Strengthening the Engineer Warrior Ethos: Engineer Officer Basic Course and Sapper Leader Course Integration.

摘要

Transformation has been the buzzword for the Army since the turn of the millennium. The 21st century Army has adopted a specific mentality for its leadership so the Army can become a faster, more lethal, and more adaptive fighting force. That mentality is known as Warrior Ethos, a mind-set for every soldier to be first and foremost an infantry soldier with fighting skills to match a tremendous fighting spirit. The new Basic Officer Leader Course, set to begin in the next few years, is an Armywide initiative to instill the Warrior Ethos from the beginning of an officer s career. But with the technical and diverse role of today s engineers, the Engineer Regiment is going one step further to merge Warrior Ethos with the modern, high-operational-tempo combat engineer. The U.S. Army Engineer School has started to send to the Sapper Leader Course (SLC) all lieutenants headed to combat engineer units after the basic course. Fueling this initiative is the need for officers who are as combat-ready as possible before arriving at their first unit. There is no better vehicle for this transformation than the SLC. The SLC mission is to train engineers in the leadership skills, combat engineer and infantry battle drills, and specialized engineer and infantry techniques required for a sapper unit to perform as a member of a combined arms team.