Introduction
Discussing and analyzing the term “Digital Army” and its content, one should explain that it is determined by high technology innovations, and thus, one should focus on the issue of how this technology changed the way military soldiers fight. It must be also explained how it affected the soldiers’ training methods, and how to improve those processes in Digital Army.
The transition of the military force to the new Digital Army, also called Army of Force XXI, challenged many credible military scholars, theorists, and technologists. The challenge is defined by the disputable questions of the Digital Army training process, its maintenance, and operation activity as an information technology age force. Digital Army is frequently called an Army of the future and includes an enlarged area of operation.
Discussion
One of the keys policies of such an Army is to intensify weapon system capabilities to diminish the number of battle-field systems. It is also focused on the improvement of, so-called non – linear, multiple-processor operations. Another major goal of the Digital Army is to “achieve information dominance with certainty for situational awareness” (Smith, Ford, Kozlowski, 2007, p. 94).
While discussing the issue under consideration, one should not forget that the force and the favorable outcome of the Digital Army’s operations are the capabilities of its staff members, strict control and discipline, and of course, such issues as communication and logic understanding, advanced technology’s computer systems, and new intelligence systems called C4I. The determinative factor here is the ability and skills of the military commanders and their staff to operate the digital technology systems.
Nowadays, the digital information technology systems improved greatly, that is why the military commanders, their staff, and Army soldiers get a much bigger amount of corresponding information, which appears to be more complex and hard for understanding. That is why the information provided to them, is required to be represented in the training process and to be focused on the higher-order knowledge and skills necessary for the digital battlefield.
Alberts D. from the Center of Advanced Concepts and Technology comments on this topic in the following way: “Better education and training, devoted to information processing under stress and in environments characterized by uncertainty, are needed to develop the necessary skills to handle these information-rich situations” (Alberts, 2006, p. 32).
To understand better why the United States Army transformed into the Digital Army, one might suggest referring to the research information provided by the “U. S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences” (ARI) and “Armored Forces Research Unit” organization. Those military institutes had great concern over various military issues resulting from newly designed technologies and digitization.
That is why they participated in the process of the design and development of the training techniques and strategies of the future Digital Army with the view to support the digital and new technology capabilities of the Force XXI. To achieve these objectives, there was created a special department – the “ARI Science and Technology Objective” (STO) to make, analyze and present special training strategies for the Digital Army.
Nowadays, the above-mentioned department still operates, makes various proposals, and addresses different methods concerning training leaders, their staff, and soldiers in the sphere of digital environments. For example, after those organization’s research and analysis, in April 1999, there was implemented a special military digitalization training program, aimed to support a “Mounted Maneuver Battlespace Laboratory” (MMBL) – “Battle Command Reengineering” (BCR III). Its methods and strategies are still efficiently used in Digital Army’s commanders, staff, and soldiers training.
With the view to explaining how the modern Digital Army’s soldiers operate, or simply to say – fight, one can use the BCR III experiment as an example, as it is a prototype learning experimental model of the contemporary battle–field operations. The BCR III is based on the prototype staff training approaches for digital and modern technologies military forces.
To understand the strategic goals of the program, it is enough for one to know its training systems’ creators; they are the TRADOC and the ARI digital military and advanced technologies research institutions. Those research centers remain the same, and the training programs, concerning Digital Army, they suggest are based on the previous experimentation. Therefore, one can conclude that the way that the military soldiers from the Digital Army fight today and the way they train now are determined by the prototype training experiments.
The United States Army benefited greatly from the transition to the Digital Army and the prototype training. However, it is impossible to get relaxed for the military commanders and their staff and enjoy the harvest of their work. This assumption is strongly supported by the viewpoint of the credible military science scholar Campbell C. and his colleagues from the ARI research department: “Additional trials of the prototype training and evaluation systems are required to validate its efficacy and utility.
As capabilities of advanced C4I systems are enhanced, future experimentation should lead to further development of a prototype training method that targets higher-order cognitive skills needed on the digital battle – field. Advances in training need to parallel technological advances in the information age before the digital Army of Force XXI can maintain battlefield dominance” (Campbell C., Campbell, R., Sanders, Flynn, Myers, 2005, pp. 67 – 68).
Conclusion
After providing and analyzing the above-provided information concerning digital environments, digital operations, and advanced technologies, using the materials on MMBL experiments provided by Elliott G., one may propose the training for future staffs and, thus, ways of waging wars and military operations should be designed with the respect to three key objectives. They are understanding of system operations and related matters; the development and improvement of the tactical skills and knowledge with the usage of the new environment’s capabilities; and team process knowledge to bring the staff and soldiers as quickly as possible to a high level of proficiency.
System operations training should be individual, explaining to every single staff member his or her job duties and responsibilities while operating the digital equipment. As for tactical skills training, it should be more advanced than the former one, as, nowadays, it is a collective training that designs various realistic environment situations to cope with; it presupposes that the staff members use their newly gained capabilities to execute the delineated parts of their work.
If debate on the topic of the team process knowledge training, then it should include clear information, feedback addressing decision-making, awareness of the provided situation, knowledge for operating in any group, and, of course, information management. Therefore, one can point out that all those training techniques should be implemented in the execution cycle of the Digital Army’s soldier or stuff member, and should be regarded as an integral part of the military mission planning and preparation for the operations.
References
Alberts, D. S. (2006). The unintended consequences of information. The Center of Advanced Concepts and Technology, Washington, DC: National Defense University.
Campbell, C. H., Campbell, R. C., Sanders, J. J., Flynn, M. R., & Myers, W. E. (2005). Methodology for the development of structured simulation-based training (ARI Research Product). Alexandria, VA: U. S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences.
Elliott, G. S. (1998). System evaluation report for the battle command reengineering II (BCR II).
Smith, E. M., Ford, J. K., & Kozlowski, S. W. J. (2007). Building adaptive expertise: Implications for training design strategies. In M. A. Quiñones & A. Ehrenstein (Eds.), Training for a rapidly changing workforce (pp. 89-118). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.