RAA Liaison Letter 2024 - 2025 Edition

RAA Liaison Letter – 2024 – 2025 Edition 127 • Enhanced career motivation. A strong sense of professional identity sets the military institution apart from the civilian workforce. This is particularly useful for retaining the motivation and focus of those members of the profession who have a parallel professional role/identity outside the military institution, e.g., engineers. The Panel 3 Task was as follows: For soldiers and leaders to refine their understanding of what it means to be professionals - expert members of the profession of arms - after nine years of war and to recommit a culture of service and the responsibilities and behaviours of the profession as articulated in the Army Ethic, in terms of specific questions. The specific questions that guided discussion across the three days are shown in Annex A at the end of this report. Discussion during the panel was facilitated by the prior distribution of a professional of arms White Paper include here before my report. The deliberations took place in the context of the impending launch of an Army Profession Campaign. This is aimed at highlighting the need for a recommitment to the professional ethic and what this means in terms of leader and soldier actions. It is intended to be more than a “what- we-are-all-about” PR campaign. Among other things the Army must address is the question of: After nine years of war, and in the face of several near-future challenges, what does “normal” look like? The near-future challenges that will be faced by the US Army include: • equipping and training to meet an expanded operational concept (Full Spectrum Operations, focused on the twin functions of combat operations and wide-area security) • coping organisationally and in morale terms with impending organisational downsizing • maintaining itself from a shrinking recruitable population • competing for quality recruits and serving professionals in the context of an intense war for talent • maintaining itself in meeting its goals in an environment of fiscal prudence, if not austerity • dealing with the greater demands on families that will be the consequence of all of the above • coping with the identity shift associated with a fundamental change in the warrior role (giving people the competency, attitudes and values to balance the twin activities of “kick arse” and “kiss arse”); and • dealing with the resultant greater demands on and challenges for leaders at all levels. The major challenges will affect many aspects of professionalism, including: • adjustment of professional identity, to take account of the role of the warrior/soldier in the context of the above changes to the operating concept • professional jurisdiction (i.e., what functions specifically belong to the Army, as opposed to being the province – partly or fully – of the other services or of civilian organisations) • professional governance (i.e., the process of self-regulation, certification, and internal management) • rank compression, which relates to the extent to the “strategic private” effect; and, above all • leadership, in respect of:  development of leaders at all levels who can take the initiative in using all forms of professional development to set and meet standards of excellence  adjustment of leadership responsibilities, in recognition of the beyond- expectations performance of junior officers in complex combat situations  the creation of a robust transformational leadership style of leading, to facilitate the inspirational effects of authentic leadership even in the face of the changes in the leadership personnel themselves; and  recognition of the importance of and strengthening of leadership culture. All this is consistent with the US Army’s “nine imperatives” of leadership development strategy, which alone demand a re-examination of professional concepts. These are at Annex B. Among the doctrinal innovations being considered by the US Army is that of integration with coalition partners that goes beyond simple compatibility, into the zone of leveraging their strengths. This would see the Australian Army working even more closely with the US military institution.