Junior Commanders and Future War with Dave Maxwell

Grounded Curiosity

I chatted with Dave Maxwell at Georgetown University to hear his thoughts on what the future holds for junior commanders. The podcast starts with the discussion of the future operating environment within the framework of nuclear, traditional and irregular warfare, and ends with a great story about initiative and strategic perspective by a junior leader in the Philippines. See: http://groundedcuriosity.com/david-s-maxwell/ Here are some of Dave Maxwell’s insights as a quick introduction: • “one of the most important things for us as officers is to continue to study and be self-learners, life long learners and have a passion for knowledge of our profession” • “we’ve got to be able to understand strategy and policy and be able to translate that strategy and policy and be able to translate that strategy and policy into campaign plans and then conduct tactical operations that support the strategy” • “in addition to our war fighting skills, which must be maintained for deterrence (and) defence, we also have to understand unconventional warfare” • “our younger officers and soldiers … are much more capable of operating in very complex, ambiguous environment” • “I see our young officers thinking and acting at levels far beyond what I was doing during the Cold War … we need to build on that … we have a much higher quality of officer and force, we must protect that, we must nurture that and we can’t put them back in the box “ • “one of the most important things [junior commanders] should be doing is writing about their experiences, good and bad, and they should be just like Clausewitz, they should be wrestling with what they think the future is about … and our leaders need encourage our junior commanders to write as that’s what’s will contribute to the development of the future force”