Learning as a Weapon System

Editorial Abstract: Instructional technologies are rapidly approaching a critical mass made up of a multitude of various systems. These technologies help us transform the military-training environment by treating learning as a weapon system. Lieutenant Colonel Baskin and Dr. Schneider take a close look at this learning process, discussing the components involved and the ways they combine to create an effective system.

Instructional technologies are rapidly approaching a critical mass made of computer infrastructures, virtual-reality technologies, modeling and simulation technologies, distributed-learning capabilities, and intelligent systems. Taken together, these technologies and capabilities create an opportunity to transform the military-training environment- by treating learning as a weapon system. By acknowledging at the system level that learning is a combination of training, education, and experience- each of which builds upon the others- we can realize many synergies and efficiencies to prepare our personnel. Treating learning as a weapon system recognizes humans as more than a functional component of any weapon system. Although learning is a continuous, lifelong endeavor, it is seldom fully analyzed. The most effective utilization of personnel involves preparing them with the necessary proficiencies at the right time and place. To do this, we must eliminate traditional "stovepipes" that tend to segregate the elements of learning.

The explosive proliferation of information systems created a warfare environment that required personnel to continuously update and/or upgrade procedures, equipment, and systems to meet operational threats. Each of these changes represents a learning burden. The need for just-enough/just-in-time/ deployable learning to support the Air Force’s air and space expeditionary force (AEF) vision, along with the explosion of information and learning technologies, provides the opportunity to transform the military training and education environment from an enhancer to a critical enabler. Such transformation can occur only by treating learning from a strategic-visionary perspective instead of using a tactical-requirements approach.

We suggest viewing the continuum of learning from a strategic systems-engineering perspective and establishing an agile yet integrated system-of-systems approach to proactively develop, implement, and manage learning systems across the Air Force. The same revolution that spawned the explosive proliferation of information enables this approach, which will result in better insight and the use of economies of scale in corporate funding, reduced infrastructure barriers, and enhanced personnel management. Some hurdles to overcome include the "if it’s not broken, don’t fix it" mentality and the organizational changes necessary for properly managing learning as a weapon system.

Learning as a Weapon System:
What Does It Mean?

As mentioned previously, learning is a combination of training, education, and experience, each of which builds upon the others. Training develops skills, along with the knowledge needed to utilize them. Education entails the learning of a discipline or subject in order to enable understanding, extrapolation, and application. Experience integrates training and education in an environment that is actual or simulated, controlled or uncontrolled. How does one go about creating an environment that supports learning? "According to the experts . . . [one must] disabuse workers of the notion that corporate learning is simply training, and especially classroom training. ‘One of the tenets in the corporate learning organization is that the best training is experience,’ says Calhoun Wick, author of The Learning Edge. ‘Classrooms may be good settings for building basic skills and laying foundations,’ observes Wick, ‘but experience is where know-how is acquired.’"¹ Proficiencies result from the synthesis of training and education through experience. Some proficiencies require intense, repetitive exposure while other skills are less volatile and can be readily enacted with limited refresher training.²

Rapidly evolving threats and technological advances create an operational necessity for a continuous-learning environment. The need for just-enough/just-in-time learning capabilities to support a highly mobile and dispersed air force, combined with expanding information technologies, is driving us away from traditional schoolhouse mentalities. For years, we have used technology to "pave the cow paths" of instructional methodologies, focusing on the creation of marginal efficiencies within an instructional block, a course, or a family/series of courses. As a result, radical and transformational advances have proved elusive.

So what does learning as a weapon system really mean? In a nutshell, it means treating the development of Air Force personnel as a weapon system, which is created by using a systems-engineering approach and the best commercial practices. The Department of Defense (DOD) defines systems engineering as the design and management of a total system, which includes hardware and software as well as other life-cycle elements. This process needs to be agile in order to define, develop, and integrate systems, products, and processes simultaneously. The systems-engineering process transforms approved operational needs and requirements into an integrated system-design solution through concurrent consideration of all life-cycle needs. It ensures that the system definition and design reflect the requirements for all system elements (hardware, software, facilities, people, and data), as well as characterize and manage technical risks.³ Using the best commercial practices will enable systems to evolve to meet a rapidly changing environment. In other words, a weapon system is designed from a strategic perspective.

From such a perspective, one sees how learning resembles a weapon system: based on operational needs and requirements, it contains instructional systems, exercises, experiences, and processes that demand development, integration, and management to efficiently and effectively produce the necessary operational proficiencies in Air Force personnel. At a recent Air Force Association National Symposium, Dr. James G. Roche, secretary of the Air Force, stated that his service wanted a new multimission aircraft that would be useful throughout the battle space.⁴ By their very nature, humans are also multimission capable- a characteristic that needs to be harnessed and nurtured. We must reflect upon the operational requirements, select and properly classify new recruits, nurture them so as to bring out strengths and minimize weaknesses by using a continuum of learning, and continuously evaluate them over the course of a career. Doing so requires a corporate strategy and implementation plan focused on entire careers- not a specific assignment or course of instruction.

Remarkable similarities exist between the Air Force’s experience with the air and space operations center (AOC) and the treatment of Air Force instructional systems today. Originally, each system within the AOC was built to meet a specific need with unique requirements, in stovepipe fashion. The operational necessity to fuse information across disciplines and the need for standardized and integrated command and control forced the service to begin looking at the AOC as a weapon system rather than a conglomeration of disparate systems. Consequently, the AOC is now defined as "the weapon system . . . through which the Joint Forces Air Component Commander (JFACC) exercises command and control of [air and space] forces. The JFACC employs the AOC to maneuver and mass overwhelming [air and space] power through centralized control and decentralized execution to produce desired operational and strategic effects in support of the Joint Force Commander’s (JFC) campaign."⁵ Like the AOC experience, learning involves the fusion of information and experience associated with developing proficiencies by Air Force people. Commanders employ personnel and their proficiencies to execute joint and service missions. Due to the proliferation of information technologies, we must integrate and standardize learning across the Air Force to make it effective in today’s resource-constrained environment. Both cases (the AOC and learning systems) require dedicated oversight, policy, systems development, and procurement. Because of the explosion of information technologies, our current learning systems find themselves in the same position occupied by the AOC 10 years ago.

The Critical Mass of Learning
Technology

Learning technologies have advanced by orders of magnitude over the last decade. One need only note the fact that high-fidelity graphics systems have become a staple at the Interservice/Industry Training Simulation and Education Conferences. The Defense Science Board (DSB) recognized this in its report of January 2001, which discussed how new training technologies, if managed properly, can radically affect the efficiency and effectiveness of training:

Although the DSB focused on military training, its argument is relevant to all learning elements. To harness potential learning synergies, the Air Force must shed its historical perspectives and, with strategic vision, embrace a new paradigm to transform part of its culture: "We are now operating in a knowledge-centric economy. Information and knowledge have replaced machinery and labor as being the key corporate assets. This has far-reaching implications for many organizations."⁷ Strategically, informational technologies are to learning what robotics is to manufacturing. They both provide the ability to define precisely how the final product should be shaped. Informational technologies such as enterprise data systems and metadata tagging permit the managing of detailed configuration control of course content and the maintaining of a person’s records of past training, education, and experiences. Using information technologies to precisely target learning enables us to address learning at the strategic versus the tactical level. Coupling data systems with delivery to a highly mobile expeditionary force is our most acute integration challenge: "The value proposition of the most recent generation of collaborative and e-learning technologies is simple and compelling: to empower individuals with technology that allows them to work together more accurately, effectively and appropriately, and to fundamentally expedite knowledge exchange and sharing across physical boundaries."⁸ When we do this successfully, we can only imagine what the future of learning could be, as illustrated by the following scenario:

This example focuses on using personnel according to their fundamental skills, such as engine maintenance, instead of limiting them to a specific weapon system, as we do today. Current and emerging technology allows us to leverage learning effectively, thus enhancing the flexibility in utilizing our forces and providing for more efficient operations. In other words, learning becomes an enabling force rather than just an enhancing force.

The Way Ahead:
A Road Map for Change

To become an enabling force, we must integrate learning elements throughout the Air Force that are now governed by myriad organizations. Our service, like many institutions, has segregated the three elements of learning and has created policies to address them separately. Functional organizations control training requirements, education requirements have been managed as a personnel issue, and experience has principally come under the purview of the major commands (MAJCOM) (e.g., Air Combat Command). In essence, we have taken a tactical- or execution-oriented approach to learning. Instead, we need to develop and maintain a strategic-learning perspective to maximize the synergistic capabilities of the learning elements. In other words, like the development of the US interstate highway system in the 1950s, the Air Force needs to design a strategically placed "interstate" learning system that changes the way people get to their professional-development "destinations"- destinations appropriate to the long-term operational needs of the service. Organizational structures and policies will have to change to provide the required advocacy, oversight, and direction.

The Air Force can follow the lead of corporations that designate chief learning officers (CLO)- people responsible for the "development and deployment of their organizations’ human capital and . . . linking business needs to performance strategies, thus enhancing individual and organizational productivity."⁹ In a recent on-line survey by the American Society for Training and Development Learning Link, 22 percent of respondents said their organization has someone who functions as the CLO. Great demand also exists for leaders who can provide a strategic vision for workforce development and then execute that vision.¹⁰ "Eric Kugler, CLO at Memorial Hermann Healthcare System in Houston, compares the role of chief learning officer with that of the better-known chief information officer (CIO). ‘The reason you have a CIO is that you don’t want 20 different databases and 200 software implementations, with each department running wild and fending for itself. You want someone who can look at the big picture. . . . Why not do the same with learning?’ "¹¹

The Air Force needs to consolidate the management and oversight of its learning activities under a single office and designate a CLO to provide a strategic vision, advocate requirements and scarce resources, and provide consistent and integrated policy. Operational necessity should drive learning (training, education, and experience) requirements. The service also needs an organizational structure that can corporately integrate, prioritize, and address these requirements. As is the case with its command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C²ISR) systems, the Air Force historically has attempted to manage enterprise-wide learning challenges via a loose federation. These systems were based on platformcentric priorities and funding. Like a C²ISR weapon system, learning requires (1) a CLO to provide centralized operational oversight, integration, and advocacy; (2) the Air Force Research Laboratory and a learning-system product office to research, develop, procure, and integrate the required learning systems; (3) a lead MAJCOM to consolidate Air Force–wide learning requirements; and (4) MAJCOM CLOs to identify learning requirements and provide policy for learning systems and their use (fig. 1). This overall structure would provide the necessary corporate framework to fund learning requirements and oversee execution, as well as offer a systems approach toward transforming Air Force personnel. Additionally, the creation of a learning warfare center (LWC) would provide a war-fighter-centered focus on improving learning across the service, thus enhancing the development of personnel. An LWC could create new synergies by linking agencies such as the Air Force Institute for Advanced Distributed Learning; Air Force Agency for Modeling and Simulation; and College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education. The center should also focus on new technologies, such as distributed mission training, deal with infrastructure issues, and manage the Air Force’s combat training centers (CTC). Like other warfare centers, the LWC should include an Air Force Learning Battlelab designed to demonstrate new learning capabilities. Proactive experimentation should become mandatory, and constant experimentation and benchmarking off the other services, allies, industry, and academia would provide proactive thinking about learning as a force multiplier.

Figure 1. Required Air Force Learning Structure

Figure 1. Required Air Force Learning Structure

The report of the DSB’s Task Force on Training Superiority and Training Surprise substantiates our assertion that the Air Force must transform its approach toward learning by using a strategic perspective. This change requires organizational, policy, and procedural alterations to integrate learning across the service. The proposed organizational structure (fig. 1) will enable the Air Force to address some of the findings identified in the DSB’s report, which noted that the infrastructure of CTCs was being neglected, that the acquisition and testing process paid little attention to how a weapon system would acquire trained operators and maintainers, and that inadequate and poorly timed training would negate the technical superiority of our hardware.¹² Over 30 years ago, Navy CTCs provided a new approach to training and delivered a dramatic change in air-to-air combat proficiency over Vietnam. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the Air Force and Army adopted their own versions of the CTC, giving trainees experience that developed combat aces and improved combat effectiveness while reducing US combat losses.¹³ The task force recommended that the services identify ways to expand CTC training to new warfare areas.¹⁴ Instead of focusing solely on what can be done at the CTCs, the Air Force should also investigate methods for providing virtual CTC capabilities to support an expeditionary air and space force. Another recommendation called for making training a co-equal part of acquisition and testing by insisting that each acquisition program have a defined training subsystem.¹⁵ The report further states that, at the beginning of a program, one must consider how to furnish competent operators (and maintainers) throughout the life of the system.¹⁶ Certainly, there should be training subsystems for each system; however, we must develop these training systems within the framework of a strategic Air Force learning vision. Doing so will enable the integration of new training systems with the service’s existing systems.

The idea of a continuum of learning becomes a primary source of requirements for training subsystems as well as any other educational or training need. Using the above organization, the Air Force could take the recommendation one step further by treating learning associated with each weapon system (tactical perspective) as part of an Air Force learning system that must be properly acquired and tested (strategic perspective) to ensure that it is properly integrated and meets the overall learning requirements. This organization would also help eliminate inadequate and poorly timed training- another product of decision making with regard to tactical-level learning. The report includes a recommendation to move as much training from the schoolhouse to just-in-time/just-right training in the units, based on evidence that "training must be applied over and over again as the composition of the units and joint forces changes and as skills erode over time."¹⁷ Additionally, it appears that training programs are reactive rather than proactive (i.e., future planning ignores training, tacitly hoping that it will solve itself).¹⁸ In other words, we train forces to use what they are given, rather than choose weapon characteristics based on whether or not we can train people to operate them effectively.¹⁹ The report further states that "technology is emerging that will support this [the recommendations] and may save money in the process. Unfortunately, there is no training laboratory, development establishment, or manager with sufficient authority who can foster the second training revolution."²⁰ Treating learning as a weapon system provides the organizational structures required to address these issues.

In addition to addressing organizational structures, the Air Force needs to integrate the myriad learning policies into a cohesive framework. Learning policy, currently contained within several publication series, should be consolidated into a single series (e.g., no. 39). The service will need to create and revise policy to ensure that it is consistent with both the strategic-learning vision and organizational changes. A separate series would also enable integration of learning policy throughout the Air Force. However, change is difficult, even when the benefits are obvious- and it is especially challenging when existing processes seem to be working effectively.

The Problem of Institutional
Inertia: An Unwillingness to
Face the Future?

The idea of learning as a weapon system is really hard to swallow for some people who are used to the "old ways" of doing things. However, unlike many senior leaders, new airmen entering the Air Force are increasingly familiar and comfortable with new technologies. Still appropriate is Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s view of the military culture and innovation: "Prejudice against innovation is a typical characteristic of an Officer Corps which has grown up in a well-tried and proven system."²¹ Only those senior officials who have readily accepted computers and have adapted their thought processes accordingly are able to visualize the new capabilities enabled by these machines. The basic problem is not necessarily an unwillingness to face the future but an inability to identify with it. This situation, then, leads to questioning the worth of the idea or technology and an unwillingness to expend resources to see if the idea or technology is really useful in its intended application.

The DSB task force identified within the services a "hardware now, training later" mentality, primarily associated with tight money in a low-threat environment.²² Because warfare is changing, we need a learning revolution that meets future warfare requirements by providing lower-cost approaches to individual and unit development. We need focused investments that will translate into tangible savings, which we can then funnel into additional learning investments. Rapidly evolving technologies hold the potential for significant savings in how we develop, equip, and manage Air Force personnel. However, the task force states that the infrastructure for carrying advanced learning out to the units must be paid for in advance, before savings will accrue in the personnel system. Many unit commanders will view this requirement as shoving the burden of additional training on their units, instead of as a way to keep people in those units, where they will be available for contingencies. We must deliver the money saved in the personnel system to people who can institute and expand distributed learning from the schoolhouses.²³This effort will require some policy revisions to identify, track, and manage learning-related savings and the associated funding flows among the acquisition, operations, and personnel systems.

The DSB task force also identified the diffuse management of training as a large contributor to existing problems: "Training responsibilities are spread throughout the military and each organization sub-optimizes in its area, ignoring the trades that might save money elsewhere."²⁴ The task force’s report focused on training, a subset of the learning continuum, but the management problem is significantly larger when one considers all of the learning elements. A revised organizational structure, emphasizing learning from a systems perspective, can address many of these problems, but the required changes may encounter opposition from organizations that could lose personnel or decision-making influence in the process. The parties involved must set aside their functional allegiances and maintain a corporate Air Force perspective that seeks to use limited resources in the most effective and efficient manner.

Summary

We agree with the DSB task force’s statement that "training superiority is ours to lose and for others to gain . . . and a new training revolution is possible that may save money in the process."²⁵ But training is only a part of a bigger perspective. Learning is the combination of training, education, and experience, each of which builds upon the others. By acknowledging this fact at the secretary of defense and service secretary level, we can realize many synergies and efficiencies in the preparation of our personnel. A requirement exists for just-enough/just-in-time/deployable learning to support the AEF vision. Emerging technologies and new capabilities create an opportunity to transform the military-learning environment by treating learning as a weapon system. Doing so acknowledges that humans are more than just a functional component of any such system. To harness potential learning synergies, the Air Force must shed its historical perspectives and, with true strategic vision, acknowledge that learning is an essential enabler and not simply an enhancer. It must also integrate the management of all learning elements under a CLO and create an organizational structure that will provide a corporate strategic vision and policy, as well as promote the research, development, procurement, and integration of required learning systems. Such actions will enable the Air Force to address the DSB’s recommendations on training and provide more effective war-fighting personnel. However, the inability of people to identify with changing operational requirements and learning methodologies, together with the normal institutional resistance associated with functional or tactical perspectives, could derail needed transformational changes. A new paradigm that treats learning as a weapon system will require inspirational integrity and leadership, a true commitment to service before self, and dedication to excellence in all we do.

1. Quoted in Larry G. Willets, "The Chief Learning Officer: New Title for New Times," Reengineering Resource Center, 1996, on-line, Internet, 10 June 2002, available from http://www. reengineering.com/articles/may96/clo.htm.

2. Dr. Ralph Chatham and Dr. Joe Braddock, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Training Superiority and Training Surprise (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, 2001), 5, on-line, Internet, 20 March 2002, available from http://www.acq.osd.mil/ dsb/trainingsuperiority.pdf.

3. See chap. 5, "Program Design," in DOD 5000.2-R, Mandatory Procedures for Major Defense Acquisition Programs (MDAPS) and Major Automated Information System (MAIS) Acquisition Programs, 5 April 2002, on-line, Internet, 7 April 2003, available from http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/50002r_040502/p50002r.pdf.

4. Peter Grier, "The Strength of the Force," Air Force Magazine 85, no. 4 (April 2002): 24–25, on-line, Internet, 7 April 2003, available from http://www.afa.org/magazine/April2002/0402Orl.pdf.

5. Concept of Operations for Aerospace Operations Center (Langley AFB, Va.: Air Combat Command, Aerospace Command, Control, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Center, 2001), 9.

7. Martin Butler, "Learning to Collaborate," Serverworld, November 2000, on-line, Internet, 4 June 2002, available from http:// www.serverworldmagazine.com/contra/2000/4q/11_collab.shtml.

9. Dede Bonner and Stacey Wagner, "Meet the New Chief Learning Officers," ASTD [American Society for Training and Development]: Virtual Community, May 2002, on-line, Internet, 4 June 2002, available from http://www.astd.org/CMS/templates/ index.html?template_id=1&articleid=27663.

11. Amy Sitze, "The Big-Picture People," Online Learning Magazine, November 2000, on-line, Internet, 4 June 2002, available from http://209.125.88.134/new/nov00/cover.htm.

21. Erwin Rommel, The Rommel Papers, ed. B. H. Liddell Hart, trans. Paul Findlay (1953; reprint, New York: DaCapo Press, 1988), 203.

Lt Col Richard R. Baskin (BS, Texas A&M University; MBA, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs) is chief of Technology Requirements, Directorate of Plans and Programs, Headquarters Air Education and Training Command, Randolph AFB, Texas. He is responsible for identifying technology applications to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the command’s education and training. His office serves as the command’s interface for Air Force battlelab, science and technology, and modeling and simulation activities. He has previously served as commander of a training-support squadron, an operations officer, an instructor, and a standardization and evaluations officer. A master space and missile operator, Colonel Baskin is also a certified acquisition professional, holding a level-three program-management certification.

Dr. Dean L. Schneider (BSEE, Texas A&M University; MSEE, Air Force Institute of Technology; PhD, University of Texas) is a senior research engineer and program manager at the Texas Center for Applied Technology, a component of the Texas Engineering Experiment Station in San Antonio, Texas, where he manages an energy-conservation effort for a Department of Defense facility. He formerly served as chief of the Technology Requirements Branch, Directorate of Plans and Programs, Headquarters Air Education and Training Command, Randolph AFB, Texas. While on active duty in the Air Force, he was director of the Air Force Human Systems Integration Office, a faculty member at the Air Force Institute of Technology, and a reliability and maintainability engineer at an Air Force depot. Dr. Schneider is also a certified acquisition professional.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.