KU is helping the military plan for "Generation After Next." Its Information and Telecommunication Technology Center helps develop technology to train and equip warriors not yet born.
The people who train America's military leaders know they have a daunting task in the next 25 years.
A new generation of young men and women are coming of age who do not think, learn or act like any of the generations that came before them.
Training this next generation of soldiers is difficult enough for military veterans who grew up before the age of digital technology, personal computers and video games. But what about the generation that will follow them -- a group now being labeled the "generation after next?"
Officials at the Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth have already begun thinking about that. When that generation starts coming of age around the year 2025, the Army's officer training school will have to be ready for them, armed with new technology and new teaching methods aimed at reaching the post-Nintendo generation.
For that, they have started a program called the University After Next, and they are getting help from a nationally recognized program at the University of Kansas.
"We have to be able to train the new leaders who will train the new Army," said Roy Carroll, chief of UAN's studies and analysis branch.
More than 70 officers and civilian military officials from UAN toured the Information and Telecommunication Technology Center on the west campus of KU Wednesday, the final day of a three-day conference in Lawrence.
Begun in 1997, the ITTC is a unique program at KU aimed at transforming theory and basic research into market-ready technology.
Funded largely by private corporations, state economic development grants and federal agencies, including the military, the ITTC works on a wide range of new technology systems, including radar and remote sensing, lightwave communications, computer networking, wireless communications and digital signal processing.
Tim Johnson, director of operations at the center, said that in addition to helping develop those technologies, staff at ITTC also helps move them into the marketplace by securing patents and developing licensing and royalty agreements for its clients.
According to Carroll, it's a way of doing business that fits into the military's vision of the future.
The next generation of soldiers, Carroll said, will be different from any other, and they will be serving in a military and political environment vastly different from the one that dominated the 20th century.
Throughout the Cold War, the world was divided between two superpowers, and America's foreign and military policy were built around maintaining a "balance of power" with the Soviet Union.
The role of the military was to be prepared for an all-out nuclear war, while continuing to fight limited conventional wars on surrogate battlefields in places like Vietnam and Korea.
Today, the military confronts what UAN officials call an "asymmetrical threat environment," in which America's interests can be challenged from a multitude of players, ranging from regional strongmen like Saddam Hussein in Iraq to any number of small terrorist groups who could get their hands on a few chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons.
As the geopolitical environment has changed, so too has the military. "Smart bombs" and laser-guided missiles were first used on a large scale in the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Since then, high-tech weapons have become so effective, the U.S. was able to achieve its military objective in Yugoslavia this year without ever sending an infantryman onto a battlefield.
Carroll said that children growing up in America today seem perfectly adept at dealing with that kind of technology. These are children, he said, who play video games over the Internet with opponents they've never seen nor met.
The military, he said, not only needs high-tech weapons and communications systems that can be put into the battlefield, it also needs trainers and leaders who will be ready to teach those soldiers how to use those systems.
By forming partnerships with centers like the ITTC, Carroll said, the military hopes not only to accomplish those goals, but also to do it in a way that is cost-effective for taxpayers.
-- Peter Hancock's phone-message number is 832-7144. His e-mail address is phancock@ljworld.com.
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