Review Essay - Reinvigorating Education in the Australian Army

… our leaders … do their troops a disservice by not studying (studying, vice just reading) the [warfighters] who have gone before us. We have been fighting on this planet for 5,000 years and we should take advantage of their experience. ‘Winging’ it and filling body bags as we sort out what works reminds us of the moral dictates and the cost of competence in our profession.

- Major General (later General) James N. Mattis, USMC, 2004¹

This review essay argues the case for the reinvigoration of education in the Australian Army based on the ideas and concepts articulated in the work of Williamson Murray, Allan Millett and Thomas Ricks. The central thesis of these three volumes is that professional military education complements training. This essay applies that thesis to the Australian context, arguing that combined excellence in education and training is critical if the Australian Army is to remain a pre-eminent warfighting organisation, particularly in the post-Afghanistan era.

Military Innovation (Murray and Millett), Military Adaptation (Murray) and The Generals (Ricks) provide useful continuities in thinking and discussion on professional military education with much of relevance to the Australian Army. Military Innovation (Murray and Millett) and Military Adaptation (Murray) analyse the reasons for the success and failure of military education in peace and war. Military Innovation focuses on the interwar period between World War I and World War II while Military Adaptation focuses primarily on World War II. In The Generals, Ricks examines the challenges, failures and achievements of US Army generals from World War II through to the current period. Ricks links his timeline to those of Murray and Millett through his post-World War II historical analysis. Ricks also connects ideas from Murray and Millett on the value or otherwise of professional military education.

Since 1999, Army’s fundamental base — its foundation warfighting skills — has been degraded by 15 years of deployment and conflict in Australia’s neighbouring region and the Middle East. For over a decade the Australian Army has trained its soldiers for specific operations. As a result, few soldiers have had the time to undertake broader education, training or practice in the four phases of war: advance, attack, defence, withdrawal. In addition, many soldiers, non- commissioned officers and officers have missed the opportunity to attend and pass career courses. In 2014 many career courses, particularly for officers, remain significantly undersubscribed. For Army’s people, these courses represent an essential element of their professional military education.

Instead of foundation warfighting, the Australian Army has adapted to multiple complex operational environments throughout the world. Through innovation and adaptation, Army has trained and performed well. However, as operational deployments end, Army’s focus has necessarily turned to regaining unpractised foundation warfighting skills. In 2010 this drive to regain unpractised skills led to the launch of Exercise Hamel — Army’s premier annual combined arms warfighting exercise.² The exercise is named after the Australian Corps’ World War I battle on 4 July 1918 to capture the French town of Hamel and its surrounding areas.³ Exercise Hamel is designed to develop, confirm and evaluate the foundation warfighting skills of Army’s reinforced combat brigades within a joint task force setting.

While the Australian Army trains hard and is working to improve its foundation warfighting skills, the three books in this review essay serve as a warning. Training is what armies, including the Australian Army, do well and the Australian Army, despite 15 years of deployment and conflict, remains a pre-eminent training organisation. Education is a far more difficult prospect and, within the Australian Army, education requires substantial reinvigoration.

Definitions

While training and education are complementary, there are significant differences in the expected outcomes of the two. Training is functional and practical. Education aims to extend, develop and change people’s behaviour and thinking. Training is designed to enable people to perform tasks effectively; education develops people’s critical problem-solving skills. Training focuses on psycho-motor skills, replicating performance standards based on past experience. Education focuses on cognitive skills — comprehension, analysis, synthesis, communication and evaluation.⁴

Training is ‘the action of teaching a person a particular skill or type of behaviour’. The word itself has Middle English origins derived from the Latin trahere to ‘pull, draw’. Education is a mid-16th century Latin word from the verb educere to ‘lead out’. Educe means to ‘bring out or develop … something latent or potential’, while educate means to ‘give intellectual, moral, and social instruction to someone’.⁵

Training thus relates to ‘pulling, drawing’ trainees towards a skill or behaviour, while education ‘leads and develops’ people’s potential. Thomas E. Ricks in The Generals neatly summarises the US Army’s 1970s, 1980s and 1990s emphasis on training over education. In those post-Vietnam decades the US Army ‘emphasised training, which prepares soldiers for the known, far more than education, which prepares them to deal with the unknown … the unpredictable, and the unexpected.’⁶

In the context of this paper, ‘Army education’ refers to the approach, systems and programs through which Army educates its people. Murray and Millett observe that establishing innovative and adaptable militaries requires senior leaders to ‘inculcate the requisite intellectual atmosphere and institutional processes within the military societies involved.’⁷ Education is one method of creating the ‘requisite intellectual atmosphere’ within the Australian Army.

Australian Army Education: 1984–2014

Education in the Australian Army in 1984 differed enormously to that offered in 2014. In 1984, junior officers were assessed on their ability to write effectively. Officers with identified difficulties in written communication were required to complete the Army Effective Writing Program. In 1984, every corporal and sergeant was required to pass the Subject 3 (Maths, English and Social Studies) examination for promotion to sergeant and warrant officer. Officers, sergeants and warrant officers who did not pass Army-administered exemption tests were required to attend and pass education courses.⁸ In 2014, the Effective Writing Program and Subject 3 (Maths, English and Social Studies) are no longer a requirement for Army’s junior officers, sergeants and warrant officers.

In the late 1980s, a soldier or non-commissioned officer without sufficient Year 12 grades could apply to enter the Royal Military College, Duntroon (RMC), as an officer cadet. If selected, the soldier attended a full-time Year 12 bridging course conducted by the Army which sought to raise the candidate’s level of qualification to that required for entry to RMC. In 2014, Year 12 bridging courses are part-time and are outsourced to state technical and further education colleges and institutes of technology.⁹

In 1984, Army operated the Army Command and Staff College, Queenscliff, which conducted a course designed to educate Army officers at the rank of major, preparing them for future demanding command and staff appointments. In 2014, Army officers attend the joint Australian Command and Staff College (ACSC).

In addition to a joint curriculum, ACSC perpetuates a cognitive dissonance of three separate ‘single service’ curriculums. Diverting joint education resources at ACSC for ‘single service’ curriculums suggests an educational shortfall in ADF officers, implying that ADF officers are not sufficiently educated by their own service prior to attending ACSC. If true, this educational shortfall needs rectification. For example, the three services may need to expand professional military education for their officers earlier in their careers and prior to attendance at ACSC. Australia’s Navy, Army and Air Force aspire to fight as joint, and increasingly whole-of-government, multi-sectoral and coalition forces. Education in the ADF must match this reality.

It is of concern that, just as the Australian Army has changed or eliminated education opportunities for its people, education standards have also fallen in Australian schools and workplaces. For example, ‘while Australia remains a high-achieving nation in education, our overall performance has fallen in the last decade.’10 ‘Australia now ranks 25th out of 29 advanced economies in terms of public investment in universities.’¹¹ In addition, more students in Australia are ‘finishing Year 12, but attendance rates are falling and literacy and numeracy scores have stagnated among high school students.’¹² This is a key concern for the Army, as language and literacy are foundation capabilities for cognitive capacity.¹³

The Australian Industry Group estimates that ‘4.2 million Australians, or 40 per cent of the workforce, are below the minimum language, literacy and numeracy standard needed to function in a knowledge economy.’¹⁴ These warnings concerning diminished education standards in Australia indicate that Army cannot assume that all soldiers will enlist with a reasonable standard of education.

In 2014, there are indications that the government may cut the ADF’s budget despite some observers commenting that ‘defence spending as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has fallen to its lowest level since 1938, at 1.56 per cent of GDP.’¹⁵ Facing similar fiscal pressures through funding sequestration, the Commandant of the US Marine Corps, General James F. Amos, observed that ‘this is no time to do business as usual’.¹⁶ Sharing a similar view, physicist Ernest Rutherford reportedly quipped, ‘we haven’t got the money, so we’ve got to think.’¹⁷ In these financially austere circumstances, it is crucial that the Australian Army champions enhanced education of its people as an asymmetric advantage in driving Army innovation and adaptation.

In summary, the Australian Army has no choice but to continue focussing on providing soldiers and leaders opportunities for education and training. Perhaps Army should reflect on Michael Howard’s description of the British Army in the interwar period of 1919–1938. The British Army in those years viewed ‘soldiering as an agreeable and honourable occupation rather than as a serious profession demanding no less intellectual dedication than that of the doctor, the lawyer, or the engineer.’¹⁸

This is not to suggest that the Australian Army should return to the structure and policies of 1984. Much of Army’s education in 1984, particularly for officers, was delivered in a single service stove-pipe. This essay argues that the Australian Army’s ability to educate its people should be as strong as its ability to train its soldiers. The three books examined in this review essay explore why education is important for militaries, including the Australian Army.

Military Innovation in the Interwar Period

Published in 1998, Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, edited by Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, comprises seven essays, and concludes that:

A significant portion of innovation in the interwar [i.e. between World War I and World War II] period depended on close relationships between schools of professional military innovation and the world of operations. The United States (US) military lost its belief in professional military education after World War II [during the Cold War] … despite the connection between success in World War II and education at Leavenworth [US Army Command and General Staff College] and Newport [US Navy’s College of Naval Command and Staff].¹⁹

Importantly, the period between World War I and World War II saw military institutions in France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States ‘come to grips with enormous technological and tactical innovation during a period of minimal funding and low resource support … some succeeded … others were less successful … and some resulted in dismal military failure.’²⁰ There were seven specific areas of innovation during the interwar period: armoured warfare, amphibious warfare, strategic bombing, tactical bombing, submarine warfare, carrier aviation, and the development of radar.²¹

Murray and Millett argue that, without education, bureaucratic process and organisational inertia predominate. Indeed, according to Rosen, bureaucratic dominance stunts innovation. He notes that, because bureaucracies, including military bureaucracies, seek routine, repetitive and orderly processes, they ‘are not supposed to innovate’.²² Citing barriers to innovation including the military hierarchy, traditionalism, romanticism and the lack of peacetime tests ofeffectiveness, Rosen explains that, ‘if left to themselves, military innovation must be the result of civilian intervention.’²³

The ADF also has its share of bureaucratic processes leading to inertia in education. One obvious example is the vision for professional military education articulated in Defence White Paper 2013. On page 105 of the 129-page document, Defence White Paper 2013 devotes just three paragraphs to ADF ‘Training and Education’. The Defence White Paper 2013 vision for professional military education is:

Education … is important in positioning Defence for the challenges in the decade ahead … Engagement with the wider national security community will be increased, including by enrolling students from other Departments and Agencies in Defence’s educational programs, and by Defence participation at the National Security College.²⁴

As an alternative approach to establishing a vision for professional military education, Murray and Millett note that armies or defence forces seeking to ‘institutionalise their new forms of warfare’, should ideally perform a combination of three actions:²⁵

1. Institute innovative approaches in the service school system, such as via non-commissioned officer and officer education programs.

2. Write doctrinal manuals on the new form of warfare, such as the German Army Truppenführung [Troop Leading] (1933), US Marine Corps Tentative Manual for Landing Operations (1934), German Luftwaffe manual Conduct of the Air War (1935), US Army Air Force manual Delivery of Fire from Aircraft (1939) and US Marine Corps Small Wars Manual (1940). For the Australian Army in 2014, opportunities for an innovative approach to future war include the development of manuals on amphibious operations and the employment of the armoured cavalry regiment. The importance of doctrine development cannot be overstated, as noted by General Alexander Vandegrift:

   … despite its outstanding record as a combat force [in World War II] the Marine Corps’ far greater contribution to victory was doctrinal; that is, the fact that the basic amphibious doctrines which carried Allied troops over every beachhead of World War II had been largely shaped – often in the face of uninterested and doubting military orthodoxy – by US Marines, and mainly between 1922 and 1935.²⁶

3. Enable operational units to perform new wartime missions. For the Australian Army in 2014, the conclusion of the current suite of operational deployments should provide opportunities for the conduct of robust experimentation, exercises and simulation to replicate wartime missions. The 1920s US Navy provides a good example of innovation in an austere funding environment. During this period the US Naval War College in Newport conducted wargaming which provided insights into ‘the potential that the aircraft carrier might possess at a time when the [US] navy did not possess a single carrier’.²⁷

Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change

Written 13 years after Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, Williamson Murray’s Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change makes a further case for education. Murray asserts that, in time of peace, militaries can only innovate; in war they adapt or fail:

… one cannot replicate in peacetime the conditions of war. In the case of innovation, there is always time available to think through problems, whatever their nature, but peacetime invariably lacks the terrible pressures of war as well as an interactive, adaptive opponent who is trying to kill us. In the case of war, on the other hand, there is little time, but there is the feedback of combat results, which can suggest necessary adaptations, but only if lessons are identified and learned, the latter representing a major “if”.²⁸

Murray’s thesis of adaptation in war relies on educating military leaders. Through examining adaptation on the Western Front (1914–1918), the opening battles of World War II, the Battle of Britain (June 1940–May 1941), the Air War (May 1940–May 1945) and the Yom Kippur War (1973), Murray argues that, without the education of military leaders, adaptation through lesson identification and learning will be limited.

Emphasising educational requirements, Murray argues that ‘successful innovation [in peacetime] has depended on the organisational culture, the imagination and vision of senior leaders, and the seriousness with which military organisations have taken the intellectual preparation of future leaders through an honest and intelligent study of the past.’²⁹ He claims a direct correlation between ‘the willingness of military institutions to emphasise empirical evidence in the processes of peacetime innovation and their ability to recognise the actual conditions of war, [as the] the first step to serious adaptation.’³⁰

Murray also asserts that ‘war inevitably involves issues at the political, strategic, operational and tactical levels … [and] that spread of perspective invariably presents contradictory choices to military leaders.’³¹ This point is crucial for military professional education. Developing officers to span this breadth of intellectual challenge is an inexact process.

Officers who show considerable promise at the tactical level may falter at operational levels and above. Others may demonstrate greater skills when dealing with higher level challenges. However education is essential throughout the entire span of an officer’s career if he or she is to succeed. This is expensive. It is also prone to disruption. As noted earlier, many career courses for officers remain significantly undersubscribed during busy operational periods. Regardless, an effective military education system must continuously seek to educate its officers and non-commissioned officers to meet the challenges of the most demanding future warfighting scenarios.

As Millett and Murray observed in 1988, ‘mistakes in operations and tactics can be corrected but political and strategic mistakes live forever.’³² For those currently serving in the Australian Army, Murray warns that:

As was the case with the experiences of the Vietnam War, time will wash out those experiences of the recent past in Iraq and Afghanistan. This time, it will be doubly tragic if there were not a change in the fundamental view of how officers view their profession … one needs to rethink professional military education in [three] fundamental ways:

1. Develop close relationships between schools of professional military education and the world of operations.
    
2. Ensure professional military education remains a central concern throughout the entire career of an officer [and non-commissioned officer] [italics in original].
    
3. Promote to the highest ranks [those who] possess the imagination and intellectual framework to support innovation [and adaptation].³³

 

The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today

In The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, Thomas E. Ricks examines the warfighting abilities of 24 generals, primarily from the US Army. Throughout The Generals, Ricks emphasises the importance of education in developing military capability. He agrees with Murray and Millett’s analysis that ‘the US military lost its belief in professional military education after World War II.’³⁴

In 1965 for example, Peter Dawkins, a West Point graduate and Rhodes scholar, noted that, instead of emphasising professional military education, the US Army sought individuals with ‘zero defects’, preferring those ‘who [had] done so little – who [had] exerted such a paltry amount of initiative and imagination – that [they have] never done anything wrong.’³⁵

According to Lewis Sorley, weaknesses in professional military education in the US Army saw the rise of US Army leaders such as General William C. Westmoreland, Commander of the US Military Assistance Command in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968. Sorley describes General Westmoreland as ‘… an organisation man more educated in corporate management than military affairs. He was an odd combination of traits: energetic and ambitious, yet strikingly incurious … [who] made no effort to study, read or learn.’³⁶ General Westmoreland did not attend Command and General Staff College or War College. He was, according to Stanley Karnow, a ‘corporation executive in uniform’.³⁷

In the 1960s and during the Vietnam War, US Army professional military education was at a low ebb. Neil Sheehan notes that ‘there was a lack of willingness among general officers to examine their own performance’ while the dominant characteristics of senior leadership in the US armed forces had become ‘professional arrogance, lack of imagination, and moral and intellectual insensitivity.’³⁸

The US Army required rebuilding following Vietnam. The first step was to establish the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) in 1973, led by Major General William DePuy. TRADOC united, for the first time, the US Army’s ‘efforts on training, research, and doctrine’.³⁹ Doctrine described ‘how the [US Army] thinks about how to fight’ and, under Major General DePuy’s leadership, the US Army published FM 100-5, Active Defense, in 1976.⁴⁰

DePuy ‘made the drafting of doctrine – once considered drone work for second- rate midcareer staffers – a core function, the business of generals.’⁴¹ DePuy’s new emphasis forced the US Army to consider ‘basic strategic questions: Who are we? What are we trying to do? How are we to do it – that is, how should we fight?’42 Current pragmatic doctrine is the key to educating an army, and the US Army made doctrine ‘one device by which it sought to reassert its professional self-worth.’⁴³

However, one criticism of FM 100-5, Active Defense, and the US Army’s 1982 revision of FM 100-5, AirLand Battle, is that these are ‘flawed products … of the late Cold War … [that] emphasised training, which prepares soldiers for the known, far more than education, which prepares them to deal with the unknown.’⁴⁴ Given a ‘predictable enemy’ — the Soviet Union — and the fact that ‘even the ground on which a confrontation with forces of the Warsaw Pact would take place was known … there was little need for [US] generals who were strategic thinkers, because the strategic threat at the time was obvious.’⁴⁵

Ricks argues that, as a result of concentrating on training rather than education, the US Army produced a generation of officers who ‘tended to be tactically adept, proficient as battalion commanders, but not prepared for senior generalship – especially when the Cold War ended and they faced a series of ambiguous crises.’⁴⁶ Indeed, as Colonel Paul Yingling notes, ‘from 1982 the National Training Center [NTC, Fort Irwin, California] was the intellectual home of the Army, not the War College or West Point.’⁴⁷

According to Ricks, this focus on tactics and the operational level of war resulted in the US Army leadership ignoring strategy. These leaders lacked the ability to embrace ‘political, economic, and psychological means for the attainment of war aims’.⁴⁸ Hew Strachan agrees, noting that ‘the operational level of war appeals to armies: it functions in a politics-free zone and it puts primacy on professional skills.’⁴⁹ For example, Ricks argues that US Army officers led four operations — Panama (1989), Iraq (1991), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) — ‘without a notion of what to do the day after their initial triumph, and in fact believing it was not their job to consider the question.’⁵⁰ The ‘fixation on winning day-long battles in a two-week NTC rotation may well have distracted an entire generation of combat officers from learning or even thinking about, how to turn short-term tactical victories into long- term strategic results.’⁵¹

In response to the US Army’s post-Vietnam inability to educate strategic thinkers, the US Army established the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) in 1984. SAMS is designed to provide staff college-qualified majors ‘the opportunity of a lifetime to study their profession in depth, in a no-holds-barred arena where their best ideas were put up against the best ideas of other people and, where they were used to winning arguments, they were now losing arguments.’⁵²

Through SAMS, the US Army seeks to ensure that ‘more officers [are] educated in theories and principles which will make them adaptive and innovative.’⁵³ To paraphrase Murray, the US Army sought, via SAMS, the ability to innovate in peace so that it could adapt in war.⁵⁴

The ADF has long recognised the value of a SAMS-type education for its officers. Since 1991, the ADF has sponsored 37 officers to undertake USMC, US Army, US Air Force and US joint advanced warfighting programs. While 12 graduates are now retired, of the other 25 graduates, one Royal Australian Navy, 19 Australian Army, and five Royal Australian Air Force officers remain serving in the regular ADF. Graduates range in rank from major general to squadron leader.⁵⁵

Yet, despite the establishment of SAMS courses, the US Army remained unable to ensure that its education systems matched its training systems. Following tactical and operational victory in the 1991 Gulf War, the US Army faced more uncertainty. The Cold War was over. A peace dividend cutting the US Army by 40 per cent was mandated. The Information Age had arrived. Programs such as SAMS were accorded lower priority in favour of US Army digitisation.⁵⁶ The US Army effectively outsourced its thinking: ‘MPRI [Military Professional Resources Inc.] wrote our doctrine, we had retired colonels as instructors, and we didn’t have battlefield feedback shaping doctrine … It cost us in the decade of war [2001-2011].’⁵⁷

As the US Army faced new challenges in the late 1990s, so too did the Australian Army. From 1999 the ADF deployed to East Timor, Iraq, Solomon Islands and Afghanistan. The Army contributed most troops and suffered most casualties. Simultaneously, as described earlier, Army’s opportunities for foundation warfighting training — particularly in the four phases of war — were limited. In addition, the Australian Army modified or phased out education opportunities for its people. Concurrently, education standards fell in Australian schools and workplaces.

Despite these challenges, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Australian Army performed well in multiple deployed environments. John Blaxland notes that:

… the Army sought to maintain a culture of learning … [however] there was still a difference between education and experience and the Army tended to value experience over education, but it recognised the need to blend education and experience (and initiative) to develop its leaders, as well as a desire to learn from others. The more operations the Army was involved in, the more capable it became.⁵⁸

Notwithstanding its past success, the Australian Army cannot afford future complacency. Sustaining excellence in an army requires robust and innovative training and education. In this regard, the challenges faced by the US Army beyond 2003 serve as a warning.

Approaching the 2003 Iraq War, US Army leadership had created a ‘well-trained, professional, competent force’.⁵⁹ The US Army could fight. But, as Colin Gray observes, when ‘war is reduced to fighting’:

… the logistic, economic, political and diplomatic, and sociocultural contexts are likely to be neglected. Any of these dimensions, singly or in malign combination, can carry the virus of eventual defeat, virtually no matter how an army performs on the battlefield … When a belligerent approaches war almost exclusively as warfare, it is all but asking to be out-generalled by an enemy who fights smarter.⁶⁰

In Iraq, the US Army faced ‘an insurgency that appeared to have few if any generals – but had a better concept of how to wage war in Iraq.’⁶¹ For the US Army, adapting from a conventional war against a known army to an insurgency against an unknown threat was fraught with difficulty.

Ricks describes two solutions the US Army developed in Iraq to unshackle itself from General DePuy’s post-Vietnam model of excellence in training at the expense of professional military education. First, soldiers and junior leaders independently adapted as they fought an innovative and equally adaptable enemy. While centralised US Army operational guidance faltered, various US divisions in Iraq, ‘waged more or less independent campaigns.’⁶²

Second, officers such as General Martin Dempsey, General James Mattis, USMC, General Raymond Odierno and General David Petraeus, were leaders who ‘were not officers who fit the relentlessly tactical mode developed by DePuy but rather [leaders] who had, on their own, found [an] alternate mode … [as] flexible commanders able to think independently … and critically [italics added].’⁶³

Ricks concludes The Generals with advice on how to use education to produce critical thinking and independent leaders in the US Army of the future. This advice, while not exhaustive, is germane to the Australian Army when considering the reinvigoration of Army education. Ricks counsels:

1. Develop critical thinking in Army leaders. Instil a professional military education habit of ‘closely studying military and cultural history’. Send leaders to ‘pursue advanced degrees at elite civilian institutions, where many of their basic assumptions will be challenged.’
    
2. Educate leaders to write clearly. The modern era is dominated by ‘PowerPoint bullet-point briefings … which lack verbs and causal thinking and all too often confuse a statement of goals with a strategy for actually achieving them.’
    
3. Encourage leaders’ contributions to professional discourse through professional military journals.
    
4. Send leaders for a ‘sabbatical’ in regional countries. Follow the Australian Army’s lead in creating outplacement opportunities for high performing leaders with elite civilian businesses.
    
5. Instil more rigour in military staff colleges. Ricks recommends staff colleges adopt ‘selective entrance examinations, frequent paper-writing assignments, and reading loads equivalent to those at civilian graduate schools.’ He adds that ‘the taxpayer is entitled to nothing less, especially in an era of tightening defense budgets.’⁶⁴ Notably, ACSC has adopted an educational approach similar to that of Ricks. ACSC students can now undertake more demanding work and earn a Masters degree in their staff college year.

Conclusion

While emphasising the benefits of a robust professional military education, the three books in this review essay also provide examples of gaps in education that led to failure in war. Education comes in many forms and not all of these forms are, or need to be, expensive. Perhaps most critically, an organisation must collectively recognise, create and nurture opportunities for education. A common theme in these three books is that poor education of military leaders increases the risk to a nation’s security.

Education in the Australian Army requires reinvigoration. Like the US Army in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the Australian Army is a first class training organisation. However there are signs, both from within Australian society and within Army itself that, as a result of reduced educational opportunities, the Australian Army’s education programs need dramatic revitalisation.

Through Exercise Hamel, the Australian Army renewed its focus on training in foundation warfighting skills — perhaps Army should also renew its focus on enhanced professional military education. The centenary of World War I in 2014 and the Gallipoli landings in 2015 provide an excellent opportunity for a renewed emphasis on education. Campaign studies of key Australian World War I operations in the region, the Middle East and Europe, with accompanying study and examination requirements, represent just one approach. The return of the Effective Writing Program for officers and English, Maths and Social Studies education for soldiers and non-commissioned officers would also provide a reinvigoration of Army education. Further opportunities include the development of Army manuals on amphibious operations and the employment of the armoured cavalry regiment.

The ultimate aim of this review essay is to generate debate on the future of education in the Australian Army. This is a debate in which all serving members of the Army have a vested interest. Ultimately, future strategic challenges and conflict involving Australia will test the effectiveness of the Australian Army’s training and education. 

Endnotes

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1    Williamson Murray, Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 38.
2    Australian Army, What is Exercise Hamel?, http://www.army.gov.au/Our-work/Major-Exercises/ Exercise-Hamel-2012/What-is-Exercise-Hamel (accessed 24 November 2013).
3    Australian War Memorial, Hamel: the textbook Victory - 4 July 1918, http://www.awm.gov.au/ exhibitions/1918/battles/hamel.asp (accessed 24 November 2013).
4    Quote from Colonel Bill Monfries (retd) email to author, 5 February 2014.
5    Oxford Dictionary, English, Oxford University Press, 2014, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/ definition/english/training?q=training; http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ educate; http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/educe (accessed 22 January 2014).
6    Thomas E. Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, The Penguin Press, November 2012, pp. 346, 420.
7    Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett (eds), Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 415.
8    From 1963 to 1984, Army delivered the Australian Army Certificates of Education (AACE) series, a formal education scheme required for soldier promotion, which also influenced pay- for-skill grouping. Similarly, from 1985 to 2004, Army delivered the Subject 3 course series for promotion and pay-group purposes. From 2005, Army ceased delivery of formal education
courses and instead integrated language, literature and numeracy requirements into the Subject 1 courses. Quote from Colonel Deborah Bradford, email to author, 24 February 2014.
9    From 1966 to 1985, Army delivered the Services General Certificate of Education (SGCE), at Victorian high school leaving level, to provide soldiers with a matriculation qualification for entry to higher Army trade courses or for entry to the Officer Cadet School, Portsea. From 1985 to 2004, Army delivered the RMC Entry Education Course, a Queensland Board of Secondary School Studies Year 12 course to in-service applicants applying for RMC or for soldier entry
to higher Army trade courses. In 2004, this capability was exported under the civil schooling program. Quote from Colonel Deborah Bradford, email to author, 24 February 2014.
10    Cassandra Wilkinson, ‘Policy debate worth millions’, The Australian, 23 April 2013, http:// www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/policy-debate-worth-m…- e6frgd0x-1226626215217 (accessed 23 April 2013).
11    Emma Alberici interviewing Bill Scales, Chancellor of the Swinburne University of Technology, ‘Importance of education reform’, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 22 April 2013, http:// www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3742876.htm (accessed 23 April 2013).
12    Justine Ferrari and John Ross, ‘More are completing school, yet the gap keeps widening’, The Australian, 30 October 2013, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/more-are-
completing-school-yet-the-gap-keeps-widening/story-fn59nlz9-1226749275779 (accessed 3
November 2013).
13    Quote from Colonel Bill Monfries (retd), email to author, 5 February 2014.
14    Rosie Lewis, ‘Workers’ literacy levels so poor bosses forced to use pictures for safety’, The Australian, 4 November 2013, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/workers- lieracy-levels-so-poor-bosses-forced-to-use-pictures-for-safety/story-fn59nlz9-1226752384035 (accessed 17 November 2013).
15    Paul Dibb, ‘White Paper 2013: What are the options?’ (Part 1), The Interpreter, Lowy Institute for International Policy, 1 August 2012, http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2012/08/01/ Defence-White-Paper-2013-What-are-the-strategic-policy-options.aspx (accessed 21 April 2013).
16    General James F. Amos, Commandant Marine Corps, White Letter No. 1—13, From: Commandant of the Marine Corps. To: All Marines, dated 2 March 2013 and General Amos’ Sequestration Video Update #1, dated 8 March 2013. The Commandant’s aim in producing this video is to reinforce the White Letter 1-13 he published on sequestration, describe the impact of sequestration on the Corps, and reassure Marines and their families that, while they will face some difficult decisions, the Corps will do everything it can to maintain readiness while keeping faith with the Marines, civilian Marines, and their families. See http://www.dvidshub. net/video/283527/gen-amos-sequestration-update-1#.UnX-nRa4Ybx (accessed 4 November 2013).
17    Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand physicist (1871–1937) in Bulletin of the Institute of Physics, Vol. 13, 1962 (as recalled by R.V. Jones). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3209515/ (accessed 21 January 2014).
18    Michael Howard, ‘The Liddell Hart Memoirs’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute, Vol. CXI, No. 641, February 1966, p. 61.
19    Murray and Millett (eds), Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, p. 327.
20    Ibid., p. 2.
21    Ibid., p. 3.
22    Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military, Cornell University Press, 1991, p. 2.
23    Ibid., p. 9.
24    Commonwealth of Australia, Defence White Paper 2013, Department of Defence, Canberra, 2013, p. 105.
25    Murray and Millett (eds), Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, p. 349.
26    Russell Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy, Indiana University Press, 1977, p. 264.
27    Murray, Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change, p. 67.
28    Ibid., p. 2.
29    Ibid., p. 5.
30    Ibid., p. 5.
31    Ibid., p. 7.
32    Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, ‘Lessons of War’, The National Interest, Winter 1988.
33    Murray, Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change, p. 328; Murray and Millett (eds),
Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, p. 327.
34    Murray and Millett, ibid.
35    Peter Dawkins, ‘Freedom to Fail’, Infantry Magazine, September–October 1965, p. 9.
36    Lewis Sorely, Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, p. 212.
37    Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, Viking Press, 1983, p. 345.
38    Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, Vintage Books, 1989, p. 285.
39    Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, p. 337.
40    Ibid., p. 337.
41    Ibid., p. 345.
42    Ibid.
43    Hew Strachan, ‘Strategy or Alibi? Obama, McChrystal and the Operational Level of War’,
Survival, October–November, 2010, p. 160.
44    Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, p. 346.
45    Ibid., pp. 346–47.
46    Ibid., p. 348.
47    Ibid., p. 349.
48    Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy,
p. xviii.
49    Hew Strachan, ‘Making Strategy after Iraq’, Survival, Vol. 48, Edn. 3, Autumn 2006, p. 60.
50    Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, p. 349.
51    Brian M. Linn, The Echo of Battle: The Army’s Way of War, Harvard University Press, 2009, p. 216.
52    Lieutenant Colonel Harold R. Winton, USA (retd), interview with Lieutenant Colonel Richard Mustion, 2001, Winton Papers, box 1, USAMHI, p. 46.
53    Colonel Huba Wass de Czege, Army Staff College Level Training Study, US Army War College, June 1983, p. 3.
54    Murray, Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change, p. 5.
55    Advanced Warfighting graduate statistics from author’s personal notes, 10 January 2014.
56    Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, p. 389.
57    Ibid., quoting Colonel John Ferrari, interview October 2009 and email September 2011, p.
390. Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) was established in 1987 by retired US Army General Vernon Lewis who anticipated downsizing reforms following the end of the Cold War. MPRI entered the military service marketplace as post-Cold War conflicts commenced. Source Watch, Military Professional Resources Inc., http://www.sourcewatch.org/index. php?title=Military_Professional_Resources_Inc. (accessed 11 January 14).
58    John C. Blaxland, The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard, Cambridge University Press, p. 9.
59    Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, p. 393.
60    Colin Gray, Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace and Strategy, Potomac, 2009, p. 33.
61    Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, pp. 393–94.
62    Jeffrey White, ‘Eyewitness Perspectives Assessing Progress in Iraq: Security and Extremism’ in Michael Knights (ed), Operation Iraqi Freedom and the New Iraq, Policy #830, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, February 2004, p. 125.
63    Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, p. 433.
64    Ibid., pp. 458–59.