Military Review English Edition November-December 2015 | Page 95
SECRET TO SUCCESS
widely disseminated commander’s intent and within the
realm of officer influence.
A recent example of poor NCO development highlights the advantages effective development provides to
officers and the U.S. Army overall. The recent defeat of
the Iraqi army by the ISIS insurgents is a case of what
can happen when all the decision making is concentrated solely in the hands of senior leaders. Recent combat
history shows much of the same style of hierarchical structure in the defeated armies from Operation Just Cause to
Operation Iraqi Freedom. In each of these operations, the
losing forces were configured with command structures
that were centralized, unwieldy, and inflexible.
While technological advantages cannot be discounted as contributing to the U.S. Army’s success,
the inability of the enemies’ professional enlisted corps
(and junior officers) to take autonomous initiative was
a debilitating factor that negatively affected enemy
combat performance. Institutional decentralization of
authority, if it had been fostered over time, could have
made huge differences in the manner the various battles
and operations played out in these conflicts. Given the
rapid nature of modern-day combat, an army that is
encumbered with poor tactical and operational agility,
stemming from a lack of an empowered NCO corps, will
have a clumsy and slow force that can quickly become
outflanked, encircled, and overwhelmed at all levels of
command from platoon to division. This was recently
demonstrated in northern Iraq by Iraqi government
forces with a weak and ill-trained NCO corps.
From the present doctrinal perspective of the U.S.
Army, the more operations are decentralized, the more
flexible and ingenious the methodologies that junior officers and their NCOs will develop to overcome the obstacles they encounter to reach their objectives and complete
their assigned missions.
Recommendations—Making Changes
to Business as Usual
Nation-states and their armies that desire to develop a
professional NCO corps similar to that of the U.S. Army
should consider the following recommendations as they
make that transition.
Add leadership training. Leadership training must be
incorporated into all NCO training and education. While
many armies, including those within our own hemisphere,
have for their officers robust military academies that emphasize leadership and technical training through four or
more rigorous years as a cadet, many of their professional
enlisted educational academies train strictly on technical
(U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Mark O’Donald)
Afghan soldiers attending the Afghan National Army Noncommissioned Officer Academy await further training 11 May 2010 at Forward
Operating Base Thunder, Gardez District, Paktia Province, Afghanistan.
MILITARY REVIEW November-December 2015
89