On 14 November Major Jonas Björkqvist and myself presented on our approach to tactile teaching methods in practical and scenario-based exercises and examinations at the Swedish Defence University seminar on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
Tag: land warfare
On 11-20 Oct 2023 we undertook a study tour to Georgia with our Advanced Course on Ground Tactics in the Higher Joint Command and Staff Programme. During this week we met with our Georgian counterpart and key institutions in Tbilisi. We also visited the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) to learn more about their work.
On 18-21 September Major Jonas Björkqvist (Land Operations Division), Patrik Wiklund (Military History Division) and I led a Staff Ride to the Netherlands and Germany studying Operation Market Garden and Operationn Veritable. This tour was part of the skill development of the Land Operations Division at the Swedish Defence University. Besides studying the two operations, the aim was to test a new pedagogical approach to Staff Rides and to study the new Swedish Army Tactical Regulations.
Recently, I had the opportunity to be part of a wargame in Sweden that was part of an elective course on Land Operations in our Higher Joint Command and Staff Programme taking place in Skåne in the south of Sweden. It was an intense learning experience that required careful planning and tactical thinking from our students.
This week I have co-organised a Staff-Ride for a course on land operations and tactics for the Joint Higher Command and Staff Program at the Swedish Defence University together with Lt Col Per Lindahl, Head of the Land Operations Division. It has been a very successful trip where we used four different themes – Technology, Logistics, Urban Warfare and Tactics – as a starting point for discussions and seminars at various themed terrain locations.
We also spent a day studying and reflecting on the consequences of the profession, leadership, courage and symbolic values during a visit to Verdun.
My new co-edited volume on Advamced Land Warfare: Tactics and Operations is just out on Oxford University Press. Download full volume or chapters here: https://academic.oup.com/book/45784 (OPEN ACCESS)
The book:
- Zeroes in on the evolving role of land forces, focusing particularly on the changes that have taken place in the art of commanding and executing combat and on the role of rapid technological innovation and information dissemination in shaping warfare
- Revisits established military theory and thinking (some of it neglected in recent years) with lessons learned from contemporary land warfare
- Provides various perspectives on key contemporary developments in land warfare, while also presenting case studies on land tactics and operations in different national contexts
- Draws on the knowledge and insights of leading scholars of war and senior officers to provide a current understanding of the central issues of land warfare
- Explores how land forces remain a crucial feature of warfare as evidenced by recent wars in Ukraine, Syria, Mali, Yemen and Nagorno-Karabak
Table of Contents
My new peer-reviewed article on “Staff Rides as a Pedagogical Tool in Professional Military Education (PME): Planning and Conducting Historical Staff Rides” has just been published in Journal on Baltic Security. It has been co-authored by Major Jonas Björkqvist and Patrik Wiklund at the Swedish Defence University.
Abstract:
The use of various practical pedagogical tools is an important part of officer training. This is also an area where there is a long tradition in the training of officer cadets and officers in staff colleges as well as in the Armed Forces more generally. This article focuses on staff rides aimed at teaching tactics and operational arts based on historical examples. This type of staff-rides aims to learn from history with a bearing on the present and the future.
The article is organized as follows: first, the article gives a short overview of the history of staff rides, followed by a discussion on different types of staff rides. Then the focus shifts to ways to plan and carry out a staff ride. This includes the planning phase, reconnaissance, and the different pedagogical tools that can be used and their implementation. The article concludes with a discussion of how to think when planning and carrying out staff rides, both practically and pedagogically. The article here presented a schematic model of the pedagogical dynamics of the staff ride for different target groups based on their pre-understanding and the complexity of different field exercises.
Citation:
Weissmann, Mikael, Jonas Björkqvist, Patrik Wiklund, “Staff Rides as a Pedagogical Tool in Professional Military Education (PME): Planning and Conducting Historical Staff Rides”, Journal on Baltic Security 8(2022), no. 2, 61-82. FULL TEXT