Educating for Landpower

Educating Army Leaders, even those at the small unit level, must keep pace with the future operating environment. This complex strategic environment, like the world around us, is changing at an exponential rate, and, in arguably unpredictable directions. Thus, the challenges of educating future landpower leaders are also changing. Key concepts like Fourth Generation Warfare and Hybrid War are changing how we think about the future of war. The current Army Education System was designed to develop large numbers of leaders educated in linear warfare and has not kept pace with a transforming Army. Tomorrows landpower leaders must not only be educated to be masters of the tactical domain, but must master soft-power attributes such as governance, cross-cultural awareness, and inter-agency and interpersonal dynamics. The future landpower leaders must have a thorough understanding of how to think and this competency must be introduced at a much earlier point in an officers career in order to begin reshaping our educational institutions to address the uncertain security environment.