Army Profession

While there are many different skills and careers, only a select few are called professions. Merriam Webster defines a profession as “a type of job that requires special education, training, or skill.” The Army is a profession because of three reasons: adherence to published doctrine, continuing education of its members, and ethics based self-government. The Army publishes, reviews, and revises its own doctrine, which establishes it as a professional organization. There are establishes schools at all echelons for all aspects of its operations that help shape its members and leaders. The Army has strong self-governance based around a strong ethical climate and reinforced with the Uniform Code of Military Governance (UCMJ). These three

After 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army conducted a comprehensive review of its core competencies that led to the total overhaul of its doctrine program. As part of the Doctrine 2015 Initiative, the Army published 15 new, comprehensive revisions of its doctrine entitled the Army Doctrine Publications. Writing on the development of the new initiative, LTG David Perkins and CPT Nathan Finney argue that this comprehensive overhaul sets “a foundation for training, education and equipment that will affect our Army for decades to come.” This new initiative seeks to codify the lessons learned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while still emphasizing the reliance on core competencies supporting the Army’s overall mission to fight and win the combined arms fight. With this new doctrine in hand, the Army has a foundation to prove itself as a profession and through its military education center where young professionals use doctrine based education to

Leaders receive professional education at all levels of their military careers. This begins with initial entry training such as West Point or Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs through Intermediate Level Education (ILE) and ultimately the US Army War College for strategic leaders. The role of the entry level PME is described by Giuseppe Caforio as having “the specific aim of choosing individuals best suited to the next process – professional socialization” but differs from other professions in that those who do enter the system “become part of the institution itself.” The PME system uses this rationale as each level becomes progressively more selective while more thorough understanding and internalization of the Army’s doctrine occurs in both Leaders and coursework. The PME system is designed to develop leaders who take the doctrinal foundation of the profession and apply it critically to real world problems. Dr. Colin Gray discusses in his article on the need for strategic leadership that “professionals cannot responsibly simply take orders to fight from the realm of policy.” By taking the doctrine learned in the PME schools and applying it to real world issues, the Army professionalizes itself over time. Part of this application of learned professionalism to real