What is the 'teaching experience' in military education today?

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What is the 'teaching experience' in military education today?

There are three basic viewpoints known to be in the attitude to the past: nihilistic, apologetic and dialectic. O.K. Meshkov virtually expressed the essence of the first viewpoint in his article "The Armed Service Academy: the problem of Training of Military Cadres": "At the present time, the system of training of officer cadres is continuing to orient itself toward the requirements of the 1970s-1980s of the previous century considering that the majority of instructors in this system are representatives of Soviet scientific military school. Therefore, we do not teach the cadres what needs to be taught (inasmuch as the notion of "what needs to be taught" has not been defined specifically), but we teach what we know relying on the experience of wars and on the continuity of scientific and educational schools. In these conditions, no reforms can be successful either in respect of the personnel component proper or with regard to the entire system of training of cadres for

maintaining the country's military security. Till it is borne in upon, who should be trained, taking into consideration the requirements of tomorrow, the military academies will continue preparing those who were needed yesterday." (1)

As is obvious, the author perceives the major drawback of the training of today's military cadres in the fact that modern instructors rely "on the experience of wars and on the continuity of scientific and educational schools," that similar practice of training future defenders of the homeland of tomorrow leads to the training "of those who were needed yesterday." (2)

The author shares the viewpoint of some Western military theoreticians. For instance, G. Douhet asserted that "the past yields nothing for the future, and the latter must be created anew." (3) T. Metaxis and S. Goldberg echoed him by d...

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