The U. S. Army Future Concept for the Human Dimension

Required Capabilities

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  An expanded lifelong leadership education process that fully leverages all effective tools and opportunities to accelerate, sustain and improve leaders’ skill development throughout their careers.
  
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  A responsive TLE system that ensures Soldiers have access to relevant training and education, and information through reachback, when and where needed.
  
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  A realistic simulated environment, and realistic simulation programs, that replicate the salient aspects of the OE to ensure Soldiers train as they fight.
  
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  A dynamic training system that adapts as needed to the characteristics of future learners, as well as to unique Soldier skill and competency requirements stemming from a changing OE.
  
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  A Soldier-centered training development and delivery system that rapidly produces timely, operationally relevant training products, and uses individual Soldier knowledge, skills, and development needs to tailor training content, timing, and delivery.
  
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  A multifaceted training capability that prepares Soldiers to operate effectively in the JIM culture or OE.
  
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  A unit training management system that enables commanders to tailor training to their Soldiers’ proficiency levels and operational requirements, and reduces the need for unit training management resources.
  
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  A training approach that applies HPI techniques to prescribe a best solution or solution set to resolve a performance deficiency.
  
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  A doctrine development process that provides real time updates to TTP.
  
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  A training capability that allows units to train themselves without significant external support.
  

Questions for Further Exploration

All of the TLE issues that must be addressed by S&T research, experimentation, and studies are far too numerous to list here, and all cannot be foreseen. However, what are clear are the types of issues that must be priorities. These include finding answers to the following questions.

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  How can innovative learning models, strategies, and tools enable the training system to improve efficiency and effectiveness of individual, collective, and self-development training for future Modular Force Soldiers?
  
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  How can emerging technologies enable the training system to provide more realistic, relevant, and responsive training on demand?
  
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  How can emerging knowledge from learning science, and new training technologies improve the responsiveness of training development and delivery (both rapid access and availability)?
  
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  What, if any, changes in training and education (such as, IMT, OES, NCOES) might be needed to prepare millennial Soldiers in the most efficient and effective manner? For example, because of their immersion in a digital world, do millennials have a different definition of "knowledge" and "learning" and if so, what are the implications for Army training and education?
  
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  What are the limits on Soldier and leader learning and performance? (For example, limits on the extent to which to accelerate learning; limits on range and/or depth of multifaceted or multi-skilled performance.)
  
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  What are the implications for individual and collective training and education in the future?
  
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  How should training be arranged to provide opportunities for units to practice learning?
  
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  How can the Army recognize when units and leaders are learning effectively and deliberately?
  
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  How can schools teach organizational learning?
  
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  How do larger units and senior leaders contribute to learning during operations?
  
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  How should the Army address the unique TLE needs of the Army Reserve Soldier—as a “part-time” warrior-citizen?
  

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  Do millennials have the potential to be the first true generation of life long learners?
  
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  Do millennials prefer independent learning and does that translate into a natural affinity and the skills for self-development?
  

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  Does familiarity with technology and exposure to rapidly changing realities via the Internet give today’s generation an intuitive understanding of the need to continuously learn and adapt their thinking within a dynamic environment?
  

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One-and-a-half million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not one of them came home unchanged. No one comes back unchanged.

COL (Dr.) Tom Burke

DOD Director of Mental Health Policy

Chapter 6

Combat and Operational Stress—A Continuing Challenge

6-1. Introduction and Historical Background

No matter how well the Army develops men and women of stellar character, superb physical conditioning, armed with the knowledge and intellect essential to the profession, prolonged exposure to stress, particularly that of the trauma associated with combat, can wear Soldiers down, and reduce the effectiveness of their units. Stress, of course, exists all of the time. It is not limited to combat nor is its effects limited to Soldiers. Families experience stress because of prolonged and repeated deployments, and the strain on the family in turn produces another stressor taxing the Soldier. Combat stress represents one of the more extreme conditions Soldiers experience in war. Some, perhaps most, Soldiers learn to cope with the effects of combat stress, but it is increasingly evident that the effects of stress, whatever the source, can be cumulative, and remain hidden for a long time. Stress occurs and has effects in the moral, physical, and mental components of the human dimension. This chapter addresses the sources of combat and operational stress, their effects on Soldiers, Army civilians, and contractors, and the implications they have on the human dimension.

The development of the railroad, breechloaders, barbed wire, the machinegun, indirect artillery fire, the airplane, tank, and wireless radio, changed tactics and introduced the concept of operational art. These technological innovations contributed to a Revolution in Military Affairs that continues to have important implications for the human dimension. The battlefield impact of more lethal direct and indirect fire systems forced greater dispersion among Soldiers and units that led to increased C2 difficulties for leaders at all levels as Soldiers advanced in individual rushes to successive covered positions. Voice command, visual signals, or even messengers could no longer control the increased decentralization of units effectively. Future concepts call for a continued increase in the dispersion of individuals and units and for ever-increasing autonomy. This trend presents a significant challenge to the Army.
Leadership pressure emphasizing duty and offensive action in the face of battlefield lethality and strong defenses were among the many factors that contributed to the massive losses of World War I and the emergence of significant numbers of psychological casualties referred to then as shell shock. The occurrence of such large numbers of psychological casualties, and incidents of unit-wide indiscipline, spawned a surge of interest within the medical profession and popular culture in the factors affecting the Soldiers will to fight.¹⁵⁰ For the most part, efforts to determine the causes succeeded only in differentiating between cowards and heroes. Better training, rest, and treatment among the Soldier’s comrades, relying on group cohesion as therapy to provide the motivation to recover, treated perceived cowardice and malingering successfully.
Well into World War II, many military leaders continued to regard a Soldier’s breakdown due to combat fatigue as evidence of weak character as the infamous Patton slapping incidents illustrate. As the American Army continued to experience large numbers of combat stress casualties, evidence emerged linking both the prevention of stress casualties and combat motivation to Soldier morale and unit cohesion. Psychiatrists, behavioral scientists, and military theorists reached similar conclusions as to why “a tired cold, muddy rifleman goes forward with the bitter dryness of fear in his mouth into mortar bursts and machine-gun fire of a determined enemy.”¹⁵¹ Samuel Stouffer and his associates Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz in The American Soldier: Combat and its Aftermath, and in their article, “Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II,” concluded that unit cohesion is built on the strength of the bonds Soldiers develop with each other and their leaders.¹⁵² These small group ties combined with competent caring leadership, concern for their individual reputation with fellow Soldiers, and reputation as a contributing member of the unit are principle ingredients of effective units. These factors also contributed to lower psychiatric or battle stress casualties.
Nowhere in civilian life is the importance of group identification and mutual support more important than it is for Soldiers in combat.¹⁵³ A half century of research continues to indicate a strong relationship between among morale, cohesion, esprit de corps, combat motivation, and combat stress casualties. Collectively, the importance of morale, cohesion, and esprit de corps lies primarily in their contribution to motivating Soldiers and sustaining their fighting spirit but they also act as buffers against psychological breakdown.
Similarly, nowhere in civilian life is the role of the family more important to improving and sustaining the workforce. Strong family support groups for deployed units serve now and will continue to serve as bastions against the negative effects of stress. Future efforts to keep the deployed Soldier in contact with their families will continue to work both ways by shoring up the morale of the Soldier while reassuring those left behind of their continued support.