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Naval Warfare Studies Institute
Newsletter - September 29, 2022 |
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Supporting Decision Advantage for the Future Fleet in and beyond the Classroom
Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Zachary Knueven maneuvers through a window during Integrated Training Exercise (ITX) 2-21 on Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif. Photo: US Navy.
The NWSI critical thinking and judgment team recently supported Season 3 of NPS’ “Critical Thinking for Strategic Leadership” course, which helps our warrior scholars develop the cognitive and dispositional skills necessary for leading change in an uncertain and unpredictable future. Students engaged in Socratic conversations about leadership informed by critical thinkers and strategic leaders from a range of organizations, exploring the interplay between national security and the private sector.
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Final projects applied what they discussed in class to a national security problem, examining topics such as US-PRC competition 2045, Arctic Security and Climate Change, Futurizing Navy Medicine, and others.
Why it matters: As NPS transforms to move beyond industrial age approaches to what and how graduate students learn about defense, courses like these develop student appreciation for the cognitive and intellectual underpinnings of interdisciplinary ‘range.’
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Since we do not know what security challenges we will confront in the future, being able to think through ambiguous problems in holistic ways can hopefully avoid the ‘hammers looking for nails’ attitude that might result from military teaching only from narrow disciplinary silos.
- The course is firmly rooted in Cognitive Age approaches to learning that have been advocated by several leaders, including the Commandant of the Marine Corps in his Planning Guidance and President Ann Rondeau in her Proceedings article, “Future Military Leaders Need Interdisciplinary Educations.”
What’s next: This course is building the thinking foundations that Navy and Marine Corps leaders need to enable decision advantage as well as the knowledge, abilities, and attitudes needed to integrate the art and the science of warfare.
How it works: Students read work by (and about) the 29th Commandant of the Marine Corps General Al Gray, foreign policy strategist Andrew Marshall, Air Force Colonel John Boyd, Marine General Anthony Zinni, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Navy Captain Wayne Hughes, Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert Simon, and leadership and strategy scholars such as Prof Henry Mintzberg.
- Students also examined case studies about leading strategic change in defense as well as in business and educational institutions, in addition to conceptual and practical readings.
This was the most interdisciplinary group of students yet to enroll in the course.
- Students came from more than 10 different programs and multiple departments, pursuing graduate degrees in curricula including Strategic Leadership, Applied Design for Innovation, Business Administration, and Information Strategy and Political Warfare. In keeping with President Rondeau’s emphasis on student-centered learning, these NPS curricula have elective slots/whitespace, as opposed to Industrial Age preloaded matrixes, or “selectives.” This is essential to creating interdisciplinary learning spaces.
- Some distance learning (DL) students were also working full time jobs, including a chief to the US Naval Mission to Colombia in Bogotá and a combat trauma surgeon, bringing current examples from their experiences to course conversations.
- Adding to that, students from different countries including Brazil, Singapore, Finland, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sweden, and the Netherlands brought unique international insights and perspectives to the discussions on how culture influences strategy, as well as how they view the current and future strategic competition.
That’s not all. General Zinni joined for a few additional learning opportunities as part of the course to talk with students in real time about strategic thinking and leadership.
- Zinni participated in a discussion about the importance of learning from failures after students had examined the importance of failures for both individual and organizational level adaptation. Zinni extended the discussion to also talk about national level failures and how to learn from them.
- In his second visit, he talked about strategic leadership and the importance of people in innovation and leading change, extending class discussions about General Gray’s leadership and the importance of cultivating particular thinking and leadership skills in our organizations.
What students are saying:
- "This elective allowed me to explore new concepts and ideas outside of my “military box” by reading business administration literature, case studies, and, most importantly, having in-depth discussions with peers from different services and countries, and with different experiences."
- Joost Tuinman, Netherlands ARMY Special Operating Forces, Defense Analysis student
- “This course provided a diversity of experiences, concepts, perspectives, and ideas in a safe environment that allowed opportunity to challenge our own assumptions on rightness as well as developing collaborative solutions for tomorrow’s challenges. Regarding Strategic Leadership, whether you’re an aviator, logistician or analyst, the framework and value of critical thinking demonstrated how deliberate and thoughtful dialogue provides decision advantage leading to world-class performance, narrowing the gap from high and low quality solutions.”
- Paul Nickell, Navy CDR, Department of Defense Management, DL student
- “The Marine Corps is going through a change process, which is geared towards preparing the institution for warfare in complex and uncertain environments. … The need to develop Marines intellectually is essential for promoting sound and quick decision-making. This course gave me a new perspective on the importance of establishing learning environments that nurture critical thinking and strategic thought. The in-depth study of figures such as General Gray, General Zinni, Andrew Marshall, Colonel John Boyd, and General Van Riper broadened my knowledge and re-shaped my perspective on the importance of critical thinking and maneuver warfare. As the Director of the Staff Noncommissioned Officer Academy Camp Lejeune, I am in a unique position to ensure the concepts in the class are incorporated into my faculty advisor's professional military education program.”
- SgtMaj Dan Heider, Department of Defense Management, DL student
Want to know more?
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NPS and NWSI in the News
Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Challenges NPS Students to Forge the Future of Warfare
MC2 James Norket, Naval Postgraduate School
At last week’s commencement address, Bob Work gave a shout-out to CAPT Wayne Hughes, whose legacy inspired the creation of NWSI and guides its mission, and he predicted that NPS will create more visionary innovators like him to solve the most pressing military challenges of the near future.
- Work: "The Naval Postgraduate School wrote the book on guided munitions warfare. Wayne Hughes, God rest his soul, he wrote the book [Fleet Tactics]. Somebody at NPS is going to write the book on algorithmic warfare [the biggest predicted area of strategic competition with China]. Why? Because here in one place you have strategic analysis, wargaming, simulations, high tech... you have warriors who understand operational problems working with world-class technological talent to solve those problems. You've got connections now with Silicon Valley. You do testing, prototyping. This is the place where it all comes together."
- Work was also inducted into the NPS Hall of Fame during his campus visit. He graduated from NPS in 1990 with a Master of Science degree in Space Systems Operations.
Read more.
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NPS, Partners Develop Executive Course on AI/ML Foundations for Senior Leaders
Matthew Schechl, Naval Postgraduate School
The last issue of the NWSI newsletter shared an update on NPS’ hosting of the Naval Artificial Intelligence Task Forces and mentioned this newly developed course on AI for senior leaders. This article explains the course in more detail.
The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), in partnership with Stanford University and the Defense Innovation Unit in Silicon Valley, developed an intensive three-day course specifically for senior defense leaders on the emerging role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) in the military. Developed under the direction of the DOD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), the inaugural executive AI course, held June 7-9, provided approximately two dozen General and Flag Officers, Senior Executive Service (SES) civilians and other senior executives with a foundational knowledge of AI/ML systems, including technical cornerstones, practical implications, ethical guidelines and DOD-specific problems and solutions. With the success and positive feedback of the initial event, additional courses are planned for November 2022 and February 2023. A Lead AI Course specifically created for the Naval context and use cases is planned for December 2022. Read more.
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NPS Foundation delivers collaborative national security research tool to the Naval Postgraduate School
NPS Foundation
The Naval Postgraduate School Foundation held a ceremony Sept. 6 symbolizing the transfer of Athena, a collaborative research tool, to the Naval Postgraduate School. Athena empowers researchers, sponsors, and leaders across the Naval Education Enterprise to access and query information currently stored in numerous separate databases by use of keywords, topics of interest, service priorities and other filters. The application is built on Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Teams to assure security, enhance scalability, and deliver content across all devices. Read more.
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Announcements
FY23 funding allocation results are now available for review in the Naval Research Program Topic Portal
The public list of “FY23 Navy & Marine Topic Review Board Results” is accessible in PDF format via the NRP Topic Portal external landing page. More detailed information may be viewed via the NRP Topic Portal Topic. Search now.
The Naval Research Program (NRP) at NPS addresses Fleet, Force, and OPNAV-nominated research topics. This program executes studies and analysis by NPS faculty and students aligned to the CNO’s NAVPLAN and S&T priorities.
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For FY23, 267 topics were generated, and 198 proposals were submitted against those topics. 95 projects were selected. The operationally relevant research solves problems ranging from AI applications to hybrid force CONOPS, force optimization and readiness issues, while building faculty expertise and student applications upon return to the Fleet/Force.
FY24 topics can be submitted now through April 2023.
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Upcoming Events
Joint Interagency Field Experimentation JIFX 23-1
7–10 November 2022
Come experiment with us!
Focus Area: Expeditionary Energy and Power Solutions
Submission deadline for experiments with aerial vehicles: 27 September 2022. Submission deadline for all other experiments: 04 October 2022
2023 Design Challenge: Local Challenges, Global Solutions
The Naval Postgraduate School is excited to announce the Rapid Innovation Design Challenge for 2023. Schools and students in grades 6-12 are invited to envision, develop, and design innovative solutions to local climate challenges. Participants will create no-code custom applications for their challenge solutions using ServiceNow’s platform. Each registered team will be paired with student/faculty mentors from the Naval Postgraduate School. Teams will compete against each other for a chance to win cash prizes sponsored by the Naval Postgraduate School Foundation.
Mentor Registration open September 20- November 1, 2022
Challenge submissions due March 17, 2023
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