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MILITARY REVIEW • January-February 2006
The Second
Learning Revolution
Major General Robert H. Scales, U.S. Army, Retired
T
HE U.S. EXPERIENCE in Vietnam revealed
serious faults in the way the American military
prepared for war. In that conict, Soldiers learned
that superior technology alone could not ensure
victory. Decades of real-war experience gave the
North Vietnamese Army an experiential advantage
that U.S. training and educational institutions could
not easily overcome. In response, the rst U.S.
training revolution began during the war with the
Navy’s Top Gun program, which was soon followed
by the Air Force’s Red Flag exercises. The successes
of both in restoring U.S. air superiority set the stage
for similarly imaginative successes in preparing
warriors to ght on the ground.
The air services sought to make better ghter pilots.
The Army sought to make better combat battalions and
brigades. The Army focused on the operational rather
than the tactical level of war for two reasons. First,
the bitter experience of tactical warfare in Vietnam,
particularly during the latter stages of the war, soured
many senior leaders on the idea of transforming
the Army at the squad and platoon levels. Second,
the Israeli experience in the 1973 Yom Kippur
War convinced the Army its doctrinal salvation lay
with the ability to defeat massive Soviet armored
formations as they approached the inter-German
border. Thus, the emphasis from the beginning was
to become the nest, most formidable operational
maneuver force in the world by combining brigade
maneuver formations with deep res provided by Air
Force and Army aviation and long-range cannon and
rocket artillery.
The Army’s rst post-Vietnam training revolution
began in earnest with the creation of a system of
force-on-force free-play exercises. These were
scored realistically and fought against a world-class
adversary imbued with a serious desire to win. The
Army’s laboratory for creating the revolution was
the National Training Center (NTC) in the California
desert. By the time the Army and Marine Corps
moved into Kuwait in 1991, both services had
embedded the spirit of the combat training centers
into their cultures. The results on the ground spoke
volumes about the efcacy of realistic training
followed by forthright assessments during post-
exercise after-action reviews.
By the beginning of the kinetic phase of Operation
Iraqi Freedom, 12 years later, the U.S. had gotten
it exactly right. For the rst time, large Army and
Marine armored formations, supported by massive
aerial strike forces, were able to execute a truly
joint operational takedown thanks mostly to skills
learned by Soldiers, Marines, and Airmen in the
California deserts.
Subsequent events in Afghanistan and Iraq,
however, suggest that the enemy now understands
and accepts America’s superiority on the sea, in
the air, and in space. Acknowledging the ground
services’ operational dominance, the enemy seeks to
win at the tactical level of war. His logic is simple,
his intent diabolical. He has learned that the surest
way to negate big-war technology is by moving the
ght into such complex terrain as jungles, moun-
tains, and most recently, cities. War against such
an enemy has devolved primarily into a series of
tactical engagements fought principally at squad and
platoon levels. As a result, joint warfare and other
elements of military power are increasingly being
applied at lower and lower levels, to the extent that
combat leaders of much lower rank and experience
are performing the functions formerly considered
the purview of senior commanders.
The challenge today is to create a second training
and educational revolution—a learning revolu-
tion—that prepares military leaders to ght in this
new age of warfare. As the focus of ghting shifts
downward, so too must the systems that teach Sol-
diers and Marines how to ght.
Learning science has evolved to a point where
the distinction between training and education has
become blurred, so much so that the two often are
combined in several important aspects. Training
prepares a young Soldier to deal with expected
situations on the battleeld. Education prepares him
to deal with uncertainty. On the modern battleeld, a
Soldier knows that to survive he must be able to use
his weapons and follow his leaders’ orders. But he is
also expected to demonstrate resourcefulness, initia-
tive, creativity, and inventiveness, all demanded by
a battleeld where confronting the unexpected and
new is routine. Tactical prociency must be matched
with a Soldier’s ability to speak the language and
