General trends in military specialists’ training of the Armed Forces of Ukraine: historical aspect

Abstract

The article is devoted to analysis of general trends in the Armed Forces of Ukraine military specialists’ training are scrutinized in this article from a historical perspective. The factors of reduction in the first officer positions recruitment before the Russian Federation military aggression against Ukraine are analyzed. Those factors are: drawbacks in the state order planning for the training of tactical level specialists, absence of the other sources of officers admission to the first officer positions because of the lack of appropriate legislative framework, and an unsuccessful implementation of the personnel policy and military education tasks that consequently led to a significant officers’ training lag behind the real needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In addition, the measures taken by the Defense Agency to stabilize the situation and eliminate the existing incompleteness of the first officer positions are considered. Since 2015, the Defense Agency has suggested several effective methods, primarily in the form of course training for non-commissioned officer personnel who have higher education with the further assignment to the officer personnel positions and award of a military rank of “second lieutenant”. The Defense Agency also has run an experiment that involves the enrollment for an experimental program “Leadership Courses” of civil citizens who obtained a bachelor’s degree and higher for training (up to 12 months) for the military service under contract in the first officer positions. The suggested forms and means of the servicemen’s training are continuously adapted in order to find an optimal way that has to provide the conditions for mastering a certain military specialty on a professional level. The author has studied the latest forms of junior officers’ training taking into account the standards of NATO member states. The concept of “military specialists’ training” is analyzed in the context of implementation of military education tasks and military personnel policy for the first time. The future research perspective consists in the need to provide the possible ways of the world-leading countries’ positive experience usage in order to create an effective career management system for military specialists.