Military Review English Edition November-December 2014 | Page 40

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Advising leaders at platoon
and higher levels
Expertly training enlisted
soldiers, crews, and small teams
Taking care of soldiers and
their families
Enforcing standards
Training subordinates to
master their military occupational
specialties
Achieving these ends is vital to
winning our nation’s wars across
the full range of conflict. The NCO
corps must leverage the three
Soldiers attending the 7th Army’s NCO Academy learn leadership skills during simulattraining domains to enhance future
ed missions at the Joint Multinational Training Command in Grafenwoehr, Germany, 10
NCO competencies so they can
February 2009.
(Photo by Christian Marquardt, 7th Army JMTC PAO)
adapt to changing tactical, operational, and strategic conditions as
Provide challenging and rigorous leader developwell as a thinking enemy. The complexity of the OE,
ment training, education, and experiences that result
coupled with the need to execute a full range of decenin earlier technical mastery, increased tactical skills,
tralized operations in a variety of cultures, will drive
adaptability, innovation, and agility—in other words,
the increasing learning demand placed on NCOs.
mastery of the NCO general learning outcomes.7
To ensure a capabilities-based strategy, analysts
Articulate learning responsibilities and requirereviewed the framework in The United States Army
ments across the three training domains (operational,
Operating Concept.10 The Army operating concept proinstitutional, and self-development) and integrate them vides a “concept framework” for the development of cainto a synchronized, effective, and efficient developpabilities for the future force in the 2016 to 2028 timement system.8
frame. The framework contains a family of six concepts
Improve professional development models and
that examine the projected OE and provide strategic
learning curricula so that soldiers and leaders can asguidance to develop the capabilities required in supsess leader development progress, track learning events, port of Army modernization. The U.S. Army Capstone
create goals , and certify professionals.
Concept is the foundation for a series of documents.11
Support identification and development of NCOs The operating concept’s six functional concepts align
to serve in operational- and strategic-level assignments. with warfighting functions and three other concepts
NCO 2020 will meet these objectives by accepting
focused on the development of soldiers, leaders, and
the challenge, learning from the past, and synthesizorganizations.12 The Army operating concept describes
ing the “as is” with the “can be” using an instructional
how Army forces will conduct operations as part of the
systems design process. The ADDIE (analysis, design,
joint force to deter conflict, prevail in war, and sucdevelopment, implementation, and evaluation) process
ceed in a wide range of contingencies in the future OE.
is the tool the Army will use to transform the current
These documents guide efforts to identify and develop
NCOES into the NCO 2020 system designed to supthe requirements of the future force in which an NCO
port mission command and provide adaptability to the
must lead.
VUCA environment.9 The outcome will be an NCO
In addition to the concepts, the Army Leader
corps that supports Army goals and objectives by doing Development Strategy (ALDS) describes the characthe following:
teristics the Army desires in leaders throughout their
Leading teams, squads, and platoons
careers. It contains the guiding strategy to build those
Serving in staff roles
characteristics.13 Together, the concepts and ALDS

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November-December 2014  MILITARY REVIEW