By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, Nov. 29, 2017 — Warfare is increasingly
transregional, multidomain and multifunctional and professional military
education must keep pace with these changes, the senior enlisted advisor to the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said recently.
Following a meeting of the Enlisted Military Education
Review Council at the National Defense University here last week, Army Command
Sgt. Major John W. Troxell said the military “has to develop our
noncommissioned officers and petty officers to function in [an] environment”
where threats continue to grow and become more complex.
Troxell noted that the military is becoming an increasingly
joint force at lower levels. In the train, advise and assist missions in Iraq
and Afghanistan, he said, joint force squads are led by staff sergeants.
Looking to the future, the question becomes how to train and
educate “the next senior enlisted advisor to the chairman or [U.S.] Pacific
Command senior enlisted leader or sergeant major of the Army?” he said.
Enlisted Leader Attributes
The Enlisted Military Education Review Council seeks to find
the answers to these questions. The members are senior enlisted leaders for the
services’ training commands, key members of the Joint Staff and representatives
from National Defense University. “This is designed to figure out the direction
we want to go as a joint force,” the sergeant major said, and how the services
can develop leaders in a joint environment.
Specifically, the council looks at achieving the chairman’s
six approved enlisted leader attributes:
-- The ability to operate on commander’s intent and enable
mission command at all levels;
-- The ability to make sound and ethical decisions based on
the values and standards of the profession of arms;
-- The ability to use available resources to enhance the
discipline, readiness, resiliency and health of the force;
-- The ability to anticipate, communicate and mitigate
risks;
-- The ability to operate in joint, inter-agency,
intergovernmental and multinational environments; and
-- The ability to think critically and develop agile and
adaptive leaders.
“We expect every noncommissioned officer and petty officer
in the United States military to be able to execute at their appropriate level
-- whether it is the tactical, operational or strategic level,” Troxell said.
In other words, these attributes apply to all levels of the
enlisted force -- a corporal needs to have these qualities as much as a master
chief petty officer does, the sergeant major said.
The council meets to get reports from the services to ensure
they are able to incorporate these leader attributes through their service
training or complemented through joint training.
“It’s just to get a pulse on how we are doing building on
what I call our greatest competitive advantage -- trained, educated and
empowered enlisted leaders,” he said.
Building Joint Leaders
The services are taking this to heart, Troxell said, and
they are taking advantage of career-broadening assignments. He noted that
civilian education “helps with the cognitive aspects of what we are doing.”
But each service has a leader development model that trains
young noncommissioned officers to grow, develop and operate effectively in
their service specific environments, Troxell said.
In the past, he said, there was no joint model that
complemented what the services were doing. The joint force needed a blueprint
that allowed noncommissioned officers to be competent and focused not only in
their parochial lanes, but also a joint or multinational environment, Troxell
said.
The review council’s discussions have led to the development
of online Senior Enlisted Joint Professional Military Education-1 and SEJPME-2
courses, Troxell said. Senior enlisted personnel also can now access the Joint and
Combined Warfighting School, which traditionally has trained only officers. And
finally, there is now the Keystone Course for command senior enlisted leaders,
which is the equivalent of the Capstone Course for flag and general officers.
There is progress, Troxell said, but more needs to be done.
The council recommended increasing enlisted attendance at the Joint and
Combined Warfighters School. “We want to reach a bigger audience of senior
enlisted [personnel],” he said. The school has 13 seminar groups per course,
and the sergeant major said he would like to have a senior enlisted leader in
each.
“As we develop this joint leader policy, we want to develop
a policy from the chairman that talks about joint leader development,” he said.
The council recommended increasing Keystone attendance to
reach a larger target audience, Troxell said. “We want to hit non-command
select senior enlisted leaders -- meaning operations sergeants major, master
gunnery sergeant[s] and other senior staff NCOs,” he said.
The council has met annually since its formation, but at the
most recent meeting members decided that it needs to meet every six months,
Troxell said.
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