Restoring the Scholar-Warrior

A Shared Mandate for Students, Instructors, and the Signal School

By Maj. Nicholas Christensen and Maj. William Sack
U.S. Army Signal School

July 1, 2026 | Army Communicator, Summer 2026 Edition

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Officers of Signal Basic Officer Leader Course, Class 003-26 approach the end of a 10-mile ruck ahead of a ceremonial regimental induction and pinning ceremony at Fort Gordon, Georgia, May 21, 2026. The ruck march is one of several milestones in the 16 weeks of intensive education and training encompassing the course. (Photo by Laura Levering, U.S. Army Signal School)
(Photo by Laura Levering, U.S. Army Signal School)

Professional military education (PME) within the Signal Corps has become an easy target for criticism. Most signal officers, if honest, have likely said some version of the following during their company grade years and many continue to say it as field grade officers: “I did not learn anything at Signal Basic Officer Leaders Course,” “Signal Captains Career Course was a waste of time,” or perhaps the most common refrain, “It could have been done much better and focused on what actually mattered.”

These comments are frequently voiced not only in private conversations among peers but openly in front of junior officers and senior leaders alike – and all were foolish to let them leave their lips before fully understanding the long-term impact. In retrospect, these statements reveal more about our misunderstanding of the purpose of institutional education than they do about the quality of the education itself. Perhaps “foolish” is a more academically appropriate term than “dumb,” but the underlying point remains the same: such comments reflect a widespread misunderstanding of the role PME is intended to serve within the Army profession. PME was never designed to create fully trained experts for every future assignment; rather, it exists to develop adaptable officers capable of critical thinking, doctrinal understanding, and professional growth. While the former remains fully true, failing to acknowledge the shortcomings of the officers attending PME, the instructors tasked with teaching it, and the institution designed to create and manage it would be equally foolish. Expectations for officer PME should be high, and there are multiple places where change must occur quickly to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving landscape.

demands of a rapidly evolving landscape. While this article focuses on signal captains PME, many of the recommendations are translated to other signal and non-signal officer courses. This article argues that changes to all three are essential to creating a signal captain PME experience that produces officers ready to adapt to the demands of commanders tasked with executing in a modern warfare world and who are strategically minded, ethically grounded leaders capable of critical thinking and creative problem-solving (TRADOC, 2017, iii).

What Must Change for the Student

Before even arriving at Fort Gordon, Georgia, for the Signal Captains Career Course (SCCC), officers repeatedly hear the same advice: “This is your chance to take a break.” In fairness, for many officers who attended during the mid-2010s, this mindset was shaped by nearly two decades of sustained conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with the operational and fiscal pressures imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011, “Sequestration.” By the time many officers arrived at SCCC, they genuinely needed a pause. The problem, however, is not the pause itself; it was its utilization. The intent of PME was never to provide an intellectual vacation characterized by passive learning and endless “doom scrolling,” which often leaves individuals mentally exhausted rather than renewed. Instead, PME is intended as a focused professional pause: the opportunity to step away temporarily from the knife fight of day-to-day operations and re-engage intellectually at a level many officers have not experienced since their undergraduate education.

Unlike operational assignments, PME does not require continuous deployments, late nights in the office, or constant crisis management. It demands deliberate intellectual effort. This period provides officers with an opportunity to reconnect with Army doctrine, operational theory, and professional reflection before assuming the increased responsibilities associated with company command, battalion staff leadership, and future operational planning roles. Importantly, the institution recognizes its inability to fully prepare officers for every assignment they may encounter over the next six or seven years of company-grade service. Attempting to do so would require an impractical amount of time away from operational units, ultimately proving counterproductive. Instead, Army doctrine emphasizes self-development as a core component of leader growth.

Amy Regulation 350-1 identifies leader development as occurring across three domains: institutional, operational, and self-development (U.S. Department of the Army [DA], 2017). PME provides only one component of that framework. The individual officer bears responsibility for identifying personal weaknesses and deliberately pursuing growth through self-study, professional reading, certifications, mentorship, coaching, and technical education. Too often, officers approach PME seeking only the information necessary to pass exams, complete requirements, and move on. When officers reduce education to memorizing PowerPoint slides and utilizing CTRL-F to locate answers in regulations, the educational experience inevitably feels hollow. Under those conditions, it is unsurprising that officers later ask, “What was the point of that course?” Therefore, the paradigm must shift from the outset. Students should arrive at SCCC expecting academic rigor that challenges them to move beyond doctrinal familiarity to the ability to do genuine analysis, synthesis, and application.

PME must require officers to employ the critical thinking skills developed during undergraduate education and initial entry training, then refined through operational experience. Rather than merely identifying doctrinal answers, students must learn to apply doctrine within ambiguous operational environments and generate solutions to complex problems. Only then will the “focused professional pause” of PME achieve its intended purpose, better preparing officers for the unpredictable demands of future service.

What Must Change for the Institution

While individual officers bear substantial responsibility for their own professional development, the institution itself is not without fault. As centers of excellence standardize processes and U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command (T2COM) modernization efforts continue across the Army, the current environment presents a significant opportunity to reform how PME is designed and delivered. The Army must become more agile in developing curriculum, more selective in instructor assignments and preparation, and more willing to challenge officers intellectually beyond simple knowledge recall (U.S. Army Combined Arms Center [CAC], 2015).

Modernizing the POI Development Process

First and foremost, the program of instruction (POI) development process – specifically the ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate) framework – requires modernization. The Army recognized this issue as early as 2015 when it established Army University, identifying a need to “revitalize the Army’s professional military education system” (Command and General Staff College Foundation [CGSCF], 2015), yet in 2026 we still find articles calling for transforming Army education (Duckett, 2026).

While many strides have been made, the underlying curriculum development process remained largely unchanged. The ADDIE framework continued to operate on a deliberate multi-year cycle appropriate for an era of relatively stable technology and predictable modernization timelines. During much of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), this slower pace remained acceptable because technological change occurred incrementally and programs of record remained stable for extended periods. That environment no longer exists. The pace of technological development, network modernization, and software integration now evolves far faster than the institutional training pipeline is designed to accommodate.

The Army Operating Concept and Multi-Domain Operations framework both emphasize adaptability, rapid technological integration, and decentralized decision-making in contested environments while acknowledging the current gap in training (TRADOC, 2018, F-3). A five-year curriculum development cycle is no longer merely inefficient; it represents the operational risk of Signaleers unable to deliver critical data that enables a commander’s ability to command and control the operation at the pace that the modern operational environment demands. As initiatives such as C2 Fix and C2 Now drive rapid capability changes across the Total Army, signal education must fundamentally shift from platform-specific instruction toward conceptual mastery.

Instruction can no longer center on specific systems such as the Command Post Node, Satellite Transportable Terminal, or legacy transport equipment. Instead, PME must focus on enduring concepts: networking, transport architecture, tactical communications integration, and systems interoperability. A signal officer does not necessarily need mastery of every individual system interface or modem configuration. Rather, officers must understand the principles underpinning communications architecture so they can rapidly adapt to whatever equipment set their unit possesses. The objective is not technical memorization, but operational adaptability.

Revitalizing the Instructor Corps

Second, the Army must restore prestige and rigor to instructor assignments within the Signal School: historically, instructor billets. Particularly, small group leader (SGL) positions were viewed as highly competitive and professionally rewarding assignments.

Instructors refined their doctrinal expertise while simultaneously gaining exposure to branch-wide modernization initiatives and institutional leadership at the enterprise level. At one time, prospective instructors interviewed directly with the Signal School commandant or the Signal Center of Excellence commanding general. This process reinforced the importance of the assignment and helped attract high-performing officers from diverse operational backgrounds, committed to contributing to the regiment. Likewise, programs such as Project Warrior created pathways for talented officers to influence the profession beyond their operational assignments. The ability to not only take their operational experience but also the collective knowledge gained from seeing multiple rotations of best practices and lessons learned is invaluable as an instructor. Together, these pathways – supported by an updated deliberate talent management process, with the assistance of branch career managers – must be a priority to properly develop future generations of Signaleers. During the GWOT era, however, operational experience became the dominant metric of professional value. Institutional assignments often became secondary considerations in officer career progression. As a result, the perception exists that the Army unintentionally devalued the very instructors responsible for educating the next generation of leaders. Reversing this trend is critical to producing officers able to meet the demands of future operational environments. Instructor preparation should include both advanced pedagogical training and technical expertise development.

While TRADOC Regulation 600-21 was updated in 2018 with the intent to formalize and improve instructor development, it is still a voluntary program and based upon observations that are still largely task-based training environments associated with Initial Entry Training rather than adult learning methodologies (TRADOC, 2018, 10-11). Yet, students in SCCC routinely receive graduate-level academic credit through civilian university partnerships. If the Army genuinely considers PME to be equivalent to graduate education, then instructor selection, preparation, and expectations must reflect that standard. Research on higher education consistently demonstrates that faculty quality is among the strongest predictors of educational effectiveness (Fink, 2008). Simply put PME’s quality cannot exceed the quality of those entrusted to teach it.

Restoring Academic Rigor

Finally, the Army must address the issue of rigor within PME. A persistent culture exists in which PME is viewed as a period to “take a knee.” Whether openly admitted or not, many officers have adopted this mindset because institutional expectations often reinforce it.

Too frequently, SCCC becomes an exercise in rememorizing the fundamentals and searching digital regulations rather than engaging in meaningful intellectual development. As technological complexity expands throughout the force, the requirement for officers to possess both tactical competence and technical understanding has never been greater. Future conflicts will demand leaders capable of integrating communications, cyber, data, and operational planning under contested conditions. Accordingly, signal PME must evolve in two significant ways.

First, academic standards must increase. Assessments must measure not only doctrinal familiarity but also analytical reasoning, operational application, and problem solving. Students will be challenged to think critically, conduct independent study, and engage deeply with course material beyond classroom hours. This necessarily requires moving away from simplistic open-note, multiple choice examinations toward assessments that demand synthesis of the information, written analysis, practical application, and the ability to evaluate outcomes.

Second, the institution needs to accept that not every student will succeed. For years, there existed an institutional reluctance to recycle or dismiss students from SCCC. While understandable from a personnel management perspective, this approach undermines academic credibility and diminishes professional standards. PME cannot simultaneously claim graduate-level rigor while operating under an expectation of near-universal completion regardless of performance or effort. To achieve these objectives, a structural revision to PME would not only enhance academic rigor but also reduce permanent change of station (PCS) requirements, improve stability and predictability for officers and their families, and likely generate some long-term cost savings for the Army. A modernized adaptation of the former Advanced Course and Combined Arms and Services Staff School (CAS3) model could provide substantial benefits not only to the Signal Corps but across the broader Army profession.

By separating branch-specific technical instruction from a centralized common core curriculum, the Army could foster greater interdisciplinary collaboration and facilitate the exchange of lessons learned across warfighting functions. This type of approach would further strengthen branch technical education by ensuring it is grounded in a foundational understanding of FM 3-0 and the principles of multi-domain operations. Officers would then arrive at their branch-specific courses with a shared operational framework, enabling instruction to focus less on doctrinal familiarization and more on analysis, integration, and application within complex operational environments.

Conclusion

The Army currently operates in a strategic environment that is both familiar and unprecedented. While the profession continues to face timeless leadership challenges, modern warfare increasingly demands new intellectual approaches capable of addressing rapidly evolving technological and operational realities.

Gen. John Murray warned, “We do not want to get to 2035 to find we have fallen behind. We want to aim ahead of the competition and not behind it” (Murray, 2021). If this warning is interpreted solely through the lens of technology acquisition, then the Army misunderstands the deeper issue entirely.

Technological superiority alone does not guarantee military advantage. The Army’s decisive advantage has always been its people. If Soldiers truly remain the Army’s greatest asset, then the Army must critically reassess how it educates its officers. Officers entering PME must arrive prepared to engage intellectually, challenge themselves academically, and deliberately build the professional toolkit required for future leadership. Simultaneously, the institution must evolve to support that expectation through increased rigor, better instructors, more adaptable curriculum development, and a renewed emphasis on critical thinking.

Ultimately, PME exists not simply to transmit information, but to cultivate adaptable leaders capable of thinking under conditions of uncertainty.

William Butler perhaps captured this relationship best when he warned: “The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”

Maj. Nick Christensen (left) Maj. William Sack (right)

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