This chapter presents the results of the survey that was conducted in February 2010 at the Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Additionally, a summary of the open-ended interviews that were conducted in January 2010 at the Command and General Staff College will be presented in this chapter. The primary purpose of the open- ended interviews is to corroborate the survey findings. The processes used in conducting both the survey and the open-ended interviews were described in Chapter 4. These two processes were employed in order to gain the perspectives of field grade officers‘ views on Army
Transformation. The views of the Army chiefs of staff were obtained via the case study
conducted in Chapter 5 of this dissertation. The survey, the views of the chiefs of staff relative to specific areas of the survey and the open-ended interviews are used to triangulate information that is necessary to test the five hypotheses discussed in Chapter 4 and answer the research question. The research question is:
Do U.S. Army lieutenant colonels and majors understand Army transformation in the same way as the three Army chiefs of staff who have served since 1999?
The views field grade officers hold regarding Army transformation is important to understand, especially since many of those officers will be the senior Army leaders of the future. Field grade officers throughout the military are competitively selected to attend Military
Education Level 4 (MEL 4) training; the Command and General Staff College at Fort
Leavenworth is but one institution within the military that fulfills that requirement. Although there is no guarantee that an officer who attends MEL 4 training will attain the rank of general officer, those who do not attend will in all probability not achieve that rank during their career.
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Therefore, those who do become general officers in the future will most likely be in charge of implementing programs and decisions that are being made by current senior leaders. Gaining the perspectives of current field grade officers, some of whom may be flag officers in a few short years, may be helpful in describing any gap that may exist in how transformation is currently defined. Both the survey and the open-ended interviews allow for some basic demographic information to be collected on the officers who participated in one of these two data collection processes.
A Description of the Survey Participants
There were 1,051 students who attended CGSC during the survey period. Of that number, 837 were active Army, Army Reserve or Army National Guard. The survey was issued to the 837 officers that were directly affiliated with the Army in one of these three ways. Although the survey was issued to these specific students, there were 15 participants who identified
themselves as other than active duty Army, Army Reserves or Army National Guard, as shown in Table 6.120. Additionally there were four officers who identified themselves as ―other,‖ without specifying other military affiliations.
The total number of individuals who responded to the survey was 216, which provides a response rate of 25.8%. If the 19 officers who identified themselves as ―other than Army‖ were removed from the total the response rate would then fall to 24%. As discussed in Chapter 4,
20
In addition to the Active Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard, the other U.S. military services as well as DoD civilians and U.S. allies from around the world also attend the U.S. Army CGSC.
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Methodology, while this response rate may appear to be low it does represent an average rate for survey participation at CGSC21.
The number of participants that responded to the demographical information was
inconsistent in that as few as 169 responded to the prior enlisted service question and as many as 197 responded to education level, the Army component affiliated with, and the source of
commission. The 197 respondents to these three demographic areas represent the total number of eligible respondents. Most officers who responded were at least 35 years of age, all officers had at least 10 years of military service with over half having more than 13 years in the military.
Army officers must have received a college degree before being commissioned or in some exceptional cases within a very short period of time after being commissioned. A little less than half of the participants had at least obtained a bachelor‘s degree, with over half having received a master‘s degree or higher. Five participants had received a doctorate and two had received a law degree. A third category included a participant that reported as a master degree candidate.22. The active Army component represented most of the participants, followed by the Army Reserves and the Army National Guard. Most officers, over 96%, were majors followed by 2% who identified themselves as lieutenant colonels or other. The ―other‖ category may have included the two Army warrant officers and an Army captain. A majority of participants
indicated that they had received their commissions through the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), while the remaining officers were commissioned either through the U.S. Military Academy, presumably at West Point and not at one of the sister service academies, through
21
Dr. David Bitters, statistician at CGSC, indicated that a survey response rate of between 20- 25% is about average for the time of year in which this survey was conducted.
22
Female officers may be underrepresented in the survey. Only 7.6% of respondents identified themselves as much. A response has not been received from the Quality Assurance Office at CGSC to an e-mail request for demographic information pertaining to this population. It is conceivable that female officers may represent a significantly lower percentage of the population at CGSC.
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Officer Candidate School (OCS), by a direct commission, or through a state sponsored military OCS program.
The demographic information that was collected from these participants indicated that the average field grade officer is a major (0-4), over the age of 35, is well educated with many having a master‘s degree, a doctorate or a law degree, that has been in the military for well over 10 years and appears to be on track for a career in the Army. Most officers identified themselves as being active duty (as opposed to being reservist or national guardsmen), being commissioned through ROTC, and had indicated that they had at least some prior enlisted experience.
Since most officers who attend CGSC are majors, it was expected that lieutenant colonels would be represented at a lower percentage. In most cases, graduating from a MEL 4 military institution such as CGSC is a prerequisite to attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. However, some officers may attain that rank while a student at this year-long course. To have gained a higher representation of lieutenant colonels, it would have been necessary to have conducted a survey at the U.S. Army War College. There is no evidence that would suggest that by
conducting an additional survey at the Army War College simply to capture a greater population of lieutenant colonels, that the survey results would have been any different. However, officers who attend the U.S. Army War College are more likely to attain the rank of general officer. Not all officers who attend CGSC will attend the War College.
The Quality Assurance Office (QAO) at CGSC advised against asking for demographic data relating to ethnicity. It is the opinion of some that requesting such information may be offensive. Additionally, requesting officers to provide their branch affiliation (infantry, armor, artillery, etc.) may not have served a very useful purpose. Unlike the linear battlefields of the Twentieth Century where officers and soldiers were stationed based on their branch (infantry and