We currently send cadets to ADFA for a minimum of three years to award a degree that has little significance to the employability of Army officers. This period exceeds the length of all subsequent military training, career courses, and staff college. This balance is insufficient for the coming war whenever and wherever that may be; for there will surely be one.
A more military specific Bachelor of Profession of Arms (B Prof Arms) is proposed to enhance the effectiveness of the Army, increase the quality of our officers, and to give our soldiers a corps of leaders that are as capable as we can possibly make them. The tax paying citizens are more concerned with the Army bringing their loved ones home alive than with studies of English literature, biology, or engineering.
The breadth of military capabilities, policy, and philosophy is simply too great to attach to the already busy curriculum of RMC, career courses, or voluntary PME. The study of war is worthy of our efforts, it is both academic and practical in nature, it is as important as any professional field and we must commit to it as a recognised profession.
The proposed degree structure is one officer’s suggestion, if only as a conversation starter. Criticism is welcomed to make the concept stronger and more convincing to decision makers.
Year 1 Semester 1
- Logic and Reasoning
- Applied Mathematics
- Military Capabilities
- Military Communication
Year 1 Semester 2
- Land Tactics
- Ethics
- Weapon Technology & Effects
- Geography
Year 2 Semester 1
- Air Power
- Naval Warfare
- Staff Skills
- International Politics
Year 2 Semester 2
- Applied Military Tactics
- Philosophy
- Economics
- Intelligence and Analysis
Year 3 Semester 1
- Applied Military Operations
- Strategy
- Leadership
- Personnel Management
Year 3 Semester 2
- Applied Military Strategy
- Project Management
- Governance and Policy
- Applied Leadership
The program is set up to give the fundamental building blocks at the start of the degree, with capstone subjects being conducted once the fundamentals are in place.
Implementation
The scope of impact could vary considerably. In terms of minimum viable product, the change could be as small as the addition of the above subjects to the ADFA catalogue and have selected candidates complete the program as a major within a Bachelor of Arts. As a more mature concept, there would be very significant changes to the greater Army officer training continuum and perhaps even the wider ADF. Some of these points are addressed in the fictional FAQ section below which is intended as a simple shorthand for addressing likely issues and compatibility concerns.
Fictional FAQs For a Mature Concept of B Prof Arms
What about direct entry GSO?
Delete entirely. The B Prof Arms is an integral part of Army Officer training.
What then is the role of RMC?
Second Lieutenants will be delivered from ADFA fit, militarised, and educated. RMC will carry out conditioning and hardening in a predominantly field environment. A potential routine might consist of two weeks of TEWTs, two weeks of field for six months, and then graduation. Drill, dress and bearing and room inspections are for ADFA, RMC is for leadership in the field and practical application of tactics.
What about engineers and specialist degrees?
Any non-B Prof Arms graduate should by definition be an SSO, and these degrees would still be offered at ADFA. Engineers for example, would be streamed into purely engineering and project related roles. Business and science could realistically be removed completely with necessary specialists sourced from civilian graduates. This would aid in retention of specialists and focus their careers on their desired field without being posted to positions that are more concerned with administration than technical expertise. The loss of applicants who would only do a business degree and not a Profession of Arms degree is a feature, not a bug.
What about logistics vs combat corps?
An absurd and harmful division of knowledge that ensures both sides are deficient. The B Prof Arms spans both combat and logistics as the two should not be separated. Considering the career course differences are barely measured in months, this is a trivial problem to solve.
Career courses?
B Prof Arms will far outstrip any LOAC/COAC course outcomes. These courses could be phased out, with recognised PME forming the backbone of ongoing education that should realistically result in the achievement of a masters degree by the time the officer reaches sub unit command.
What about life after Defence?
For any non-specialised profession such as medicine, law, or engineering the B Prof Arms compares very favourably. Many government positions require any bachelor degree and would be very well served by officers educated in logic, mathematics, philosophy, and detailed strategic planning.
How does this interact with JPME 2.0?
As admirable as optional PME activities are, they do not present the same structure, assessment, and exposure time as a full-time degree. These would operate independently.
Is this three years of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu?
Absolutely not. This program is about creating a stream of officers who can confidently and competently wield the tens of thousands of men and women who make up the ADF in a wartime environment. No other profession has such pressures or would allow the current minimalist approach to job specific training. Subjects such as philosophy are to be practical in nature, not to be implemented as a ‘history of philosophy’ as is presumably the norm.
Conclusion
We are transitioning to a war footing. A regular civilian education is no longer adequate and arguably never was. This is an innovation in training that would gain international attention as the historical performance of officers is often the source of substantial legitimate criticism.
The ADF is deficient in numbers of personnel and equipment, it must use those men and women that it has in a manner that is more competitive than our adversaries. The B Prof Arms is a zero-risk method to achieve an enormous gain in capability. It would decrease the staffing requirements of the various career courses while providing a more enticing and relevant degree to potential military officers who are interested in achieving qualifications and expertise in their chosen field. Finally, and most importantly, it will save soldiers’ lives.
My personal preference would be to make the program accessible to commissioned officers only, but it’s not the hill I need to die on. There is an attraction in exclusivity and we are in dire need of attracting talent to the organisation.
There will always be a division of labour between professions, this approach just seeks to draw the boundaries along a more sensible border by making the profession of arms an explicit profession of its own that would sit side by side with other professions such as engineers, doctors and lawyers. The cultural division between arms corps GSOs and logistics GSOs has to me always seemed more poisonous than that between specialists and GSOs, so I consider knocking that wall down a few feet to be enough of a win.
But I must disagree with you, this format of ADFA and RMC would not function as desired.
I've been in this realm for many years, training soldiers, officers, and operating with the same.
We predominantly don't send people to ADFA because they're book smart, we send them their because they do not yet have the life skills to commence training at RMC-Duntroon.
With this change, we would have immature candidates attending a high-end war fighting course.
We're trying to achieve two outcomes for the Army between ADFA and RMC.
1. ADFA matures candidates
2. RMC makes officers.
It would be more apt to say, we're turning RMC into a 4 year course, with 3 years of the university study you recommend, and a final year of high end application.
And we would in turn need to keep ADFA generating maturity in younger candidates for a number of years, we can't afford to have the average ADFA 1st year enter direct to RMC.
So what would we do with ADFA? Per the suggestion, and with some extrapolation, delete it, as you said. No more non-ADF studies at the tax payers expense.
Deleting ADFA's current construct would leave an even larger, already gaping hole, in recruitment for suitable officers directly into this program. This is already the reason RMC was shortened from 18 months to 12.
Recruitment is an extant risk that eventuates when we remove the dangling carrot incentive to join, as well as increase the calibre of candidate required at the gate. We need to treat that somehow if this university plan is to succeed.
So all in all, by all means, delete ADFA. But we will lack the ability to mature teenagers to a suitable standard to join RMC.
ADFA needs to be more than a uniformed boarding school where we capture school-leavers until they are ready for RMC; to say nothing of the other two services. If we are squandering three years of an officers life merely waiting for them to age then we are doing all involved stakeholders a serious injustice.
If ADFA is truly a glorified holding pattern, then your suggestion to close ADFA entirely and just take mature graduates from civilian street is both realistic and cost effective. As a Baker class re-tread, this approach instinctively troubles me very little. That said, ADFA does exist and is to receive a capital injection to rebuild itself. It is better to harness the inevitable and make it work toward our cause than to fight against ADFAs existence. Also, RMC was twice historically a 4-year course, so this may not be so much a drastic change as a turn of the wheel.
I tried to avoid the recruitment side of the equation, but it is clearly related and you have brought it to the fore as your central theme. The current approach is clearly failing. This has to be acknowledged in order for Army to understand that its approach needs to change, not incrementally in the pursuit of a new minority talent pool, but philosophically. Nationalism is anathema to the new political stance of the ADF and pay concerns are met with snorts of derision from those who hold the levers of influence. Carrot dangling as you have termed it is demonstrably ineffective and we find ourselves lowering bars and barriers just to achieve a quota of warm bodies; standards be damned, the units can pick up the training shortfall. The other taboo factor is the risk associated with what appears to be imminent high-end war; not to be confused with the ‘trips’ of my youthful soldiering. Sub hundred thousand dollar income for a decent chance of a front row seat to WW3? This would be quite off-putting to a generation who have been raised on inclusiveness and won’t be whipped into a nationalist fervour easily.
How then do you leverage a motivation for state service devoid of national identity, financial incentive or a sense of self-preservation? One option is to offer your target audience something that is exclusive, that cannot be attained without committing to the ADF. The degree structure I have proposed really is unique among academic offerings. It is not token. It is neither woke nor antiquated. It is demanding, it is comprehensive and it is offered absolutely nowhere else on Earth. It is designed to attract would-be commanders with a desire to be unapologetically elite in their field. The elitism ideal may be distasteful to mature academics, but mature academics do not lead platoons and companies into firefights. Young commanders do lead soldiers into firefights, and their motivations are biologically linked to risky and competitive behaviours. An officer without the desire to lead soldiers into combat is a non-starter, ergo a recruitment strategy needs to target those with a bent for all the attributes that defence has publicly spurned, to its clear and sobering detriment.
The Australian Army ought to be an elite institution. We ought to demand its members be better, not accept whoever we can hoodwink. They need to be remunerated according to their worth, as is the expectation of a meritocratic, competitive society.
Some private companies are cautious of employing ex-military pers. Sure, they have good leadership and teamwork skills and on paper appear highly qualified. However, they often lack practical experience, with too much time often spent doing admin, compliance, training or in postings that are unrelated to their specialty. Most civilian companies assume about 10 days a year for individual training - not the many months Army does. How many have done a course/obtained a competency and never/rarely used the skills (no equipment, not posted to a unit that uses your skills, too much time doing compliance/admin etc). I spend 90% + using my core skills - in Army, it was less than 30%. Post Army, many professionals are almost unemployable, having rarely used their technical skills. Then add institutionalization, with an expectation of all training being in work time, paid by your employer, while in most civilian companies, self-development to support career growth involves part-time training in your own time.
Recruiting-wise, building 'elite' status will only be of interest if there is a cohort that seek that particular flavour of elitism being offered. I don't see how an academic course on warfighting will tap into a bigger cohort of potential Army officers. Those who are motivated for this career can already achieve similar learning outcomes with a well structured History/Politics degree at ADFA today. I can see there is more to your proposed degree structure, but there is a fair degree of overlap. Even accounting for the value of a niche offering, it seems a stretch to think the rebranding would bring in additional numbers?
The approach also does not account for natural variance in reasons for joining. Having worked at ADFA for a number years in various roles (both civilian and academic), a minority join for the degree - most just want to get out there and do adventurous stuff in defence. I don't see a B Prof Arms changing this. So I cannot envisage a huge net attraction gain. Some of the enthusiastic but somewhat immature group might actually be turned off by it. Worse still, this approach would definitely discourage (if not disbar) the (my estimate) 30% that are keen to do a particular degree (for a wide range of reasons) AND want to serve their country as leaders in combat. I'm sure we can agree these people do exist. I know a few.
It is this last impact that I think might be the biggest issue in the proposal, and goes to a concern raised by others responses highlighting the potential to create a rift between 'specialist' and GSO. In fact, before we even get to specialists, I'd offer that in many 'warfighting' roles, a strong understanding of cyber, hard sciences, or indeed broader humanities might be the key factor that will give the GSO a chance to understand the battlespace properly and map a course to victory. An engineer can be a very competent OC, as can a business graduate. The individual to have this 'vision' may have joined for their technical interest, but if they are 'baptised' through junior warfighting experiences, they can develop the wisdom on how to apply their niche skills in warfare. If we lose this cohort, not only will the recruiting gap grow, but we also lose the real 'intellectual edge' we are seeking. These same people also develop into our translators in their later careers - the ones who can communicate our niche requirements to researchers and industry, having a deep grounding in both the practical realities of military operations and the language of business and industry.
A lot of the content you suggest in the course will become more relevant in senior ranks as people move into planning and decision roles, and I think ACSC is about the right time to bring it in as a 'requirement'.
Not only can we afford diversity of education at the bottom of the officer training pyramid, I would argue it is the only place we can afford it. Further, I'd humbly suggest we need it to operate effectively in a complex battlespace.
I'm all for bold arguments, but calling this a zero risk approach to massive gains belittles the complexity of workforce analysis and organisational behaviour - something taught in a business degree.