Brilliant Force and the Expert Architecture That Supports It

This paper will demonstrate that a new military education and training architecture, supported by investments in key technology components, will produce a Brilliant Force capable of meeting the challenges of 2025.Several drivers will shape the 2025 environment and foster assumptions from which derive the required capabilities for education and training in 2025 (ET2025). Our engagement in non-traditional missions will increase. Military operations will be highly complex and joint as well as combined. The demand for highly trained people will intensify. The pace of technological progress will increase. Thus, we must produce "brilliant warriors." To do so, the military must provide continuous (career-long), on demand learning tailored to the individual, incorporating technologies that supercharge performance. This "agile" education and training system will be capable of rapidly changing in concert with the external environment.The functions and processes of ET2025 will closely resemble today's system in that air and space forces must still be concerned with the transfer of knowledge, skills, or wisdom from one source to another. What will be different are the methods and architecture used to accomplish that transfer. Although most of the examples in this paper deal with training, the architecture will support either training or education. Education and training will be available to anyone, anytime, anywhere via the National Knowledge Superhighway, Academic Centers of Excellence for curriculum development, and Expert Tutors (EXTOR), personal artificial intelligence agents.