“I wonder whether we don’t need a revolution in training in the British Army?” asks the new chief of U.K. Army training, posing this question after a keynote address at ITEC, in which he squarely damned the way his army trains and educates its officers and troops.

Lt. Gen. Paul Newton, commander of the British Army Force Development and Training Command, in the post barely two months, seems just the sort of warrior-scholar who could shake things up and spark a revolution. Any general who says publicly that his army’s approach to training has changed little since the days of Napoleon and who describes his son’s recent officer training at the U.K.’s top war college, Sandhurst, as “a particularly unimaginative experience,” is refreshingly free of politically correct bullet points (though he may yet take a bullet for making his point.)

A higher regard for doctrine was one of the changes that Newton highlighted as necessary. Doctrine, he said, must stop being a “dirty word” and be seen instead for what it is, a body for the science of learning.

In the U.S. Army, of course, doctrine is a central tenet, with the very word “doctrine” embodied in the name of its training command.

So it was curious to me that two armies, longtime allies who continue to fight side by side to this day, should hold such contrary views of doctrine. Other senior British officers at ITEC confirmed that doctrine is indeed sneered at in the U.K. military, but not necessarily because it is seen as having little value. A recently retired Royal Air Force senior officer explained that British officers are as keen and avid readers and scholars as their American counterparts. The difference is these British warriors are uncomfortable admitting to their scholarly endeavors.

There’s a cultural barrier, then, that Newton will have to overcome. He will be right to persevere, however. In the U.S. military, warrior-scholars such as Marine Gen. James Mattis and Army Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster are held in high regard as much for their agile, out-of-the-box thinking as for their traditional battlefield skills. They set an education standard to which junior officers can and do aspire and which is foundational for them becoming quick-thinking, adaptive leaders.

Learning should not be a shameful secret. U.S. officers fiercely debate new doctrine and they can only do so if they have studied history, are widely read on contemporary issues and have displayed and honed their thinking and debating skills in open forums such as those provided at the American military academies.

Just a week after ITEC, McMaster gave a presentation on the art of command in counterinsurgency operations at one of Washington, D.C.’s think tanks. He, like Newton, talked about how agile-minded people are a military’s best weapon. “At West Point, the education is very collaborative, very broad, and the kids there are challenged so they grow and learn to understand what they are taking on as officers. It’s the same at Annapolis and the Air Force Academy,” he said.

If Newton succeeds in encouraging a new breed of British warrior-scholars to openly demonstrate their learning and embrace doctrine, he will have done his army a great service.

— Karen Walker, executive editor