Enforcing Standards and Discipline in the United States Army

The United States Army has a history of instilling and enforcing discipline within its ranks. However, with every passing year come changes in the way society thinks and acts. New social values are created and fostered, and leaders in the U.S. Army must address these changes in order to maintain continuity of standards and discipline from one generation to the next (Wardynski). Thus, as the new generation of soldiers enters the United States Army, new challenges await leadership. The evolving world of social media is just one of the challenges that require leaders to be proactive in their approach to army standards and its enforcement. Soldiers have access to the internet in a deployed environment and use this platform in positive ways but also use social media in ways that bring harm to the Army values and heritage. Leaders need to walk a fine line between the soldiers rights to privacy and operational security.
In order to lead effectively, understanding of the new generation’s needs and expectations has to be considered at the same time that the Army’s own standards and expectations are communicated to new soldiers. The Army cannot forego one while observing only the other and vice versa. The Army has to maintain its standards and discipline but unless it understands the obstacles that prevent soldiers from knowing what it means to be a professional, the vision the Army has for itself, the standards it relies upon, and the discipline it needs to thrive will be lacking—as is currently the case (Allen, 2012). This essay will discuss the challenges and opportunities Army leaders face and also how leaders must maintain discipline in their ranks.
Statement of the Problem
The problem that is faced by leaders in the Army today is that they see new soldiers coming out of basic training without any confidence or discipline (Frost, 2018). To that end, Frost (2018) states that a new Basic Combat Training (BCT) program has been developed that is designed to reinforce discipline and build the new soldier’s confidence. Frost (2018) indicates that the new BCT program fixes the defects in the old BCT program that were producing undisciplined and unconfident soldiers. However, there has been no study indicating what today’s Army leaders think of the new BCT program or what they believe the real issues are when it comes to instilling discipline in the new generation of soldiers. Thus, there is a need for a qualitative study that allows for the exploration of viewpoints among military leaders that can be compared with viewpoints of new soldiers so as to see how what the actual perspectives are like and how great the distance is between them—i.e., how much bridging needs to occur in order to get new soldiers aligned with leaders in the Army.
Research Questions and Strategy
The design for this study is to interview military leaders and new soldiers about their perspectives on discipline and standards. The aim is to see what they know, what they believe, where they want to be, and how they think they can best get there. It is assumed that leaders will have more perspective on this issue than new soldiers. However, by interviewing the new soldiers the objective is to gauge their attitudes on standards and discipline and to assess their willingness to be challenged, since the basis of the new BCT program is that new recruits will rise to the challenge when standards are raised and discipline training is doubled early on (Frost, 2018).
The research questions that this study asks are:
1) What do leaders in the Army perceive as the main problem when it comes to instilling discipline and maintaining the necessary standards with new soldiers?
2) What do leaders believe would be an effective way to increase discipline in the Army?
3) Do leaders believe the standards themselves have been lowered either in a formal or informal way? If so, how?
4) What is the main generational challenge that leaders in the Army face with this new generation of recruits and soldiers?
5) What should be the Army policy on issues like social media, where the line between what is personal and what is public has been not only blurred but often obliterated?
6) What do new recruits and new soldiers feel is the main problem when it comes to becoming a disciplined soldier capable of attaining the standards expected of them by the Army or that they themselves expected to reach?
Literature Review
Wardynski et al. (2009) note that “officers that the Army accesses today are the feedstock for its senior leaders in the next 30 years” and that to ensure discipline and standards tomorrow, the right leaders today have to be developed and groomed (p. 14). If the leaders are not groomed to carry on the torch of discipline that is crucial to the Army’s success, the generational problems that crop up will overwhelm the Army and lead to a crumbling of discipline, a lowering of standards, and a weakening of morale and resiliency (Wardynski et al., 2009). This is problematic for a number of reasons, but one of the most primary reasons is the fact that the American military has, up to this point, been able to rely upon its technical superiority and weaponry in order to combat the enemy—but in the future this is likely to not be the case. The military will not be able to just rely on its weaponry and technical superiority: it is going to have to rely on the moral character of its soldiers to produce results in the face of enemy combat. That means it is going to need disciplined soldiers—and currently finding soldiers of a caliber fit to lead has become more and more difficult, as Wardynski et al (2009) observe:
While its current generation of officers has been able to count upon American economic and technological preeminence as unrivaled sources of power, the U.S. Army’s future officers may be unable to do so. Instead, they will likely be confronted by several nations possessing large, relatively young and well-educated populations, with greater access to capital and technology drawn from rapidly expanding domestic economies…America’s Army, therefore, must wage war with the volunteer officers it accesses and retains. Now more than ever, these men and women must be extremely talented (p. 2).
In short, Wardynski et al. (2009) show that there is a need for more talent in the military, and that talent has to be developed effectively in order for the military to meet and maintain high enough standards so that it can compete against the militaries of other countries.
Allen (2012) highlights the fact that one of the big problems in the military is that there is the perception among soldiers and leaders of one set of standards for the home station and another set in operational environments. This means that there is incongruity between what is accepted as a standard in one place and what is accepted as a standard in another. A soldier might be deemed up to standard at a home station, but in an operational environment the soldier might be deemed sub-standard. Aside from this, Allen (2012) notes that there is a common perception of standards being relaxed during the reset and train/ready phases of Army Force Generation. Worst of all, only half of soldiers surveyed indicate that their leaders have high standards (Allen, 2012). This suggests that the military is sorely deficient when it comes to maintaining high standards and discipline.
One of the reasons for the depreciation in standards is found in the 2011 Army Posture Statement, which revealed that the military “lowered its accession standards in the previous decade, leading to a 65 percent increase in ‘moral’ waivers for recruits with criminal records from 2003 to 2006, among other effects” (Allen, 2012, p. 29). The effects of this lowering of standards is seen everywhere in the Army. For example, because there is a need for more leadership in the field, the duration of the Warrior Leader Course has been decreased from one month to only 17 days (Allen, 2012). Thus, in an effort to get more quality leaders in the field, the process of training leaders is being reduced, which means the quality is going to suffer and the leaders the Army needs are not being produced effectively. This could explain why soldiers surveyed feel their leaders do not have high standards: insufficient time is being spent training leaders to have and enforce high standards.
Allen (2012) suggests the Army begin promoting ROTC programs on Ivy League college campuses again so that it can get high-quality new officers in the field instead of having to rely on lower quality soldiers who do not come from elite backgrounds. There needs to be more development of high-quality stock, according to the findings of Allen (2012). The research indicates that past behavior is a good predictor of future performance and too many soldiers are being promoted who have poor quality records when it comes to past behavior.
Frost (2018) suggests that the way to fix the problem is to use the new Basic Combat Training program, which focuses more on instilling discipline in the early weeks of the program and less on basic skills. By focusing more on discipline, Frost (2018) argues that new recruits will be able to uphold higher standards of behavior. When leaders challenge the new recruits, the soldiers are more likely to rise to the challenge, so leaders should not be fearful of challenging soldiers during the training process. This is why Frost (2018) recommends the new BCT program over the old one.
Conclusion
In order to lead effectively, understanding of the new generation’s needs and expectations has to be considered at the same time that the Army’s own standards and expectations are communicated to new soldiers. The standards of the Army have been lowered in the past and this is a problem because the military in the coming years is going to need leaders and soldiers of high-quality moral fiber. Discipline is needed in the Army now more than ever before, and it is sorely lacking according to the research. This study aims to explore the perspectives of military leaders and soldiers to better understand what the problem is and how it can be addressed. The literature on the subject shows that declining standards and discipline is a major factor across the board and that if the military does not do something to address the issue the military will not be able to stand up to enemy combatants or rely on technological superiority alone. The literature indicates that more focus needs to be placed on discipline in the early weeks of training and that standards have to be maintained.
References
Allen, C. D. (2012). Back to Basics: The Army Must Reinforce Standards of Discipline. Carlisle, PA: Army War College Carlisle Barracks.
Frost, M. (2018). Back to the basics with pride and discipline. Retrieved from https://www.ausa.org/articles/back-basics-pride-and-discipline
Wardynski, C., Lyle, D. S., & Colarusso, M. J. (2009). Towards a US Army officer corps strategy for success: A proposed human capital model focused upon talent (Vol. 1). Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute.