Perceptions of asymmetric warfare taken from the news media frequently focus on the devastation and loss of American lives in Iraq from improvised explosive devises. A much broader scope of the realities of asymmetric warfare was offered by retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. David Grange, president and chief executive officer of the McCormick Tribune Foundation...
The North Georgia College & State University annual leadership conference on May 8-9 drew academics and military leaders from across the country and from various backgrounds and disciplines to focus on “Creating Leaders for Asymmetric Warfare.”
Over the course of the two-day conference, the more than 60 invited attendees formulated initial recommendations in the selection, training and education requirements for junior military officers.
North Georgia’s conference was designed to create a network of higher education faculty and military officials involved in officer training and identify how to improve military leadership development for asymmetric or irregular warfare.
Perceptions of asymmetric warfare taken from the news media frequently focus on the devastation and loss of American lives in Iraq from improvised explosive devises. A much broader scope of the realities of asymmetric warfare was offered by retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. David Grange, president and chief executive officer of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which co-sponsored the conference.
“Irregular warfare is really a way of thinking throughout the spectrum of conflict, throughout all agencies in our government, throughout the business sector and in the international marketplace,” he said. “We need to use it more to defeat our adversaries in the marketplace, the commonplace and on the battlefield.”
Grange, a 30-year military veteran whose last assignment was commanding general of the U.S. Army First Infantry Division, said that there is good work being done in irregular warfare training but that it lacks of a unity of effort on the part of U.S. security agencies.
The changing nature of conventional warfare has prompted military leaders to assess how to better prepare future officers who are facing increasingly unconventional situations in a protracted fight in the global war on terror, according to conference officials. Institutions of higher education offering the Reserve Officer Training Corps, more commonly known as ROTC, produce a majority of the nation’s military officers.
The conference proceedings and recommendations will be published by the University Press of North Georgia this summer.
NGCSU, The Military College of Georgia, is a coeducational, comprehensive, residential university in the University System of Georgia. North Georgia is also home to a national award-winning Army ROTC program and is the only public university in the state to offer a Leadership Minor in a military or a service track.