Do you have innovative training ideas to offer the U.S. Army? Well, TAPE President and CEO Louisa Jaffe was fortunate enough to hear now-retired Four-Star General David G. Perkins, former Commanding General of the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), speak from experience about what a military leader at his level (and all levels) is seeking in today’s Army.
General Perkins delivered the keynote address at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando, Florida in November 2017. The event occurred a few months before his recent retirement on March 2. In a series of three articles, we will present Louisa’s key takeaways from General Perkins’ I/ITSEC speech.
General Perkins started his speech by explaining that TRADOC serves as the proponent FOR and deliverer of doctrine, training, simulations, and education TO the entire Army. He spoke of the long-term requirements of TRADOC’s mission and articulated his vision of industry support from an unusual perspective – not speaking in terms of technical Army requirements or existing contracts coming up for recompete.
He said, “I’d like to talk to you from the point of view of a commander, not as the commander of TRADOC, but as ‘a commander.’ And so, what does a commander expect from his ‘training enterprise’? What does the commander expect from his ‘simulations enterprise’? What does the commander expect from his ‘education enterprise’?” General Perkins spoke in real and genuine terms about what any military leader needs from industry with respect to innovation in training.
He emphasized three main aspects of training that innovators need to consider:
1. Training serves as a “forcing function” to introduce new intellectual ideas. General Perkins explained that one of the impediments to that effective function is overcoming the “tyranny of training.” He defines this phrase as the enormous costs, logistics, labor hours, planning time, and execution of a practical combined arms training exercise – a simulation event that can only train a fraction of those who need it.
Because of high overhead, the exercise cannot really provide the needed repetition for trainees. Innovation from industry must provide not only the “forcing function” of training, but also all the benefits of a large, practical exercise at a fraction of the overhead costs, and perform it locally at the trainees’ home station. General Perkins stated, “I see that as sort of the next training revolution coming into the Army and probably the Joint Forces. We need to change how we view what is done day-in and-day-out as we prepare for the large collective training events – getting rid of this sort of ‘tyranny of training’ and high overhead.”
2. Innovation must bring together all the domains for training. We have to redefine the training requirement from the very beginning as a converged requirement with all of the domains: land, air, sea, space, and cyber. Commanders need training to give participants the experience of “inter” and “intra” domain communications and leaders/commanders the practical experience of commanding within and embracing all these domains. He stated emphatically, “This is an innovation that commanders need from industry.”
3. Commanders (and therefore industry innovators) need to see training “as a tool, not a task.”
Our next blog post will discuss this third aspect of innovation in training. The third and final blog post will explore General Perkins’ innovative views about the concepts of education versus training.
