Gen. Bob Brown, commander of the Combined Arms Center, said when the AOC was published, he thought it made a pretty bold statement. "We've never before said we could win without fighting."

The AOC does not take anything away from maneuver warfare. It simply adds the prevent-shape pieces to afford a wider range of options.

Maj. Rustin Necessary then picked up, discussing implementation of the AOC.

He focused on assigning the right Soldiers to the right missions at the right time.

Human resources needs to track who has been to which region and figure out what skills each Soldier has, be it operating in a joint, interagency, intergovernmental or multinational environment, he said.

Perkins asked that in a regionally-aligned force-context, should the Army repeatedly send Soldiers to specific regions to "leverage continuity" or send them to places they have never been so they can better understand the different environments?

Necessary said the decision should be mission-dependent. In a low-threat environment, the payoff would be to rotate different people in and out, but in a high-threat region, it would be wise to assign people experienced with that region to leverage personal contacts and operating wisdom.

Perkins said he found the conversation interesting and thought-provoking and said the Army has been grappling with these types of questions.

Every year, the Army is obliged to report its readiness to Congress, Perkins said. The question then becomes readiness for what: a mission that is anticipated near-term in a specific area of the world or an unknown future threat that isn't yet out there?

The Army's answer in the AOC and the combat training center, or CTC, rotations is to train for all possible scenarios. Perkins noted that the original design of the CTCs was to "conduct leader development in unit sets."

Suppose you are a company commander slated for a Royal Air Force mission in Africa, Perkins said. You go to a CTC to learn how to drill wells and do other humanitarian work. Then, years later, you become a battalion commander in a maneuver outfit and something unpredictable happens, but all you know is how to drill wells.

That is why the AOC and the CTCs are focused on the full range of military operations, Perkins said. The Army can't afford the luxury of training specialists who only know how to drill wells or only know synchronized fire and maneuver.

ABOUT COLLOQUIUM

Colloquium is similar to the recently-held chief of staff of the Army's captains Solarium, in that seven topics of high importance to the Army were discussed including talent management, diversity, education, training and mission command.

Colloquium was conducted by the Center for Army Leadership on behalf of the Combined Arms Center. It was the first-ever colloquium for majors. All 84 majors were students enrolled in the Command and General Staff College or the School of Advanced Military Studies.

(Editor's note: This is the first in a series of articles on Colloquium 2015.)