Sgt. Maj. Kenneth Agueda during an educational event in 2015.

Sgt. Maj. Kenneth Agueda during an educational event in 2015. DOD

Army Generals Are Not Prepared for the Future

Service leaders love to tout innovation, but can they make the changes necessary to succeed?

The Army continues to build general officers who are not adequately prepared to succeed as technology advances. The Army has always done a terrible job at developing and deploying new technology, and though there may be many reasons for the Army's endless failures in innovation, the final responsibility lies with the generals. While it is popular to compare military generals with corporate Chief Executive Officers, these analogies lack empirical analysis. Compared to the top CEOs, Army generals are sorely undereducated in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM.

Innovation Leadership and STEM

High performing CEOs increasingly have STEM degrees. In 2018, Harvard Business Review noted that more of the top 100 CEOs have engineering degrees than MBAs. According to Boston Consulting Group's 2020 list, of the top 20 most innovative companies roughly 65 percent have STEM undergraduate degrees, and 30 percent have STEM graduate degrees. There are many reasons companies may seek STEM-educated CEOs, including better data-driven decision-making skills, better understanding of complex systems, and a generally different approach to problem solving, but the correlation with STEM and private-sector innovation is strong.

Army generals, in contrast, are not strong in STEM. According to biographies released by the Army's General Officer Management Office and based on the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics definition of STEM, of the current active-duty Army generals, 32 percent have undergraduate STEM degrees, and only 11 percent have STEM graduate degrees. Additionally, most of these STEM-educated generals are in the engineer branch. The resulting total for non-engineer generals with STEM graduate degrees is just 6 percent.

History Majors and the Future Army

In government, nothing says prioritization quite like rolling out a new organization. Army Futures Command, or AFC, officially stood up in 2018 in tech-savvy Austin, Texas, with the mission to develop operational concepts, future force designs, and material solutions, or, as former Defense Secretary Mark Esper put it: “pioneering the development of emerging technologies.” This organization is responsible for technology innovation for the Army, so one might expect its leaders to be well educated in STEM. The reality is far different.

The general officers charged with leading the Army into the technological future lack STEM education. According to GOMO, of the 15 generals associated with AFC, only five have STEM undergraduate degrees, and none of them have STEM graduate degrees. As with the current cohort of Army generals as a whole, the most prevalent undergraduate degree at AFC is history. While knowledge of history is important, it is unclear the extent to which, for example, intricate understanding of 13th century counterweight-trebuchet contributes to the effective development and deployment of advanced, long-range precision fires.

It is not just AFC generals that lack STEM expertise. Other technical fields, such as missile defense, test and evaluation, intelligence, aviation, and nuclear are led by non-STEM generals—only 7 percent of these generals have STEM graduate degrees. Only 10 percent of generals in cyber, arguably the Army’s most technical field, hold STEM graduate degrees.      

General officers do not make decisions in a vacuum. While the old leadership adage about not being the smartest person in the room still holds, generals cannot rely solely on the recommendations of their staff when it comes to technology decisions. For example, there is a limit to explaining quantum key distribution like “you're speaking to a 5-year-old.” And if “quantum key distribution” sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, that is the point. If technological decisions are so complex that generals must rely on subordinates’ understanding of STEM principles, do those generals not abdicate a major component of leadership? And what about split decisions, when the multitude of PhD-type experts fail to agree on an issue? Generals cannot completely rely on their subordinates for advice, nor, as is common, on the advice of retired generals now working for defense contractors—a most ridiculous form of circular logic.

There is a growing opinion in defense circles that we are losing our technology edge against China, which is making STEM a priority in its officer corps. In the People's Liberation Army (PLA), officers are “required to fight the high-tech wars of the future and must possess scientific and technical knowledge.” According to one report, “A number of officers with engineering degrees or doctoral degrees in computer science now serve as vice commanders or chiefs-of-staff in the group armies.” In its 2020 China security report to Congress, the DOD acknowledged the PLA’s quest for a STEM-heavy education system that “seeks to blend and cultivate military and civilian S&T [Science and Technology] expertise through education programs, personnel exchanges, and knowledge sharing.” China looks to not only surpass us in military technology, but also in officers capable of deploying those technologies.

The venerable innovator and CEO Jack Welch, who held a B.S., M.S., and a Ph.D in chemical engineering, famously said, “change before you have to.” The Army had to change 20 years ago. Now, the world's rapid rate of technological change has only increased the urgency. According to a recent RAND study, “The Army has not greatly valued additional education in the promotion process.” The Army needs to end education pseudo-requirements like having any masters degree—most often from a war college—and mandate more STEM education, choosing future generals based on intellect and potential for innovation. This may mean reserving a part of the meticulously cultivated career timeline for STEM schooling.

The Army can easily accommodate STEM education by deemphasizing aide de camp roles as well as assignments as an executive aide to a senior leader. Of the current active-duty general class, 56 percent held at least one of these jobs—29 percent held at least one aide de camp job, 41 percent held at least one exec job—with many having multiple aide and exec jobs in their career.

The world is entering a period of rapid technological change, and our enemies are aggressively pursuing technological advantages. The Army will continue to fail in technology unless it changes its promotion and education practices. To misquote Einstein, we cannot solve our problems with the same type of general officers we used to create them. The Army loves to tout innovation, but can it make the changes necessary to succeed?

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.