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Options for the U.S. Army to Build More Combat Condition Resilient Soldiers

J. Caudle is a Civilian Defense Contractor and a Captain in the U.S. Army Reserves with 18 years of experience in all three U.S. Army components. He has specialties in Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear, Cavalry, and Armor operations and has a M.A. in National Security. He can be found on Twitter @MOPP_Ready. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.

National Security Situation:  The United States Army overemphasizes safety during training which has the potential to create risk adverse Soldiers and Commanders.

Date Originally Written:  April 25, 2022.

Date Originally Published: May 16, 2022.

Author and / or Article Point of View:  The author has served in the Active Army Component, the Army National Guard, and the Army Reserves as both an officer and a Non-Commissioned Officer. The author believes that soldiering is a dangerous business and that while Commanders should look out for the well-being of their Soldier, this looking out should not sacrifice combat effectiveness.

Background:  Soldiers that are treated like professional warfighters from day one and expected to embrace tough, realistic combat conditions will be less surprised by, and more resilient to, the stresses of combat. Commanders require the freedom to prioritize training Soldiers as warfighters over risk adversity.

Significance:  Commanders that are trained to be timid and driven by a fear of being relieved due to safety incidents in training may not be effective in combat. This ineffectiveness will negatively impact U.S. National Security. Soldiers led and trained by timid leaders have less potential to develop the aggressiveness and decisiveness needed to win battles. As Carl von Clausewitz said, “Given the same amount of intelligence, timidity will do a thousand times more damage in war than audacity[1].”

Option #1:  The U.S. Army increases hardships to produce tougher, more resilient warfighters.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s Maxim #58 says “The first qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only the second; hardship, poverty, and want are the best school for the soldier[2].” The ability to endure fatigue, privation, hardship, poverty and want can be trained just like any other skill. Battlefield conditions require that leaders develop resilient Soldiers. One hardship that Soldiers endure on the battlefield is constant exposure to extreme weather conditions. Leaders can increase the amount of time their Soldiers are exposed to the weather while training. To enhance focus on the tactical mission instead of administrative box checking, the Army Physical Fitness Uniform could be abandoned in favor of the duty uniform during daily fitness training and during the Army Combat Fitness Test. Increasing the amount of training conducted in using Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology (JLIST) can also be done. Training in the JLIST increases Soldier proficiency in a simulated chemical warfare environment, adds physical stress into field problems, and trains the Soldier to focus on their mission instead of their physical discomfort in the suit. Leaders could also conduct training on a reverse cycle i.e. training at night and sleeping during the day. This reverse cycle would enable Soldiers to better know how they react to sleep deprivation so they can be effective in combat.

Risk:  Recruiting and retention would suffer as some Soldiers would not like this lifestyle. The Army will need a focused narrative on justifying this option. Army recruiting commercials would show these hardships for expectation management and also to attract a different type of recruit. There is also a safety risk as training gets harder, more mishaps are bound to occur.

Gain:  This option produces tougher, more resilient Soldiers. However, this option will only succeed if Soldiers are treated like professional warfighters. Training Soldiers in the ability to endure fatigue, privation, hardship, poverty and want not only serves their unit and ultimately the nation, but may have a lifelong impact on the resilience of the Soldier and their mental health.

Option #2:  The U.S. Army reevaluates its use of DD Form 2977, the Deliberate Risk Assessment Worksheet (DRAW).

The author has seen DRAWs up to 28 pages long that never make it down to the individual Soldiers it is designed to protect which establishes the perception that the DRAW itself is more important than actually implementing safety. In addition to the DRAW not being accessible to the Soldiers it is designed to protect, the U.S. Army’s implementation of the DRAW also ensures Commanders prioritize not being relieved due to a training mishap over conducting realistic training.

Better use of the DRAW would ensure the contents of the form are briefed to the Soldiers involved in the training. Additionally, Commanders would not let the DRAW overly restrain them in conducting realistic training. Keeping Soldiers unaware and training safely instead of realistically does not enable the U.S. Army “To deploy, fight, and win our Nation’s wars by providing ready, prompt, and sustained land dominance by Army forces across the full spectrum of conflict as part of the Joint Force[3].”

Risk:  The option will increased the probability of training accidents.

Gain:  This option will build risk tolerant leaders within the U.S. Army. It will also build more resilient Soldiers that are experienced in completing more realistic training. This realistic training will increase Soldier resiliency by exposing them to battlefield stressors.

Other Comments:  Colonel David Hackworth, U.S. Army (retired) states “Training for war must be realistic at all costs. We can’t just discontinue a curriculum when something bad happens, provided that something is not the result of misconduct on the parts of sadistic or unqualified instructors.” He later states “Training casualties, tragic as they may be, must be accepted as an occupational hazard in the tough and dangerous business of soldiering. The emphasis on safety at the expense of realism…sets up soldiers it presumably is protecting for failure by stunting their growth and inhibiting their confidence in themselves and their supporting weapons[4]”.

Recommendation:  None.

Endnotes:

[1]U.S. Army. (2019). ADP 6-0 Mission Command: Command and Control of Army Forces. Washington D.C.: Headquarters, Department of the Army

[2] Bonaparte, N. (1902). Napoleon’s Maxims of War. (G. D’Aguilar, Trans.) Philadelphia: David McKay. Retrieved from Military-Info.com.

[3] U.S. Army. (2022). Army.mil. Retrieved from https://www.army.mil/about/

[4] Hackworth, D. H., & Sherman, J. (1989). About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior. New York: Simon and Schuster.

 

 

Capacity / Capability Enhancement Governing Documents and Ideas J. Caudle Leadership Option Papers Readiness U.S. Army
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Assessing U.S. Army Diversity Efforts in the Context of Great Power Competition

Louis Melancon, PhD has served in the U.S. Army around the globe for 25 years. He presently represents the U.S. Army to the Joint Hard Targets Strategies program. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.

Title:  Assessing U.S. Army Diversity Efforts in the Context of Great Power Competition

Date Originally Written:  May 21, 2021. 

Date Originally Published:  June 7, 2021. 

Author and / or Article Point of View:  The author is an active duty military member who believes diversity of work force is a potential asymmetric advantage in great power competition. 

Summary:  The heuristics (mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision) that people rely on matter.  Relying on outdated heuristics can be problematic. While U.S. Army talent management efforts have been important in realizing increased diversity, the effort to create matching heuristics is lacking. The result will likely undermine the U.S. Army’s efforts at achieving diversity. 

Text:  On May 20, 2021, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz made comments about U.S. Army recruiting advertisements[1]. Twitter users responded to the senator’s tweet quickly and in a highly negative manner.  Beyond these twitter responses, the situation Senator Cruz’s comments created highlights a larger implication of similar behaviors in the U.S. Army. The issue at hand is a reliance on flawed heuristics; approximations of knowledge that are useful in making immediate, though not necessarily the most efficient, decisions. 

Despite Senator Cruz’s attempts to back away from his position about the efficacy of the U.S. Army compared to the Russian military[2], the heuristic that he used is clear: efficacy of a military is defined by its ability shape its members into a similar, unthinking mold; a vessel to contain violence, unleashed automatically in response to a command given by their masters. The senator’s tweet illustrates a belief that soldiers are identical cogs in the machine of an army; when a cog breaks, it is replaced, and the machine grinds on. This heuristic echoes the industrial revolution and does an adequate job of describing Queen Victoria’s army[3], but is not useful today.

The nature of war remains constant, but the character of war changes[4]. The characteristics of an industrial revolution army are not useful in modern, great power competition. Senator Cruz’s heuristic is outdated. However, his foible highlights a similar problem of similar heuristics that are often used within the U.S. Army regarding talent management. 

The U.S. Army, over the past several years, has taken great steps to leverage the diversity of its force and should be applauded for this effort. A large talent management effort has created a web-based market place to match soldiers to units based on preferences. Official photos have been removed from personnel files in an attempt to reduce bias by units and in central selection boards. Gender neutral pronouns are now used in evaluations. New methods of selecting battalion and brigade leadership are in place[5]. These  steps improve diversity but by themselves will take too long, perhaps a full work generation of 15-20 years, to effectively address and correct biases that emerge from old, outdated heuristics. 

Breaking and replacing heuristics is hard; it takes energy, thoughtfulness, and leadership focus. Diversity of a population, and by the transitive property, the military force it raises, can be an asymmetric advantage in competition and conflict justifying that energy and leadership focus. Context matters in competition and conflict; strength only has value when placed in the context of an opponent and that opponent’s weakness. The goal is always to create an advantage and a successful military engages an opponent at their weakness. A military is deceiving itself if it relies on its self-assessed strength in isolation of an opponent.  Success in both competition and conflict comes from turning interactions with an opponent into an asymmetric engagement where the balance is not in the opponent’s favor.  For the U.S. Army, in this era of great power competition, this strength rests in the children of the American people, all the American people with all their diverse backgrounds. New technologies can be duplicated, new weapons can and will be countered, but a diverse people, bringing their unique perspectives and experiences to problems, cannot be easily replicated. The longer the U.S. Army waits to break its talent management- related heuristics and fully utilize its soldiers, the more behind it falls in competition, especially with China.  

As a society, and as a military force, the U.S. and U.S. Army have significantly greater ethnic and gender diversity than either China or Russia. China’s People’s Liberation Army is a monument to glass ceilings for those that are not ethnic Han or male[6]. The picture is not better in the Russian military for those who are not ethnic Russian or male[7]. This is not to say either military force is monolithic in their outlook, but near homogeneity tends to create predictability, inflexibility, and an inability to identify self-weakness[8]. There is an opportunity here for the U.S. Army to truly find and leverage talent management as an asymmetric advantage against the Chinese and Russian military personnel systems, and so by extension their militaries as a whole. 

The U.S. Army has not been as effective in breaking and replacing old heuristics in conjunction with the active steps to increase diversity. Anecdotal evidence is emerging that new heuristics are naturally emerging within the force that will slow down the efforts to improve diversity; this is a result of not deliberately seeking to replace heuristics at pace with new diversity initiatives. As an example, rather than focus on matching skills needed for a position with a candidate, some units are seeking out personnel whose career trajectory closely matches previous concepts of a successful soldier. Preferring a concept of what makes a good soldier over recognized skills needed for mission success goes against what the U.S. Army desires with talent management. There is no maliciousness here, humans rely on heuristics and so older, flawed concepts are tweaked on the margins if nothing is provided to replace them. The units are seeking to do the right thing, but are limited by what the individuals within them know. Without a deliberate effort to shape heuristics that support new policies, the ones which emerge in the force will inevitably and inadvertently buttress the old biases.  

Senator Cruz provided a teachable moment. His constituents will decide with the ballot if he will have to pay a price for having outdated and flawed heuristics. Were the U.S. Army to share Senator Cruz’s outlook, the price paid in both competition and conflict with peer competitors will be much higher for soldiers if the issue of heuristics is not addressed now.

Endnotes:

[1] Cruz, Rafael E. [@tedcruz]. (20 May, 2021). “Holy crap. Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea…” Twitter. https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1395394254969753601

[2] Cruz, Rafael E. [@tedcruz]. (20 May, 2021). “I’m enjoying lefty blue check marks losing their minds over this tweet, dishonestly claiming I’m “attacking the military.” Uh, no. We have the greatest military on earth, but Dem politicians & woke media are trying to turn them into pansies. The new Dem videos are terrible.” Twitter. https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1395586598943825924 

[3] Brown, M. (2017). Cold Steel, Weak Flesh: Mechanism, Masculinity and the Anxieties of Late Victorian Empire. Cultural and Social History, 14(2), 155-181.

[4] Johnson, R. (2017). The Changing Character of War: Making Strategy in the Early Twenty-First Century. The RUSI Journal, 162(1), 6-12.

[5] The variety of in-place and future initiatives can be seen at https://talent.army.mil

[6] Kania, E. (4 October 2016). “Holding Up Half the Sky? (Part 1)—The Evolution of Women’s Roles in the PLA.” China Brief. https://jamestown.org/program/holding-half-sky-part-1-evolution-womens-roles-pla

[7] Chesnut, M. (18 September 2020) “Women in the Russian Military.” The Post-Soviet Post. Center for Strategic and International Studies, https://www.csis.org/blogs/post-soviet-post/women-russian-military

[8] Cooke, A., & Kemeny, T. (2017). “Cities, Immigrant Diversity, and Complex Problem Solving.” Research Policy, 46(6), 1175-1185.

Assessment Papers Diversity Louis Melancon Readiness U.S. Army
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Options to Improve Individual and Small Unit Readiness in Great Power Competition

Skye Viera currently serves as an 11B in the Texas Army National Guard and deployed to Djibouti with his current unit. Prior to this he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps as an 0311 Infantry Rifleman, deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. Skye recently returned from Kabul where he was employed as a Private Security Contractor supporting the Department of Defense. You can find Skye on Twitter @sjviera34. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group. 

National Security Situation:  As the Department of Defense (DoD) pivots from the Global War on Terrorism, which involved fighting irregular forces, to focusing on Great Power Competitors like China and Russia, two countries with regular militaries, more attention to detail and creativity regarding individual and small unit readiness is required. Small things that may have been overlooked with little consequence when fighting an irregular force, will have consequences when fighting a regular force.

Date Originally Written:  December 28, 2020.

Date Originally Published:  March 1, 2021.

Author and / or Article Point of View:  The author believes that readiness goes beyond the minimum mandatory requirements and that if small units are ready, the military as a whole is likely ready. Since the Service Members (SM), are the ones responsible for their own readiness, they have an obligation as professionals, to ensure their small unit’s readiness and develop ideas and solutions to move beyond the minimums.

Background:  With senior leadership more focused on minimum mandatory metrics, the small unit level i.e. the Fire Team (four person unit) and below, often gets overshadowed. As such, it is up to the service members at the Fire Team level and below to ensure their own readiness.

Significance:  Emerging threats such as remote weapons systems[1], social media[2], and unmanned aerial systems from state, irregular, and Private Military Companies (PMC)[3] add new concepts to readiness. Individuals and Fire Teams will have to evolve their traditional measures of readiness and turn into adaptable organisms, able to cope in a complex world, if they are to survive and accomplish their mission.

Option #1:  Self-Assessment.

The goal of this self-assessment is for the SM to ask themselves “Am I ready to deploy tomorrow and face the full-spectrum of missions?” This self-assessment can fall into three categories. The first, Technical Readiness, is the SM confident to operate the multiple weapons systems, communication equipment, and use other skills such as land-navigation, first aid, radio procedures, and mission planning? The second, Personal Readiness, is the SM physically fit to endure long missions with limited recovery time and imperfect nutrition, and free of minor injuries that could flare up and result in loss of capability? The third, Mental Readiness, is the most important aspect of individual readiness, and the one with the biggest stigma attached. The SM should have taken care of personal affairs and sought help long before deployment to resolve personal-anything that could distract from the mission.  The SM should be mentally prepared to face deployment hardships easily and adjust to life without internet, clean water, and endure daily instability. All of these issues are manageable for the SM if they are willing to both prepare and seek help. It is not a sign of weakness to seek help, it is a sign of strength to want to better oneself. 

With the DoD pivoting towards China and Russia, individual readiness will evolve. The use of personal electronic devices (PED) will have to be curtailed with the SM restraining the use of cell phones, smart watches, and off the shelf Global Positioning Systems. “Digital camouflage” will increase in importance, especially if the adversaries can identify the unit they are opposing as they can conduct psychological operations on the home front. With the ability to target SM family members through the use of social media, the SM will have to prepare themselves and their family to be resilient against online personal attacks.  The SM must be prepared to cut ties with social media, have DoD censors possibly monitor their online activities, and switch to more secure means to communicate with their families. 

Risk:  A risk with Option #1 comes from out of pocket expenses if the SM wants to use private sector resources in pursuit of individual readiness. Other risks stems from institutional bias, depending on the environment created by leadership, as the SM could be ostracized in seeking help for physical and mental injuries. Also, rather than abandon their digital device to protect their unit and family, the SM could try to enhance their digital security themselves in an incorrect manner, thus increasing vulnerability.

Gain:  SM improving their own readiness will ensure they are mission ready with or without a preplanned training cycle, thus increasing the speed of possible deployment. This option will also minimize the SM’s digital footprint and thus make the SM and their families harder to target both on and off the battlefield. Finally, Option #1 increases the strength of individual replacements, which can lead to a more professional environment that nullifies the toxic elements found in a unit. 

Option #2:  Fire Team Assessment.

Knowing the true mission readiness of a Fire Team at a glance is next to impossible unless you are a member. Pivoting to prepare to fight China and Russia requires the Fire Team to ponder what this type of combat will look like and develop procedures to rehearse. In addition to the China and Russia threats, the Fire Team will need to prepare to act against PMCs such as Russia’s Wagner Group, which may behave more unconventionally and not wear a military uniform. A new procedure will likely be developed that focuses on digital checks prior to conducting a mission i.e. turning off or discarding personal electronic devices. Following a mission or an incident the Fire Team will need to conduct rigorous examination of the actions taken and adapt as needed using their own creativity to create procedures to ensure mission accomplishment and battlefield survival. The members of the Fire Team will look to themselves to improve their teams readiness. Developing skills and procedures to shift on demand between a conventional military threat and an unconventional PMC threat will be challenging as, while the U.S. may differentiate between these threats, the enemy only sees them as capabilities contributing towards their end goal.

Risk:  The primary risk with Option #2 is a higher-level command element being uncomfortable with their smallest unit, the Fire Team, being highly individualistic and adaptable, and seeing this creativity as a threat, seeking to eliminate it.

Gain:  Option #2 enables the Fire team to truly take their survival into their own hands through scenario examination and procedure development. This option develops Fire Team planning, networking, and leadership skills. Option #2 allows higher leadership to trust their smallest units to operate in a dispersed manner without constant supervision.

Other Comments:  It is up to the individual, no matter the rank, to be mission ready on demand, regardless of their motivation to serve. Being mission ready, with or without a preplanned training cycle, is the ultimate sign of individual readiness. 

Endnotes:

[1]Hand, Gorge E. “GRAPHIC: What the Azerbaijani Drone Strike Footage Tells Us.” SOFREP, 3 Oct. 2020, www.sofrep.com/news/armenian-azerbaijani-drone-strike-footage-graphic.

[2]Doffman, Zak. “Cyber Warfare: Army Deploys Social Media Warfare Division To Fight Russia.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 1 Aug. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/08/01/social-media-warfare-new-military-cyber-unit-will-fight-russias-dark-arts.

[3]“Band of Brothers: The Wagner Group and the Russian State.” Band of Brothers: The Wagner Group and the Russian State | Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS Executive Education Program, 25 Sept. 2020, www.csis.org/blogs/post-soviet-post/band-brothers-wagner-group-and-russian-state.

China (People's Republic of China) Great Powers & Super Powers Readiness Russia Skye Viera United States
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Options to Prioritize People and Improve Readiness: Decreasing OPTEMPO to Increase Learning

Josh Linvill has served in 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment as a regimental planner, rifle company commander, and headquarters and headquarters troop commander. He is assigned to the 10th Mountain Division and serves as a planner for Operation Resolute Support in Kabul, Afghanistan. He can be found on Twitter @josh_linvill. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.

National Security Situation:  The U.S. Army is transitioning its number one priority from readiness to people. Part of the transition is an attempt to reduce the operational tempo (OPTEMPO) so units can focus on dedicated periods for mission, training, and modernization.

Date Originally Written:  November 7, 2020.

Date Originally Published:  January 4, 2021.

Author and / or Article Point of View:  The author is a graduate of the U.S. Army’s School for Advanced Military Studies whose research focused on how the Army can learn from Rotational Training Units’ (RTU) experiences. The author believes a lower OPTEMPO by focusing the purpose of Combat Training Center (CTC) rotations or reducing the number of CTC rotations will increase learning for the Army and therefore increase readiness.

Background:  In October 2020, the U.S. Army published its Action Plan to Prioritize People and Teams. The plan describes how the focus on readiness, “resulted in an unsustainable OPTEMPO and placed significant demands on units, leaders, and Soldiers and Families and stress on the force[1].” The action plan describes two ways the Army will reduce OPTEMPO; specially designed rotations where the entire brigade will not deploy to a CTC and potentially not requiring CTC rotations for units scheduled for non-combat deployments.

Significance:  Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) provides a model, figure 1, the Army can use to increase learning while reducing OPTEMPO. Theorist David Kolb explains the dialectic nature of ELT, “learning is defined as ‘the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.’ Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience[2].” The ELT cycle consists of four stages: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. In ideal circumstances the learner grasps and transforms knowledge while progressing through each stage of the cycle. As Kolb writes, “immediate or concrete experiences are the basis for observations and reflections. Theses reflections are assimilated and distilled into abstract concepts from which new implications for action are drawn. These implications can be actively tested and serve as guides in creating new experiences[3].” Changing the current design and/or rate of CTC rotations, or concrete experiences for units, enables the Army to give primacy to the other stages of the ELT cycle. By implementing different options for CTC rotations the Army can learn more by harnessing the power of a complete ELT cycle.

Figure 1. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory Model. David A. Kolb, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2015), 51.

Option #1:  The Army focuses CTC rotations on Army learning, not just the RTU. In this option, the Army can treat each CTC rotation as a means to an end by assessing and integrating the needs of the RTU with the overall needs of the Army. In other words, each CTC rotation can serve as a new concrete experience in the ELT cycle of the Army. The Army can use lessons learned from current conflicts or previous War Fighter Exercises and CTC rotations to tailor rotations focused on one unit or warfighting function. For example, division cavalry constructs, the use of armor in an Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaisance saturated environment, or consolidation area operations.

Risk:  The primary risk to Option #1 is that the experiments fail and a fiscal risk in that rotations are extremely expensive. If there is no balance between active experimentation and training the fundamentals of warfighting and therefore readiness will suffer.

Gain:  Rather than using similar rotational constructs for each Brigade Combat Team, in this option the Army will benefit from using the ELT cycles that begin with different experiences to test (ELT active experimentation) a theory or hypothesis (ELT abstract conceptualization) developed by reflecting on pervious experiences (ELT reflective observation). In this option ELT cycles that begin outside of CTCs will directly influence CTC rotations. By linking ELT cycles at CTCs the Army can develop new ideas following a variety of experiences.

Option #2:  The U.S. Army slows down to speed up learning. A certain level of detachment from experience is required to progress through every stage of the ELT cycle. An organization consumed by events cannot effectively learn. By reducing the number of CTC rotations the Army can learn more by focusing on the other stages of the ELT cycle and exploit the knowledge of other organizations who shared the experience with the RTU. Organizations like Operations Groups and the Opposing Force (OPFOR) are just some of the key players to extending the learning process. More time between rotations would allow these organizations time to progress through their own ELT cycles and share that knowledge directly with other units[4].

Risk:  Although quality over quantity is important and in-line with the Army Action Plan, this option risks leaders in key positions not having any CTC experience at all. Fewer events mean fewer concrete experiences to initiate the learning.

Gain:  Fewer rotations means CTC Operations Groups will be able to focus more time observing and coaching units through the entire ELT cycle instead of focusing on the concrete experience of each rotation. Fewer rotations will enable members of the Operations Groups to follow up with previous RTUs and coach them through the reflection on, conceptualization, and experimentation of ideas that began during their rotation, extending the learning cycle that started at the CTC. This same process could take place for units training for upcoming CTC rotations. Members of the Operations Groups would have the time to share the reflections and observations of previous RTUs and their own observations and ideas to support commanders training their units for a CTC rotation. Fewer rotations would also enable other CTC organizations, like members of the OPFOR, to take part in the process and further enhance units’ learning cycles.

Other Comments:  None.

Recommendation:  None.

Endnotes:

[1] U.S. Army, Action Plan to Prioritize People and Teams. Army.mil, October13, 2020, accessed October 25, 2020, https://www.army.mil/article/239837/action_plan_to_prioritize_people_and_teams

[2] David A. Kolb, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2015), 51.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Dr. Robert Foley examines the process of horizontal learning, using the experiences of other units to learn, is his article, A Case Study in Horizontal Military Innovation: The German Army, 1916-1918. Available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402390.2012.669737

Josh Linvill Option Papers Readiness U.S. Army