In the middle of a patrol base before morning nautical twilight, a small group is huddled around a map with an operations order shell. The patrol base is at maximum security awaiting an early enemy attack. This is a familiar scene for every infantry officer. In fact, it is the foundational leader training experience for all junior officers across commissioning sources. The training design hasn’t changed much in the six decades since the Vietnam War—a shared experience from the chief of staff of the Army to the squad leaders of 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, which returned from Operation Inherent Resolve in April. And yet there have been sea changes to the operating environment that today’s soon-to-be officers, infantry branch or not, will soon enter—sea changes that continue to accelerate—and small-unit tactics must evolve to account for the enemy’s ability to leverage multidomain effects on friendly forces. This includes the ubiquitous presence of small, unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS), electromagnetic spectrum and signals jamming, and underground fortifications, among many other novel applications of traditional fundamentals of combined arms ground combat.

Now is the time to adapt the premier cadet training program to ensure that experiences witnessed in Ukraine and Gaza are not merely lessons observed by current leaders. Instead, the emerging trends in warfare can become an integral part of how our next generation of Army officers learn to fight, starting with their fundamental initial entry training environment. As this summer’s iteration of Cadet Summer Training (CST)—in which all ROTC cadets take part a year before commissioning—makes apparent, there is an opportunity to effect change in the way the Army prepares its future leaders now. But this cannot be a one-off improvement; it must be part of an ongoing process of continuous innovation so that CST keeps pace with the Army’s strategic vision for the application of ground combat on the modern battlefield.

Demonstrating Agility at Cadet Summer Training

CST is a crucible experience for over five thousand future Army officers each year. It is supported by almost three thousand officers and noncommissioned officers who serve as cadre in the capacity of observer-coach-trainer. CST takes place at Fort Knox, Kentucky from May through August annually and is the premier training event for cadets during their four-year ROTC career. It is the Army’s only opportunity to execute an ROTC program at scale given the disparate nature of 274 programs spread out across over one thousand colleges and universities.

Improving cadets’ warfighting skills is a top priority of Cadet Command senior leaders and helps prepare future officers to lead soldiers in combat. At the same time, a key priority for the Army chief of staff is transformation. The modern battlefield is providing unique insights into disruptive technologies that are changing the nature of small-unit combat. The infantry-based small-unit tactics that drive cadet assessments are rooted in Vietnam-era experiences. It is imperative that future officer training models integrate today’s lessons observed into adaptable training environments that more accurately mirror current conflict, without losing CST’s foundational principles of leading by example and shared hardship.

The use of platoon-sized infantry formations to assess leadership presents Cadet Command with an incredible opportunity to integrate, experiment, and expose cadets to the major evolutions on the modern battlefield. Providing this exposure as early as CST is in line with Army senior leader expectations for transformation, multidomain operations, and taking lessons observed from conflicts and turning them into lessons learned in training.

CST 24 is already adapting to ensure our tactical scenarios introduce cadets to prevailing changes of the current battlefield. This year, the designers of the training environment, Colonel Jim Horn, Lieutenant Colonel Jay Wenger, and Lieutenant Colonel Jake Phillips, identified two key areas where lessons observed from Ukraine and Gaza could be added to the environment cadets operate in during their leadership evaluations.

This is not the first time cadet training is being used to experiment with new aspects of the modern battlefield. In 2017, the Modern War Institute at the United States Military Academy conducted randomized controlled tests at West Point’s cadet field training with virtual reality and other advanced technologies. Their research, described in Military Review, suggested that the introduction of complex technologies at initial entry–type training caused cognitive overload and distracted or degraded leader effectiveness. Importantly, those tests involved providing cadets with complex technologies for their use in training. Based on these results, CST 24 did not seek to integrate the technologies directly into the training platoon. Instead, cadets are being exposed to sUAS and subterranean avenues of approach but are not expected to enter tunnels. We expect these methods to reduce risk of cognitive overload precisely because they do not require the training audience to employ them. We believe these applications of the multidomain complexity of the modern battlefield will help cadets mentally visualize and more creatively imagine what the enemy might bring to bear against them on a patrol, even while huddled around a two-dimensional map in a patrol base during the hot and humid summer in Kentucky.

Lessons Observed in Ukraine: Adversary sUAS

Recognizing the critical role unmanned aircraft systems are playing in the fight in Ukraine, scenario designers added sUAS to the composition of enemy assets for CST 24. Soldiers from 4th Infantry Division, tasked with supporting CST as opposing force (OPFOR) elements, accepted Colonel Horn’s request to bring their organic Black Hornet sUAS to Fort Knox. With the support of Cadet Command leadership, Major General Antonio Munera and Command Sergeant Major Roy Young, Lieutenant Colonel Phillips’s innovative approach to UAS usage opportunities resulted in deconflicted airspace between range control, the local Army airfield, and the nearby international airport in Louisville to ensure every cadet at CST 24 encountered enemy UAS during tactical training.

To ensure the OPFOR use of sUAS was not a distraction to training and was value-added to leadership decision-making, we leveraged the recently published Army Techniques Publication 3-01.81, Counter–Unmanned Aircraft System (C-UAS) to teach cadets during their crawl phase (the first in a crawl-walk-run sequence) the fundamentals of how to respond when dealing with enemy UAS.

Cadre were directed to lead classes in a field environment that provided a philosophical background on the use of sUAS. The information included in the classes touched on the proliferation of UAS, how these inexpensive, flexible, and expendable platforms enable adversaries to observe and attack friendly forces, and that units in the path of UAS should assume they are being observed and prepare for indirect fire on their positions.

Cadets were then given a framework and a paradigm for how to process and respond to enemy use of sUAS, specifically tied to leader planning and decision-making in line with the Army leadership requirements model, instead of a how-to guide for tactical application. Cadets were taught that the platoon leader must include contingency planning and rehearsals for making unexpected contact with an enemy UAS. When operating in the vicinity of UAS, platoons should avoid open areas, increase dispersion, increase camouflage, and always consider overhead cover and concealment during all aspects of a patrol including movement, establishing objective rally points and patrol bases, and actions on the enemy objective. Specific actions on contact to help cadet leaders visualize how their formation might encounter enemy sUAS included a R3 model:

  • RECOGNIZE — Friendly forces encounter a UAS and identify it as a potential threat
  • REACT — Passive air defense measures are taken to increase survivability of friendly force (camouflage and concealment; deception; dispersion; displacement; hardening and protective construction)
  • REPORT — After detecting an air threat, friendly forces issue a SALUTE report to higher headquarters so other friendly units can be quickly warned

Cadre, serving in observer-coach-trainer capacity, were also given a framework for assessing cadet judgment and decision-making when making contact with enemy sUAS, which focused on three simple yes/no questions: (1) Did the platoon recognize and become aware that they are in visual or audible contact with an unidentified UAS? (2) Did the cadet leader make a decision about how to adapt or adjust movement techniques, routes, or any other aspect of the plan given the presence of an enemy sensor in the air above their platoon? And (3) did the platoon leader make an attempt to inform higher headquarters about the observed enemy activity?

At the time of this writing, over sixty cadet platoons, numbering over 2,200 cadets, have completed this training, with an additional three thousand cadets scheduled to train by the end of this summer. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from cadre, cadets and the 4th Infantry Division soldiers who are maximizing their opportunities to fly their newly fielded sUAS, which is a positive collateral consequence of integrating fielded force units into cadet training scenarios.

Lessons Observed in Gaza: Underground Enemy Facilities

Not unlike the lessons observed in Ukraine, observing the experience of Israel Defense Forces fighting in Gaza made apparent that ground forces are being asked to fight in increasingly urban environments and that adversaries are building tunnel networks to evade friendly surveillance and attack from the air. These subsurface areas are presenting challenges to even the most elite ground forces. While it would not make sense to ask cadets to develop spelunking skills, Lieutenant Colonel Wenger, Lieutenant Colonel Phillips, and Colonel Horn spearheaded the construction of a makeshift sewer cover to represent a larger tunnel system on the objectives that cadet platoons attack. Following the doctrinal guidance in Army Techniques Publication 3-21.51, Subterranean Operations, we developed the following training procedures to inform platoon leader decision-making.

Like the sUAS scenario, cadets received a brief explanation of how or why the enemy might choose to develop subsurface fortifications. They were instructed on how the development of infrastructure below ground adds complexity to the battlefield and how this infrastructure can be used by enemy forces to protect critical assets, store supplies and equipment, and hide and protect themselves from observation and attack. They were also taught about several of the forms subterranean spaces can take, including caves, shallow tunnels, sewers, or other underground structures.

Cadets then became familiar with how a leader might consider altering his or her unit’s task organization. The platoon leader must include contingency planning and rehearsals for making unexpected contact with enemy subterranean facilities. Platoon leaders should be prepared to engage on multiple fronts from enemy that fled the objective through subterranean egress routes. Identifying a specialty team and providing clear engagement criteria to a security squad or a follow-and-assume assaulting element to prepare for a counterattack demonstrate an understanding of the platoon leader’s role to isolate and secure entrances/exits to enemy subterranean facilities. Specific actions on contact to help cadet leaders visualize how their formations might encounter enemy subterranean spaced included the exact same R3 framework as sUAS to mitigate cognitive overload:

  • RECOGNIZE — Friendly forces encounter unidentified entrance/exit to subsurface
  • REACT — Actions are taken to isolate and secure the subterranean entrance/exit
  • REPORT — After detecting a subterranean threat, friendly forces issue a SALUTE report to higher headquarters so other friendly units can be quickly warned

Cadre were also given a framework for assessing cadet judgment and decision-making when making contact with enemy subterranean infrastructure, which focused on a similarly simple set of yes/no questions: (1) Did the platoon identify the enemy subterranean facilities on the objective? (2) Did the platoon take action to isolate and secure the entrance/exit to prevent the enemy from using it to surprise friendly forces? And (3) did the platoon leader inform higher headquarters about enemy subterranean facilities that require more than a single light infantry platoon to clear or control?

When a cadet platoon leader receives fragmentary orders from the platoon’s higher headquarters informing him or her that the platoon’s next objective may include tunnels, it becomes fairly straightforward for cadre to record how that platoon leader reacts during both the planning and execution phase of the training lane. Cadre listen to the cadet deliver an operations order and can quickly identify if the cadet platoon leader tasked any subordinate units to assign a team to secure any potential subterranean entrance or exits on the objective. Did cadet squad leaders incorporate this drill into their rehearsals at a patrol base or objective rally point? Once on the objective, does the platoon leader recognize a dry hole, which may indicate an immediate counterattack from the flanks by the enemy?

Further, a cadet platoon leader could decide to use one of the three maneuver squads to reinforce the shaping operation squad whose job it is to isolate the objective. Additionally, the cadet leader could choose, instead of the traditional follow-and-assume task for a second assaulting squad, to have that squad in a reserve function. This enables the platoon to maintain a maneuver element not decisively engaged on a primary objective with a subterranean layer, in the event the primary objective is a dry hole and the enemy uses its underground facilities for an attack on the cadet platoon’s flank.

The added tactical complexity is not the basis of grading. Cadets are not expected to clear tunnels or shoot down enemy UAS. Instead, the exposure of future leaders to these new aspects of a more complicated battlefield becomes the vehicle to evaluate their judgment, adaptability, and decision-making in uncertain, volatile, and ambiguous situations. How cadet platoon leaders choose to adjust their plans to new situations is a clear indication of the degree to which they exhibit the Army’s core leader competencies (lead, develop others, and achieve) and critical attributes (presence, character, and intellect).

Opportunities for CST to Remain Flexible in Support of Army Transformation

The overall purpose of CST is to assess and evaluate cadets as they enter their senior years and make decisions about what component and which branch to serve in. CST performance directly contributes to a national order of merit list that impacts these key career decisions. But beyond the grades cadets earn at Fort Knox, there is also a very important training aspect of CST that is at times overlooked and undervalued. There is a real tension between the need to score cadets and evaluate their performance to inform national order of merit lists and the opportunity to train cadets at scale on aspects of the future battlefield that are increasingly challenging to socialize in 274 different ROTC programs.

Innovation and agility can become part of the institution of CST with the appropriate process updates, and without taking away from the cadet evaluation mission. Specifically, every four years the secretary of defense publishes a National Defense Strategy. This document might trigger a review of the CST program of instruction for alignment with developments on future battlefields. Routinely challenging cadets to become more creative with how they understand, visualize, describe, and direct small-unit tactics is key to helping the Army achieve its strategic vision of incorporating lessons from the modern battlefield into the training, force structure, and equipment our future leaders use to develop.

Even without a formal review of the program of instruction every four years, near-term opportunities exist to enhance innovation and creative thinking at CST. For example, in addition to exposure to enemy sUAS, CST 24 is already planning for cadets to have access to friendly sUAS during the planning and execution of their missions. Incorporating intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) via sUAS recording of the enemy objective along with full-motion video of the terrain in the area of operations will provide cadet leaders an opportunity to employ advancing sUAS technology to inform their planning processes beyond preparing to evade enemy assets. The UAS feed would help with terrain model development and scheme-of-maneuver design while cadet leaders conduct troop leading procedures and operations-order planning in the patrol base.

Offering cadet platoon leaders the option to view the full-motion video from a UAS aligns with key elements of the principles of patrolling, including planning, reconnaissance, control, and common sense. Not expecting the cadets to be responsible for the technical skills to employ the sUAS technology further avoids the cognitive overload experienced in previous attempts to enhance cadet training with advanced tech.

In line with the Army leader requirement model, a cadet platoon leader who receives a higher headquarters mission that indicates sUAS ISR is available and then makes a request to view it demonstrates intellect and presence. Furthermore, if the cadet platoon leader then coaches or directs squad leaders, forward observers, and other members of the cadet platoon to conduct some type of rehearsal, or if the terrain model or scheme of maneuver addresses some aspect of the footage observed, that cadet leader would receive high marks on the assessment of his or her ability to lead and develop others. Finally, if the coaching and directing of subordinates leads to mission accomplishment of key tasks and purpose of the operation due to the implementation of elements of the battlefield or terrain derived from the sUAS ISR footage, that cadet platoon leader would be evaluated favorably in the achieve category.

The electromagnetic spectrum infantry units are accustomed to freely controlling for command, control, and communications is now increasingly being contested by adversaries. To add an additional layer of multidomain operations to future cadet missions, cadre could program disruption into the ISR sUAS video mentioned above. As cadet leaders become comfortable and come to value the decision-making advantage afforded them by sUAS ISR, the recording could be deliberately halted (shown as static in a prerecorded video). The disruption simulation of friendly ISR would be described to cadet leaders as signal jamming by enemy electronic warfare assets, thereby introducing cadets to another domain that impacts command, control, computers, and communications on the modern battlefield. This disruption demonstrates to cadets that enemy forces are aware they are being observed by sUAS and such an electronic warfare attack degrades the ISR advantage the cadet platoon had during previous missions. It could further reduce the cadet leader’s ability to use indirect fires, since the sUAS would no longer be in a position to observe. In each of these instances, the introduction of a contested electromagnetic spectrum will help cadets avoid complacency and not take for granted unfettered access to ISR during operations in enemy territory, which is now a reality of warfare.

Another readily available innovation to consider for the future of CST is to expand schoolhouse integration and enhance the realism of new lieutenants’ training by leveraging second lieutenants at the Maneuver Center of Excellence conducting their Basic Officer Leader Course (BOLC). The BOLC curriculum requires these new lieutenants to produce and deliver operations orders. We could imagine a time when those lieutenants pitch the order and lead the patrol during the crawl phase of cadet summer training. Today, tactical scenarios begin with a day of classes and a day of cadre-led training lanes. Understandably, Cadet Command cadre, with seven, ten, or twenty years in the Army and from every basic branch, may not always be the best coaches and trainers for an infantry tactics–based innovation of technology on the battlefield. Integrated training between CST and infantry BOLC will enhance experiential learning for both communities.

It is important to note that there is fair and valid criticism that CST is simply initial entry training for future officers and that the addition of fires, ISR, subterranean terrain, and other flavor-of-the-day dynamics of combat only distracts from the fundamentals. Some argue that the traditional land domain battlefield is sufficient to evaluate the leadership of future officers, many of whom will not branch into combat arms. The characteristics of the offense—surprise, concentration, audacity, and tempo—can be exercised without overcomplicating the area of operations with subsurfaces and enemy or friendly air assets. The fact of the matter is that no functional higher headquarters exist for these training platoons and the burden on cadre to observe, control, and assess cadets is already challenging enough without the inclusion of complex enablers. These concerns must be addressed.

And yet, if we ignore the opportunity to expose future leaders to these dynamics, we do both them and the Army a disservice. Moreover, CST is more akin to advanced individual training because the cadet initial entry training in this analogy is the leadership lab curriculum and situational training exercises conducted at each ROTC program. The college campus is home station and cadets conduct overnight exercises once a semester and at least once a year in the spring, before arrival at CST, a combined mission rehearsal exercise with adjacent programs to provide cadets a mini-CST experience. CST is the largest, most robust single Army training activity executed in the continental United States and offers cadets an Army experience that is unmatched on the 274 disparate college campuses where they spend the school year. If CST can’t incorporate aspects of today’s operating environment, then there is nowhere in Cadet Command where it would ever be possible. Branch courses like BOLC serve their function to examine exactly how specific branches will adapt to modern warfare, but there is no other opportunity where junior leaders who will go on to represent every basic branch train together at the same scale as CST. It is not until officers make field-grade rank that we conduct professional military education in a combined arms way. CST is uniquely positioned to expand interdisciplinary understanding and set junior officers on a multidomain leadership path.

The world is watching as small units in Ukraine and Gaza employ the latest technology on the ground, in the air, and in cyberspace. I can imagine a time in the not-too-distant future when the Army’s next generation of officers are training the way we will need them to fight on tomorrow’s battlefield. It will take a lot of hard work, creativity, and commitment by smart leaders at all levels of cadet command, but the program the cadre in Task Force Tactics pioneered at CST 24 provides a timely breach that has marked a clear path to the high ground.

Lieutenant Colonel Adam Scher is the professor of military science at Seton Hall University. During CST 24 he served as the Task Force Tactics training and standards officer. His previous infantry assignments include deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan with the 101st Airborne Division, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, and 82nd Airborne Division.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: US Army Cadet Command (Army ROTC)