HAMMER: Korea was the first war where the US Army rotated Soldiers in and out of theatre in significant numbers, a practice that has continued ever since. In doing practical and instructional knowledge is lost and lessons have to be re-learned, sometimes at great cost. How would you change the manner in which we now rotate Soldiers into different conflicts across the globe?
Rotating Soldiers every nine months allows them to see and be with families. The Army has already reduced from twelve months to nine months of standard deployment time. I personally think that this is a reasonable deployment window that allows units to get familiar with environment in theater. I would not change the time; however, I would suggest financially incentivizing experienced NCOs and officers the option to stay longer in theater. The reason why NCOs are the backbone of the Army- not just because their responsibilities of training and supervising junior Soldiers/military personnel of other sister branches, but also because of their experience (specifically deployment experience) they bring to the table — providing inexperienced Soldiers the understanding of the kind of war they’re fighting through leadership and mentorship. I would offer monetary incentives to experienced NCOs and officers who would volunteer to stay in theater, train and lead newly arrived units/Soldiers. Another option- which isn’t currently available, is through high technology simulation. Something like you see in the movie “Inception”, program lessons/SOPs/TTPs in a first-person 3D simulation game, in which inexperienced leaders and Soldiers play as their roles in battles. The games must be full-immersion and engineered to create psychological effects that Soldiers experience in real battles. There are simulators for rollover and operating Humvees; inexperienced Soldiers can definitely benefit from full-emersion theater specific simulation games. And as a disclaimer, I am not even a gamer.