The document discusses the evolution and challenges of defense education, emphasizing the need for a broader approach that integrates modern technology and analytical skills for military personnel. It highlights historical perspectives on military education, the tension between traditional training and academic learning, and the importance of fostering critical thinking amidst a hierarchical structure. The future of defense education may benefit from innovative technological delivery methods, such as MOOCs and blended learning.

1. Defence Education:
Past, Present and
Future
22 November 2012
Dr. Venkat V S S Sastry
Head of Applied Mathematics and Scientific
Computing,
Cranfield University at the Defence Academy of
the UK, Shrivenham

2. What is Defence
Education?
• Education for the people concerned with defence
sector
• People from three services, army, navy and air
force, MOD Civil Servants
• Defence industry
• Used interchangeably with Military Education

3. Earlier approaches to
military education
• Clausewitzian approach to understanding the nature
of war implied the need for a broader approach to
military education than the Jominian model that could
be inculcated through drill and repetition of principles

4. Drivers …
• One of the drivers for defence education stems from
the increasing use of technology in modern warfare.
• Modern soldier is expected to be comfortable with the
rapid adoption to enhance their analytical skills
• Creating the 7-Dimensional soldier – challenges for
defence education (Navneet Bhusan)

5. … of defence
education
• Need for breadth of knowledge at conceptual level in
a variety of disciplines
• Depth of knowledge in a chosen specialization
• Service ethos and “training mentality/approach” is
often at odds with general educational goals where
you are encouraged to challenge the “accepted
wisdom” (See Peter Foot’s remark)
• Lack of clear career progression for highly educated
qualified service personnel

6. Daish writing about the
story of the Advanced
Class ~c 1920
• Soon after its inception this course began to suffer
from a dearth of entrants and, in fact, only one
candidate offered himself for the 5th Class. …
Bashforth recounts that the instruction was provided
at a total expense to government of about £1200 per
annum and that several officers of the Royal Artillery
were “distressed at seeing this large sum of money
swallowed up by the Instructional staff”

7. Some views of military
historians
Greg Kennedy and Keith Neilson, 2002
• “Burdened with the responsibility to be operationally
capable, and often short of money, men and
equipment, the professional military has always seen
a purely academic education as luxury”
• … for the purpose of education some elements of
training are imposed into the curriculum
• … even multi-tiered, multiyear programs such as
those of Russian, German, French and US military
education systems, at all times demand that
education be paid with training

8. Some views of military
historians
John B Hattendorf (1941 -)
• Conundrum of Military Education
• takes issue with the use of the words military
and education
• “In the context of military education, it is useful to
remember that these changes … armies and navies
to have some appreciation of what was going on at
the forefront of scientific thought”

9. Hattendorf (1941 - )
• … the use of gunpowder and cannon gave rise to the
study of ballistics, and the need to understand
mathematics and physics
• Gunners in the field and at sea needed a range of
scientific education as well as technological training
to understand and to apply these concepts

10. Some of the tensions
(Hattendorf, 2002)
• Dual need for military discipline and creative thinking
• Approach of science and technology v approach of
liberal arts
• Patriotic nationalism v cross cultural understanding

11. Hattendorf
• Hattendorf identifies two drivers for wider and deeper
education of officers
• Ever-burgeoning demands of technical and
scientific spheres
• Continuing development of liberal thought (in the
Western world)

12. Andrew Lambert
• “The greatest problem for military education is the
limited account of practical experience that is
available to officers”
• “most armed force have limited contact with their core
activity … and hence require better education than
their counter parts in civilian sector”

13. Andrew Lambert
• “Education does not consist in the acquisition of
proficiency in tasks that can be tested objectively –
that is training – an essential building block of military
performance – but not one that develops the skills
required for leadership, planning and decision
making.
These attributes flow from the mastery of the
underlying principles upon which professional
knowledge is based”

14. Holley
• “Education is quite different. It aims to help one learn
how to develop perspective, values, and the ability to
cope with change, novelty and uncertainty. Those
who seek to educate can not claim to have the
“answers”. They can challenge and stimulate thought,
but if they attempt to give answers they indoctrinate
but do not educate.”

15. Military education
conundrum -
Andrew Lambert
“ … how to stimulate thought and debate within a
strictly hierarchical profession, one that demands
unquestioning loyalty and obedience in peace and war”

16. Peter Foot
“Quality of thought among students is admired, but
mostly when it conforms to the “staff solution” – a set of
answers drafted by, and for, the military directing staff”

17. John Knox Laughton
(1866)
In teaching young gunnery officers the scientific and
mathematical basis of gunnery and navigation
“…required a level of understanding beyond mere rote
learning”

18. Observation
• Just as practical aspects of gunpowder, artillery,
fortification, cartography, and navigation raised the
need for broader education in mathematics, similar
parallels can be drawn with applications of internet
technologies
• Need for broader education in applications of
mathematics - with social network analysis,
complexity, data mining, behaviour prediction,
asymmetric warfare, cyber warfare etc.

19. Future prospects
Some of the challenges of
educational delivery for the
modern defence professional
can be addressed effectively by
innovative use of technology
• MOOC; Blended learning;
• TEL; Mobile learning

20. MoLE Project Launch
Video

21. Geometry of War, 1500
- 1750
http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/geometry/content.htm