NOTE: The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of the Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or any of its subordinate units. These are the opinions, based on research and study of the author and meant to invoke some thought into how we can accelerate change in our training curriculums throughout Air Force Special Warfare (AFSPECWAR).
Simply put, we are failing our Airmen by refusing to adapt our models of training just as we are adapting our tactics to defeat future adversaries.
The current methodology for teaching initial AFSPECWAR Airmen how to effectively operate in complex environments relies on archaic models of teaching and instruction that are heavily rooted in pedagogy. These methods actually force a higher demand on individual units to teach basic decision-making processes rather than sustain and advance their Airmen’s proficiency in their primary duties.
For an example this week, I will focus on the Tactical Air Control Party and their approach to teaching the Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) Qualification. For some background, the JTAC qualification is an international qualification that is agreed upon through several different nations via a memorandum of agreement that specifically qualifies an individual to coordinate joint fires (heavy focus on artillery and close air support) within close proximity to dynamic moving forces. The means of this certification for Tactical Air Control Party Airmen, is through the Joint Terminal Attack Controller Certification Course now known as the Formal Training Unit – Strike Phase.
I’ll write as a previous instructor at one of the schoolhouses that instructed this certification to US and international students while stationed in Germany.
The course is comprised of a few different micro phases within the curriculum itself. Academic instruction, Practical Exercises, Simulations, Field Exercises, and Evaluations are the main phase themes throughout the curriculum.
The course begins with heavy academics usually instructed in a typical lecture format in a standard classroom setting. The idea of the phase is to get the students the basis of knowledge necessary to incorporate into later phases of training.
Once the academic instruction is complete the curriculum will then take the student through some practical exercises. These exercises are usually tabletop mental model simulations where the students and instructors will walk through a process, let’s say artillery call for fires. The purpose is to build a model of what the radio communication sounds like as well as start to put together how to interpret data from a map into the format to call in a strike over the radio.
From there, the student would move into a simulator where they will now get to see simulated effects of their actions. The simulations usually have micro phases that are built off a “crawl-walk-run” style of induced stress and difficulty.
Once simulations are complete, they move on to field exercises where they will typically work with live aircraft to put all their skills into practice. This is the first time that they will be talking with a real aircraft or fires asset and seeing the results of their actions in the real world and exposed to that environment.
Finally, the students will move into an evaluations phase or a “culminating activity” at which point they will be afforded the opportunity to display what all they have learned in a scenario where they have little to no instructor assists.
That entire process takes about 5-weeks of time and technically qualifies and individual to perform these same tasks, unsupervised under intense pressure while be shot at in a combat zone. However, what is commonly found when these individuals show up to a unit after the course is that they need a lot more training to be “trusted” to perform these tasks on their own in that dynamic high-pressure situation. So, that begs the question, what can we do better?
First, what we need to do is give these students as much real-life/real-world experience as we can possibly give them in the short amount of time that we have with them. An alternative answer would be to lengthen the course to allow for more time to give them more experience. However, we all know that budget constraints are absolutely real, and this course of action would not be taken lightly by the “powers that be” in the decision making tree. What is, however, way more palatable, is an option that takes the current timeline that is already funded and exposes them to top-tier training in that same amount of time and actually produces an individual that has ample real-world, implicit experience to fill the gap of actual real-world, on the job, experience.
Why do you think that is John?
In Gary Klein’s book Sources of Power (1999) he details the process of decision making especially in high-stress situations. The entire account is to study how experts make decisions. I used this book to infer methods on teaching others how to make decisions by simply thinking like an expert. In fact, one of the claims made in this research is that knowledge is merely a product of experience while the experience is the root that will allow you to gain knowledge. Read that sentence one more time…
Okay, so what can we do to apply this to what I am talking about with training? STOP wasting time with useless training practices! Give more experiences to the students more often. It sounds simple right? This is all about what I wanted everyone to start understanding when it comes to training professionals to be capable of critical thinking in high stress situations.
Methods to Change:
1. Change the Career Field Education and Training Plan (CFETP)… the entire thing… for those that don’t know what that is, it is basically the USAF document that allegedly gives our forces the task, conditions, and standards for every single task that we expect them to be able to do at various points throughout their career based on their skill-level.
a. It’s a misnomer. These tasks are not actually what we are looking for when it comes to performance. We are looking for performance and those tasks are sub-elements of the performances we expect.
i. That is a hard pill to swallow. It is a complete culture shift for the USAF and it will take a lot to undue decades of mis-guided training concepts.
b. Instead of individual tasks, get to the root of what you want students to accomplish based on performance instead.
i. Using the CFETP check out what the “header” tasks are with all of the sub-tasks underneath. This is probably a good start to see where the desired performance lies. That is what should be graded and trained to… all of the sub-tasks will come as they are inherent to completing the baseline task itself.
c. Measure the performance with something more relevant and useful to an instructor. 1B, 3C, 2b means absolutely nothing to the line instructor at a squadron. I mean this from the bottom of my heart. It is ambiguous and misleading. It doesn’t help an instructor or an instructional designer at all.
i. Use something like “Familiar, Proficient, and Expert” to define performance and give it some sort of evaluative flavor. Here are some quick examples:
1. Familiar = Trainee can complete the task within XX amount of time with some assistance from the instructor. They do not understand modification of the tasks to meet differing conditions but can complete the task when told that is what needs to be done.
2. Proficient = Trainee can complete the task within XX amount of time and needs minimal assistance. Additionally, the trainee understands where and when the task should be accomplished within different scenarios and can infer when to use the task to accomplish the mission.
3. Expert = Trainee can complete the task within XX amount of time with no assistance needed. The trainee also understands how to modify the task to meet unfamiliar situations to accomplish the mission.
2. Modify training to give student’s real-world experiences over classroom instruction
a. Research has shown that these professionals need a bank of experiences to be able to make timely decisions in high-stress environments.
i. This is all done with a system known as recognition-primed decision model (RPD) (Klein, 1999)
b. Again, huge cultural change here but will be worth it in the end. The training that we can put our Airmen through will be based on real-world scenarios in events and simulations that challenge them to think in an environment that is not yet life or death.
i. Give them as much of this as possible.
ii. Use the crawl-walk-run method to build up experiences
iii. Use non-standard experiences to challenge them to think through and recognize and learn new ways of accomplishing the mission
3. Change the way we train at the unit-levels as well. Focus on completing experiences not just tasks or currencies.
a. Does it matter how many landings and takeoffs the pilot makes or does it matter that the pilot has completed landings and takeoffs under various conditions? I would argue that the latter is way more important because if the majority of landings and takeoffs were only completed in perfect weather conditions, then the pilot may not be able to build on experiences to safely land or takeoff in inclement weather.
b. Does it matter how many type-1, type-2, and type-3 controls a JTAC has? Or, are the experiences that JTAC has in determining which type of control to use in a given situation more important? Again, I would argue the latter is more important.
c. What about the types of missions the Airmen performs over the amount of missions?
The bottom-line here is that we, the United States Military, must completely change the way we think about training and get rid of the notion that a currency is the most important aspect of calling someone “proficient or expert”.
A common theme in a lot of our Professional Military Education (PME) courses is to “teach critical thinking". However, I would say that the vast majority of our PME courses are missing the mark on this one goal. The United States Air Force wants to create a more “agile” force for the future and ensure that force is “adaptive” to various environments through training Airmen who are capable of completing more than just the job they are assigned and trained to do (multi-capable). However, nothing exists in our initial training courses that are actually allowing our Airmen to be groomed towards this way of thinking and this way of future operations.
Simply put, we are failing our Airmen by refusing to adapt our models of training just as we are adapting our tactics to defeat future adversaries.
REFERENCES:
Klein, Gary. Sources of Power, How People Make Decisions. The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA. 1999.
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