Q&A: General William S. Wallace
Warrior Trainer
Building The Future Army
General William S. Wallace
Commanding General,
United States Army Training and
Doctrine Command
Fort Monroe, Va.
General Wallace assumed the duties of commander, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, on October 13, 2005, after serving as the commanding general, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth. He was commissioned through the United States Military Academy in 1969. He has a Master of Science Degree in operations analysis and Master of Arts degrees in international relations and national security affairs. As TRADOC Commander, Wallace is responsible for recruiting, training and educating the Army’s soldiers; developing its leaders; supporting training in units; developing doctrine; establishing standards; and building the future Army. TRADOC is comprised of over 50,000 soldiers and Department of the Army civilians operating in 33 Army schools across 16 installations. Wallace has commanded with distinction at every possible level from platoon to corps and on two separate occasions led soldiers in combat. In 1972, he served as an assistant district advisor and later as an operations adviser in the Bac Lieu Province, Vietnam. As the V Corps commander, Wallace led the Army’s attack to Baghdad in Operation Iraqi Freedom. His first assignment was as a platoon leader and troop executive officer in the 2nd squadron, 6th Armored Regiment with the 82nd Airborne Division. During the first of three tours to Germany, he took command of 3rd Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in 1986. Following an assignment as the senior Armored Task Force trainer and chief of staff at the Army’s National Training Center [NTC] at Fort Irwin, General Wallace returned to Germany in 1992 becoming the 55th colonel of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Fulda. After Regimental command, he returned to Fort Irwin, where he commanded the NTC’s operation group and later became commander of the NTC. In 1997, Wallace took command of the 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Hood. Following division command, he served as commander, Joint Warfighting Center, and as the director, Joint Training J-7, in the U.S. Joint Forces Command, Suffolk, Va. Returning to Germany for his third tour, Wallace assumed command of V Corps in 2001. Wallace attended both the Armor Officer Basic and Advanced Courses; the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey; the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth; and the United States Naval War College in Newport.
Among his awards and decorations are the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Distinguished Service Medal with oak leaf cluster, the Legion of Merit with four oak leaf clusters, the Bronze Star Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal with oak leaf cluster, the Army Commendation Medal with “V” device, the Army Commendation Medal with oak leaf clusters, the Army Achievement Medal, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, the Parachutist Badge and the Ranger Tab.
Q: What is the mission of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command and what is your job as commander?
A: TRADOC is the architect of the Army, and “thinks for the Army” to meet the demands of a nation at war while simultaneously anticipating solutions to the challenges of tomorrow. There are four main elements to our mission at TRADOC. We seek to:
• Recruit and Train Soldiers: Soldiers are the centerpiece of the Army. TRADOC builds the Army on a solid foundation of quality people by selecting recruits and transforming them into soldiers who are physically tough, mentally adaptive and live the Warrior Ethos. They are our ultimate asymmetric advantage and cannot be matched by our adversaries—current or future.
• Develop Adaptive Leaders: TRADOC trains leaders for certainty and educates them for uncertainty. Leader development produces innovative, flexible, culturally astute professionals expert in the art and science of war and able to quickly adapt to the wide-ranging conditions of fullspectrum operations.
• Design today’s Modular Force and the future Modular Force: TRADOC identifies and integrates comprehensive solutions for the Army Modular Force, both today and tomorrow.
• Maximizes Institutional Learning and Adaptation: As an integral component of an innovative generating force, TRADOC shapes and links it seamlessly to the operating force to maximize Army learning and adaptation. Our motto says it all—“Victory Starts Here!”
Q: What are your goals and objectives for TRADOC?
A: Our key priority is to train soldiers and leaders to exacting standards and get them to their first unit of assignment well trained and prepared for the complexity, uncertainty and challenges of combat in an increasingly dangerous environment. Providing the Operating Force with combat-ready soldiers and leaders possessing the Warrior Ethos and Army values will always be the over-arching theme in the training we provide in Initial Military Training (IMT) for soldiers and leaders. A supporting priority for TRADOC is to provide ongoing training and education for both our officer corps and our NCOs, the backbone of our Army. For example, the goal of our Professional Military Education (PME) system is to hone our leaders’ understanding of operational complexities and cultures, capitalize on the operational experiences of the students and instructors, and encourage innovative thinking by creating intellectually rigorous learning environments. For the Noncommissioned Officer Education System [NCOES] subset of PME, our goals are to develop a life-long learning strategy for a NCO Warrior Leader Development Program. This program is aimed at growing NCO pentathletes and developing NCOs into creative thinkers, warrior leaders, leader developers, and ambassadors for the Army. We are reinforcing TRADOC’s role as the soldier’s representative to the requirements process and leading the Army in the development of a flexible requirements process that recognizes opportunities and seizes the initiative for accelerating solutions for the soldier. As we continue to shape the institutional base that is increasingly seamless for the operating force and generating force, TRADOC is pioneering civilian leader development programs necessary to train and develop strong, adaptive and innovation civilian leaders—leaders who are able to lead and manage change, think strategically, represent the Army across organizations and provide superb support to our forces.
Q: Could you talk about the history of TRADOC and how it has evolved through the years?
A: TRADOC and Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) were established in 1973 as part of the STEADFAST reorganization of the Army. As a result, FORSCOM assumed the operational mission along with the responsibility for unit readiness. TRADOC received the training mission along with oversight of Army schools, doctrine development, and the responsibility for the installations housing those activities. Additionally, TRADOC assumed the mission of combat developments when Combat Developments Command was inactivated that same year. At its creation, TRADOC represented something new in the Army—a major four-star command focused specifically on training, teaching and developing the Army, including the ROTC program. The reorganization put combat developments back into the branch schools and the formulation and teaching of tactical doctrine became a united effort in each TRADOC school.
TRADOC appeared during a time of turbulent change. For nearly a decade, the Army had been fighting a counterinsurgency war in Vietnam with an Army composed largely of draftees. As soon as that war ended, the Army had to reorient itself to the all-volunteer force facing the dangerous and growing strategic threat posed by the Soviet Union. This rapid change caused psychological and institutional uncertainty complicated by a lost decade of weapons development stemming from the Army’s focus on fighting and equipping for the Vietnam conflict. During the 1970s and 1980s, TRADOC engaged in reforming Army training, modernizing its equipment and materiel, and revising Army doctrine. Those efforts fundamentally transformed the post-Vietnam Army into the modernized, trained and ready force that hastened the end of the Cold War and continues to perform magnificently in the ongoing war on terrorism. After the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States remained the single superpower in the world, a situation which dictated a smaller force-projection Army rather than a large forward-based Army. However, its readiness was assured by the practical applications of new and emerging technologies. In the mid-1990s, TRADOC institutionalized these new directions as the mid-future Army XXI. Included in Army XXI was Force XXI, the TRADOC-led effort to determine future force structure based on digitally equipped units. Beginning in late 1999, a number of major Department of the Army initiatives, collectively termed “Transformation,” looked to the weapons, force structure, training, and doctrine of the Army well into the 21st century.
The advances in technology indicated an evolution to a battlefield on which time, distance, movement and firepower existed in new relationships. These gains rose from evidence of the extended reach and pinpoint accuracy of weapons brought to effect by near-real-time intelligence, detection, target acquisition and communications technology. TRADOC today continues to host numerous advanced warfighting experiments and seminarwar games to examine these concepts. In 34 years of providing the Army with well-trained soldiers and leaders, developing new weapons and technology, and providing effective up-todate doctrine, TRADOC has frequently changed. In the area of individual training, TRADOC changed the counterinsurgencybased training of the Vietnam era to more conventional combined arms training. In this first decade of the 21st century, training for counterinsurgency in an urban environment has become a necessity.
This evolution is nowhere more evident than in the area of doctrine. Before the advent of TRADOC, the term doctrine usually meant organization and tactics. If you look at most of the editions of FM 100-5 prior to the establishment of TRADOC, those two subjects were their primary focus. Beginning with TRADOC’s first FM 100-5, there was a change in the way doctrine was perceived. General William E. DePuy, the first TRADOC commander, wanted a doctrinal manual that dealt with the reality of the time, so the 1976 edition concentrated on “active defense” in fighting a war in Europe. There was considerable debate about “active defense” which led to AirLand Battle doctrine under General Starry. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the strategic interests of the nation broadened, making joint operations more necessary and changing the focus of FM 100-5.
Q: What is the role of TRADOC in the ongoing war on terrorism and in the training of Iraqi Security Forces?
A: With the emphasis on disrupting the insurgent and terrorist capabilities through a variety of counterinsurgency programs, TRADOC is playing a crucial role for the operational force. Our contributions are generally in the area of doctrine and training support. On the doctrine side, we recently released an updated version of FM 3-24, “Counterinsurgency” for the first time since 1985. In October 2004, we provided an interim manual on counterinsurgency as a baseline for leaders and staffs, and then dedicated two years toward the production of a first-rate manual in cooperation with the Marine Corps. When that manual was released there were more than one million downloads off the Internet in less than 30 days. We are also very active on the training front through both cultural awareness and language training for deploying soldiers and units. Experience has shown that having a better understanding of the population and an ability to converse with the people in their language greatly reduces the barriers of conflict and increases cooperation. The TRADOC Culture Center at Fort Huachuca provides cultural awareness training, foreign language training and resources to enhance cultural awareness and maintain foreign language proficiency. The Defense Language School at Presidio provides Rosetta Stone language programs for deploying soldiers. At the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, we established the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center and the Ike Skelton Distinguished Chair for Counterinsurgency. Also at Leavenworth, the Battle Command Training Program runs a five-day Counterinsurgency [COIN] Seminar coordinated with the Army and Marine Corps COIN Center at Fort Leavenworth and the Taji COIN Academy programs of instruction. This effort assists units and trainers to obtain the most relevant and recent information updates covering operations in the COIN environment. The Iraqi Ground Forces Command Advisor Team, a 15-person group comprised of senior U.S military officers, whose mission is to advise the Iraqi Ground Forces, and the National Command Center Advisor Team, a 10–person group comprised of senior U.S. military officers whose mission is to advise the Ministry of Defense, received support from the Army Intelligence Center and the Army and Marine Corps COIN Center. The Intelligence Center provided a cultural awareness mobile training team to update the groups, and the Army and Marine Corps COIN Center hosted a five-day advisor seminar to prepare each of the teams for their missions.
Q: What does TRADOC oversee?
A: The most visible parts of TRADOC are our Combat Training Centers, including the National Training Center in California, the Joint Training Readiness Center in Louisiana, and the Battle Command Training Program (BCTP) located at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Our 33 education and doctrine centers/ schools are located in 16 installation throughout the United States. TRADOC also includes recruiting stations, senior ROTC detachments in colleges, and junior ROTC detachments in high schools in all 50 states. TRADOC is probably our nation’s most visible military presence in the lives of the American people—a key interface for portraying the Army’s message to the citizens of the United States.
Q: What has TRADOC implemented through its lessonslearned initiatives to better improve training for soldiers, particularly for those who provide training and security in Iraq?
A: In the past, lessons learned were primarily generated from the Combat Training Centers [CTCs] or major training exercises involving U.S. forces. It involved a burdensome process following the observed training events, resulting in a published document. All of that has changed since the start of OIF/OEF. Now, lessons learned are collected from units themselves and from the battlefield by Collection and Analysis Teams [CAATs] from the Center for Army Lessons Learned [CALL]. Information is reviewed and made available to support training for deploying units or to adjust tactics, techniques, and procedures [TTPs] for deployed units. Normally, this process is completed within two weeks following the CAATs return from the operational deployment. Instead of the 3-4 month waiting period for a published document, information is now hung on the CALL secured internet Website for immediate use and review. Printable products can be downloaded by users from the website. More importantly, information is “pushed” to units and soldiers where in the past it was “pulled.” Some of the major products, supporting observations. and practices that have been implemented as a result of lessons learned include:
• The First 100 Days Survey—deploying soldiers are now issued a handbook that provides common mistakes, pitfalls and successful TTPs based on collected experiences of individuals that have gone before them.
• Numerous handbooks, pocket guides, newsletters, after action reports and smart cards based on observations, insights and lessons [OIL], and TTPs.
• Extensive use of collaborative Websites [i.e. Lessons Learned Integration Net (L2I Net), CALL WebSite, Road to Deployment Website, Battle Command Knowledge system (BCKS), etc. to share OIL, TTP and lessons across the entire Army and Joint communities].
• Integration of counterinsurgency [COIN] situations in BCTP and at the Maneuver Combat Training Centers, National Training Center [NTC], Joint Readiness Training Center and the Joint Multinational Readiness Center to better prepare deploying units.
• Inclusion of OIL, TTPs and lessons in the training of advisor teams and provisional reconstruction teams.
• CTCs conduct secure video teleconferences with deployed units in theater to continually improve the required training and accurately replicate the operational environment for deploying units.
• Additionally, computer-driven simulations have become a very important tool to prepare units and soldiers incorporating lessons learned into the emerging software to support various programs. Examples of simulations include:
• Virtual Combat Convoy Trainer—currently, seven are operational and the plan is for an additional nine simulators plus 27 configurable vehicle tactical trainers.
• Escalation of Force scenarios are available for training support. Not only are our soldiers using these products to better prepare, but advisor teams are using these scenarios to train Iraqi units.
• The Battle Command Training Program implemented an exercise construct called the mission rehearsal exercise for training divisions and corps. The exercise replicates the contemporary operational environment and is based on political, military, economic, social, infrastructure and information factors.
All of these new programs are a direct result of lessons learned. The unique point involved with these changes is that they are being developed and implemented for an Army undergoing transformation while at war.
Q: What needs to be done in the future to improve the training that U.S. Army soldiers currently receive in order to better fight the current and future wars?
A: It has been said that historically we train for the last war, but with the upcoming release of FM 3.0, “Full Spectrum Operations,” we will be much better prepared for the next war. TRADOC continues to emphasize and prioritize training improvements to support the current fight and prepare soldiers and units for future situations. We owe the soldiers the best training opportunities available. Some of the new initiatives underway focus on the importance of the air-ground team so leaders and staff officers better understand the processes associated with joint air support. With the introduction of unmanned aerial systems across the battlefield, there needs to be an emphasis on airspace control. This will only improve the ability to plan, synchronize and execute airspace control within the Brigade Combat Team. Investment in the modernization of training enablers at the CTCs and home station is an ongoing process. We need to replicate the environment soldiers will encounter when deployed the best we can. To do that we focus on the opposing forces, civilians on the battlefield, threat equipment and capabilities, tactical engagement systems, simulators and the instrumentation used to capture units actions during training. Technology at the CTCs can help improve the training environment and the unit’s readiness. We also recognize the need to increase participation of multinational, interagency and intergovernmental personnel at training centers. Integration of the agencies will increase the capabilities and effectiveness for the combat units and the agency personnel in the operational environment. The current operations in theater demand the cooperation of a multitude of agencies, many from outside DoD.
Q: How important a role has e-learning played in the continued education and training of soldiers at TRADOC and overseas?
A: E-learning has played an integral role in the continued education and training of the Soldiers at TRADOC and overseas. We use multiple means and technologies to deliver training to the soldier at the right place and right time. Today’s information technology has allowed for the increased speed of information processing and the ability to increase the usability across multiple platforms. The ultimate goal is improved readiness through the delivery of standardized individual, collective and self-development training to soldiers and units any time and any place, The Army Distributed Learning Program serves as the umbrella that provides e-learning availability for the entire U.S. Army professional development and education system. This capability allows soldiers to increase training readiness, presents the maximum opportunity and access to distributed learning products, and save resources by reducing resident training [upon returning from overseas] by using distributed learning capabilities.
Q: What can industry do to better help TRADOC accomplish its mission?
A: Industry can best assist TRADOC by helping soldiers and leaders accomplish their missions. Developing training and training support packages earlier in the capabilities development life cycle will enable TRADOC to better serve deploying forces. Accelerating the delivery of capabilities is key to TRADOC’s success. Industry can increase coordination and recommendations on open architecture issues for battle command systems. Increased industry interest in battle command systems that are easily trainable, provide better decision-making tools with both friendly and enemy locations, running estimates of available combat power, and interoperable with joint and coalition systems. Industry can also assist TRADOC by increasing interest and participation in the Army Capabilities Integration Center Technology Information Exchange program. This program assists both TRADOC and industry because it allows us to discuss capability gaps while as well as industry’s efforts in research and development in a candid environment. Industry’s continued support for the development of the Army’s Future Combat Systems will accelerate the developments process to rapidly transition new capabilities to the force.
Q: What is the future of TRADOC and what role will it play in the U.S. Army’s overall mission to meet the demands of a nation at war while simultaneously anticipating solutions to the challenges of tomorrow?
A: TRADOC will continue as the “Architect of the Army” as it adapts training and education to the rapidly evolving and dynamic joint operating environment in which our Army is actively engaged across the globe. In the complex global environment facing our Army, TRADOC must look at the elements of how that complex environment impacts national security. It also has to understand the information revolution and understand the complexity of the enemy and the way they use the information tools that are available to them. Change is one of the constants in TRADOC. TRADOC constantly strives to maintain and better its linkage to the operational Army while simultaneously receiving constant feedback on ways to adapt and improve on the final product provided to the operational force. The operational Army is working extraordinarily hard to prepare for the operational environment in which they are going to be deployed, someone has to scope out the future… and that somebody is Training and Doctrine Command. ♦