Military Review English Edition March-April 2014 | Page 43
JUNIOR OFFICER DEVELOPMENT
What should be apparent, given this survey of the
experience pillar of our leader development model,
is that more experience in a junior officer prior to
implementation is better than less, and that the Army
must find a way, in keeping with the intent of the
ALDS, to provide more balance in the development
of our junior officers.
Practical solutions are not the topic of this essay, but
to be useful they all should share one thing: the benefit
of experience must be factored into a junior officer’s
development prior to implementation as a direct leader
of troops. Some known practices and ideas include
mandatory enlisted service prior to entry into a commissioning program (two years seems to be a common
standard, as used by the Israelis, among others). Another
is an “apprenticeship” following graduation from a
leadership school and prior to commissioning and
implementation (the German Bundeswehr develops
its officers similarly). Still another is creating a vertical
rank structure in which all soldiers enter at the lowest
pay grade and progress upward (however quickly or
slowly) based on individual talent, desire, motivation,
and supervisory recommendation. Experience at the
next lowest position before upward progression would
be guaranteed. Of course, certain pay grades would have
to be consolidated or bypassed to ensure company-level
leaders are youthful enough to lead by example under
physically harsh conditions.
This discussion aside, some, perhaps many, contemporaries would insist that the current Army officer
development model works fine. They would point to
the enviable supply of motivated, college-educated,
and technically trained young men and women who
volunteer every year to become the Army’s entrylevel officers and begin their on-the-job training as
direct leaders. A noncontemporary, such as a Prussian army officer of the early 19th century, would
likely be impressed by the education and training our
new lieutenants receive but might scratch his head
at the last part: beginning the on-the-job training of
our officers while they simultaneously function as
leaders? To this Prussian officer, our model might
seem sequentially challenged, for if the literature on
military leader development has one common thread,
that thread is this: experience is the best teacher of
military leadership. MR
NOTES
1. Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State (Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press, 1957), 30.
2. Ibid., 42.
3. Headquarters, Department of the Army (DA), A Leader Development Strategy
for a 21st Century Army, 1, retrieved from .
4. Ibid., 2-3.
5. Headquarters, DA, Army Leader Development Strategy 2013, 3, retrieved from
.
6. Ibid., 12.
7. Headquarters, DA, Army Regulation (AR) 350-1, Army Training and Leader
Development (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office [GPO], 18 December
2009), paras. 3-26 through 3-30.
8. Gina Cavallaro, “Leadership course for new lieutenants nixed: youngest officers
will go directly to branch training,” Army Times, 16 December 2009, .
9. DA Pamphlet 600-3, Commissioned Officer Professional Development and
Career Management (Washington, DC: GPO, February 2010), 3-5.
10. Army Leader Development Strategy 2013, 4.
11. Casey Wardynski, Michael J. Colarusso, and David S. Lyle, Towards a U.S.
Army Officer Corps Strategy for Success: A Proposed Human Capital Model Focused
Upon Talent (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, April
2009), 5.
12. Martin van Creveld, The Training of Officers: From Military Professionalism
to Irrelevance (New York: The Free Press, 1990), 2.
13. Charles H. Coates and Roland J. Pellegrin, Military Sociology: A Study of
American Military Institutions and Military Life (University Park, MD: The Social
Science Press. 1965), 235.
14. Field Manual (FM) 6-22, Army Leadership: Competent, Confident, and Agile
(Washington, DC: GPO, 2006), para. 3-20.
15. John Wands Sacca, Uncommon Soldiers in the Common School Era: the
Education of Noncommissioned Officers and Selected Pri مѕ́