Army Platoon Research Articles

Supportive-leadership training to improve social connection: A cluster-randomized trial demonstrating efficacy in a high-risk occupational context.

The high, and still rising, rate of loneliness is a threat to public health (Office of the Surgeon General, 2023), with negative mental and physical health consequences (e.g., Holt-Lunstad, 2021). Given that loneliness is a risk factor for poor mental health, efforts to address loneliness are urgently needed. Workplaces can facilitate an employee's social connection through supervisor support training, which can help mitigate loneliness. Among occupational groups, the military is at higher risk for mental health disorders, suicide, and loneliness (Fikretoglu et al., 2022; Naifeh et al., 2019). This study evaluated the efficacy of an evidence-based supportive-leadership training intervention targeting active-duty U.S. Army platoon leaders and targeting both proactive support behaviors that help bolster employee social connection and responsive support behaviors, including destigmatizing mental health. Ninety-nine platoon leaders (69.7% of eligible leaders) completed the 90-min training that consisted of both in-person and computer-based components. Using a cluster-randomized controlled trial design, intervention effects were tested using an intent-to-treat approach and revealed a significant effect, whereby loneliness of service members whose leaders were randomized to the intervention group (N = 118) was significantly reduced compared to loneliness reports for service members in the control group (N = 158). Additionally, service members with higher baseline loneliness were more strongly and positively impacted by the supervisor training, reporting higher levels of supportive behaviors from their leaders at 3 months postbaseline. In sum, these results suggest how workplaces, especially those that are considered high-risk occupations, and their leaders play a critical role in a national strategy to address Americans' well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Effects of Platoon Leader Mental Health and Resilience Training on Soldier Problematic Anger.

The DoD has prioritized programs to optimize readiness by enhancing resilience of its service members. Problematic anger in the military is an issue that impacts psychological well-being and resilience. Leader support is a potential tactic for reducing anger and its effects. Currently military resilience training is focused on individual level resilience. A gap exists in such training and there is a need to train leaders to provide mental health and resilience support to their subordinates. The present study developed and tested a theory-based training aimed at platoon leaders that focused on how to engage in proactive and responsive mental health and resilience-supportive behaviors through guided discussion, scenarios, and computer-based training with embedded quizzes. We conducted an Institutional Review Board-approved cluster randomized controlled trial to test the effects of a leadership training with Army platoon leaders (n = 99) and soldiers (n = 276) in 2 brigades at an active duty military installation in the USA. Training was conducted in person with a computer-based component. Soldiers completed online surveys 1 month prior and again 3 months after the leader training. Post-training results demonstrated significant leader learning effects (Cohen's d = 1.56) and leader positive reactions to the training information, with leaders reporting the information as useful and relevant to their work. Service members in the treatment group reported significantly lower levels of anger at time 2 (b = -0.18, SE = 0.06, P = .002, pseudo ΔR2 = 0.01; d = 0.27) compared to the control group. We also found an indirect effect of the intervention on increased life satisfaction at time 2 via decreased anger (b = 0.035, SE = 0.023, 95% CI = [0.004-0.24]). This study provides an initial evaluation of training for platoon leaders that educates them on proactive and responsive behavioral strategies to support the mental health and resilience of their service members via decreased problematic anger and increased well-being. Further adaptations and evaluations should be conducted with other military branches and civilian occupations, as the benefits of the relatively brief and noninvasive training could be widespread.

Training Military Units in Social Connection: A Quasi-Experimental Randomized Trial

In the military, team cohesion and communication are essential. The present study examined the impact of training in social connection on loneliness, cohesion, communication, and connection-promoting behaviors. U.S. Army platoons were assigned to receive Team Cohesion and Organizational Readiness Enhancement (TeamCORE) training (n = 118; k = 11) or training-as-usual (n = 135; k = 15). TeamCORE consisted of 2.5 h of training for unit members and 1 h of training for platoon leadership teams. TeamCORE trainees completed a baseline survey, post-training survey, and two-month follow-up survey. Training-as-usual completed a baseline survey and two-month follow-up survey. Measures assessed loneliness, cohesion, team communication, connection-promoting behaviors, and shared mealtime. While there was substantial attrition between the baseline and follow-up survey, more than 80% of team members and leaders gave TeamCORE training high acceptability ratings. Multilevel models revealed significant time-by-condition interactions on 1 of 10 cohesion items, 1 of 11 team communication items, 2 out of 12 connection-promoting behaviors and 1 of 2 shared mealtime items; no significant time-by-condition interaction was found for loneliness. For each significant interaction, higher levels of improvement or sustainment were observed in the TeamCORE condition relative to training-as-usual. There were no comparisons in which the training-as-usual condition changed more positively than the TeamCORE condition. TeamCORE resulted in selected improvements in cohesion, communication, connection-promoting behaviors, and shared mealtime. While quite modest, findings demonstrated that brief, scalable training can demonstrate high levels of acceptability and slightly shift some attitudes, potentially improving the team’s capacity for social connection over time.

"The Spectre of Death" (October 31, 1943). Myth-making in the war prose of Aleksander Omiljanowicz and the autobiography of Władysław Świacki

Relying on archival material, the author verified the story of the alleged Home Army action near Ełk (Germ. Lyck) on October 31, 1943, according to which a Home Army platoon under the command of Lt. Władysław Świacki was to carry out an attack on the SS detail who were executing Italian prisoners of war near the camp at Bogusze. It is recounted in The Spectre of Death by Aleksander Omiljanowicz (1965) and the autobiography of W. Świacki (2007). The study reconstructs the complex biographies of the protagonists of the engagement, i.e. Świacki and Czesław Nalborski. Also, attention is drawn to the plot elements in Omiljanowicz’s narrative (including the date of the engagement and the name of the SS commander), which were then adopted in the accounts of the combatants themselves. The analysis of archival documents from various periods indicates that this story is a legend created in the 1960s. Despite this, the action has remained a fragment of the collective memory of the war in the Ełk district to this day. On October 28, 1989, a monument to the successful attack on the SS men was erected in Nowa Wieś Ełcka. It still stands there, demonstrating that local memory is influenced by the myth-making practices of the Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy.

LINKS Training and Unit Support for Mental Health: a Group-randomized Effectiveness Trial.

The LINKS curriculum, adapted from Britt et al. (2018a), was designed to improve unit climate, knowledge, and attitudes about mental health treatment seeking in military personnel. The present study extends this research by examining implementation options, comparing the effectiveness of LINKS to an active control condition with training delivered by non-experts and comparing modules that varied in training length. Eight Army platoons were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (1) 1-h Active Control, (2) 2-h Active Control, (3) 1-h LINKS, or (4) 2-h LINKS. Two platoons were assigned to each condition. Surveys were administered at pre-training (T1), post-training (T2), and 3months later (T3). Eighty-four participants completed all study phases. Regardless of training content, participants receiving the 2-h modules reported greater training acceptability than those receiving the 1-h modules. At T3, participants in the LINKS conditions reported more mental health knowledge than participants in the Active Control conditions. Sustained effects were also observed on a number of treatment barriers and facilitators, with the LINKS conditions generally leading to better outcomes. At T3, 2-h LINKS condition participants reported receiving more mental health treatment relative to the other conditions. Findings suggest that LINKS can be effectively delivered by non-expert trainers, is a viable intervention for targeting mental health treatment-seeking, and is optimally packaged in a 2-h module. The training might benefit from additional leadership training efforts.

Who Is the Soldier? Documenting American “Grunts” from Dispatches to Restrepo

This article compares the ways Michael Herr in Dispatches (1977) and Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger in Restrepo (2010) represent American soldiers in the context of military professionalization following the establishment of the AVF. These works are seminal landmarks of the grunt's-eye-view genre, but they produce the average soldier's subjectivity and identity very differently and, in turn, foster different relationships between their American audiences and this figure. Herr, I argue, represents the “grunts” of Vietnam as we all while Restrepo’s directors portray the Army platoon in Afghanistan as a collective who?. I show how the subtle aesthetic changes to documenting the average infantryman reflect and enforce the logics of professionalization as well as the intensifying distance between the American public and those who fight America's wars.

Cost of post-deployment screening for mental illness in the UK military: findings from a cluster randomised controlled trial

Background Little is known about the economic impact of military mental health screening. Aims To investigate (a) whether post-deployment screening of military personnel affects use and cost of services and (b) the impact of psychiatric morbidity on costs. Methods Participants were recruited from UK Royal Marine and Army platoons and randomised to an intervention group (which received tailored advice predicated upon mental health status) or a control group (which received general advice following assessment of mental health status). The intervention costs were calculated while service use and associated costs were assessed at 12-month follow-up. Results Data were available for 6323 participants. Mean screening cost was £34. Service costs were slightly higher in the control group compared to the intervention group (£1197 vs. £1147) which was not statistically significant (bootstrapped 95%CI, −£363 to £434. In both groups, screening and control, costs were significantly higher for those who screened positive for mental health problems. Conclusions Costs were not affected by screening. In countries that have already implemented post-deployment screening, the political cost of disinvestment needs careful consideration. Those who develop psychiatric morbidity have substantially higher care costs than those who do not.

The Afterlives of Duck-and-Cover

Wars on drugs and crime, stand your ground, Hummers, security moms, “take back the night,” AMBER alerts, gated communities, “preppers,” and “safe rooms”—all descended from the duck-and-cover years of the Cold War, according to historian Elaine May Tyler. The first chapter of May’s solidly researched and elegantly written Fortress America: How We Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy recalls the post-World War Two years when the country shifted from a war footing onto a path to peace and prosperity. With its men home from war and its women home from factory work that kept the men armed and outfitted, America began remaking itself with the family as the institutional building block. Distaining the state-led national defense strategy appropriated for the World Wars, the nation welcomed a localized approach that imagined the family as the guarantor of security. If the Russians really came, it would be dad, mom, and their security-smart children, not an Army platoon, which would rise to the occasion.

Health-Related Coping Behaviors and Mental Health in Military Personnel.

Our previous research has highlighted the important link between coping behaviors and mental health symptoms in military personnel. This study seeks to extend these findings by examining each coping behavior and mental health issue individually. This study has four specific aims: (1) test cross-sectional relationships between coping and mental health at baseline and follow-up, (2) examine stability of each variable over time, (3) determine the predictive nature of baseline mental health and coping on subsequent mental health and coping, (4) assess the magnitude of each effect to evaluate the differential predictive value of coping behaviors and mental health symptoms. A convenience sample of U.S. Army platoons of the 82nd Airborne was surveyed. We used a two-wave, cross-lagged autoregression design with structural equation modeling to disentangle elements of temporality and to examine the predictive value of mental health status vis-à-vis coping behaviors and vice versa. Separate analyses were performed with each coping strategy and each set of mental health symptoms. This design allowed for the analysis of two synchronous associations (i.e., cross-sectional correlations between the coping strategy and mental health symptoms at each time point), two autoregressive effects (i.e., baseline mental health predicting mental health at follow-up and baseline coping predicting coping at follow-up), and two cross-lagged effects (i.e., baseline coping strategy predicting mental health at follow-up and baseline mental health predicting follow-up coping). Results of descriptive statistics revealed that the most frequently reported coping behavior was thinking of a plan to solve the problem, followed by talking to a friend, engaging in a hobby, and exercising or playing sports. The least often endorsed coping behaviors were smoking marijuana or using illicit drugs and thinking about hurting or killing oneself, followed by having a drink or lighting up a cigarette. We verified many cross-sectional relationships between coping behaviors and mental health symptoms. Specifically, talking to a friend, exercising or playing sports, engaging in a hobby, and thinking of a plan were associated with fewer anxiety, perceived stress, and depression symptoms, whereas smoking a cigarette, having a drink, and thinking about hurting or killing oneself were associated with more anxiety, perceived stress, and depressive symptoms. Marijuana and illicit drug use was also associated with higher depressive symptoms. Saying a prayer was not significantly related to mental health. Only four cross-lagged effects were significant. Those who reported more depressive symptoms at Time 1 reported talking to friends and family less and exercising or playing sports less as coping behaviors at Time 2. Baseline perceived stress predicted less likelihood of engaging in a hobby at follow-up, whereas exercising or playing sports as a coping behavior at baseline predicted lower perceived stress at follow-up. This study expands the evidence for the associations between coping behaviors and psychological health or distress to specific mental health symptoms, particularly in military service members, and provides comparisons of magnitude of each association. Clinically, this knowledge is critical to more efficiently target behaviors with the greatest associations to mental health in military personnel.

Case Article—U.S. Army Deployment to the Middle East

This paper describes a modeling and simulation case study relating to Army platoons deploying to the Middle East. The study tasks students with analyzing routes for deploying troops travel through in an effort to decrease the average time a soldier spends in transit. Students with little simulation experience are able to become familiar with modeling software. Student groups are instructed to identify where bottlenecks occur in the queuing system and to find creative solutions to alleviate those bottlenecks. Additionally, the case study illustrates the concepts of input and output analysis, random numbers, random variate generation, and probability distributions. Case Teaching Note: Interested Instructors please see the Instructor Materials page for access to the restricted materials. To maintain the integrity and usefulness of cases published in ITE, unapproved distribution of the case teaching notes and other restricted materials to any other party is prohibited.

Building social resilience in soldiers: A double dissociative randomized controlled study.

Can social resilience be trained? We report results of a double-dissociative randomized controlled study in which 48 Army platoons were randomly assigned to social resilience training (intervention condition) or cultural awareness training (active control group). The same surveys were administered to all platoons at baseline and after the completion of training to determine the short-term training effects, generalization effects beyond training, and possible adverse effects. Multilevel modeling analyses indicated that social resilience, compared with cultural awareness, training produced small but significant improvements in social cognition (e.g., increased empathy, perspective taking, & military hardiness) and decreased loneliness, but no evidence was found for social resilience training to generalize beyond these training foci nor to have adverse effects. Moreover, as predicted, cultural awareness, compared with social resilience, training produced increases in knowledge about and decreases in prejudice toward Afghans. Additional research is warranted to determine the long-term durability, safety, and generalizability of social resilience training.

Management Insights

Management Insights

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan: A Critical Analysis, a Comparative Study with Indian and English Law

As Robert Sack famously put it: successful libel plaintiffs resemble the remnants of an army platoon caught in an enemy crossfire. Defamation, or libel in particular, has always been hard to prove. But, if proved, the predicament that arises, particularly in matters of public interest is if what is gained by disclosure of the statement is important, or even more fundamentally, necessary for the functioning of a state, the statement or comment is justified, or is to be allowed. This is a doubt that has lingered around for a long time, with the judiciary taking various stands through the years. But, in the year 1964, the Supreme Court of the United States of America took a bold step in protecting the freedom of speech of its country, and ensuring free flow of dialogue. Ever since, similar steps have been taken by various other countries, with some succeeding, and some failing miserably. This paper tries to look at the judgment in itself, and what entailed in various parts of the world, in detail, with a comparison with Indian and English law.

Revisiting a School of Military Government: How Reanimating a World War II-Era Institution Could Professionalize Military Nation Building

In the last decade, the United States has found itself fully immersed in nation building, despite its alleged distaste for such endeavors. U.S. military forces in particular have been at the center of these efforts, building schools in Iraq, staffing Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) throughout Afghanistan and training soldiers in Mozambique. U.S. Army platoon leaders hand out micro grants to small business owners and help stand up city councils. Civil servants who once trained for peacetime development work now find themselves mediating tribal disputes in remote mountain provinces. Regardless of the efficacy of such efforts, public statements by both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggest that nation building and related activities are preferred solutions in the war against terrorism. Yet despite the enormous complexity and ambition of such efforts, there remains a gap in the training and education for nation building.This paper details the U.S. Army-established School of Military Government and its related Civil Affairs Training Program that prepared forces for occupational duties in Europe and Asia. It highlights the demonstrated effectiveness both of its curriculum and approach to education and of its impact on the occupation of Germany and Japan, which offer important lessons for today’s military faced with similar challenges. If nation building, particularly with economic growth as a key component, is to assume a greater role as a component of foreign policy or national security strategy, it needs to consume a greater role of our planning, analysis, and organizational design. Civil Affairs and several other functional areas within the military play a significant role in aspects of nation building today and would benefit from education focused on such matters. Other beneficial initiatives would include creating a mechanism for drawing experts into and out of the military to serve as nation-builders at a level commensurate with their experience, providing a more effective and less expensive option than hiring contractors.

Predicting unit performance by assessing transformational and transactional leadership.

How do leadership ratings collected from units operating under stable conditions predict subsequent performance of those units operating under high stress and uncertainty? To examine this question, the authors calculated the predictive relationships for the transformational and transactional leadership of 72 light infantry rifle platoon leaders for ratings of unit potency, cohesion, and performance for U.S. Army platoons participating in combat simulation exercises. Both transformational and transactional contingent reward leadership ratings of platoon leaders and sergeants positively predicted unit performance. The relationship of platoon leadership to performance was partially mediated through the unit's level of potency and cohesion. Implications, limitations, and future directions for leadership research are discussed.

Training and Assessing Complex Decision-Making in a Virtual Environment

The current report describes a procedure for training and assessing complex decision-making in a virtual environment. Focusing on small unit leaders, 7 experienced and 7 inexperienced Army platoon leaders performed missions in a combat simulator, where they were required to direct the activities of 3 subordinate leaders and computer-generated forces in 4 different operations in a virtual urban setting. Objective and subjective assessments of the training value of the simulations showed that both experienced an inexperienced platoon leaders improved their decision-making across the four missions, and both groups rated this "virtual environment" training procedure as useful and positive. Lessons learned and implications for designing similar training protocols for other domains are discussed.

TRAINING AND ASSESSING COMPLEX DECISION-MAKING IN A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT

The current report describes a procedure for training and assessing complex decision-making in a virtual environment. Focusing on small unit leaders, 7 experienced and 7 inexperienced Army platoon leaders performed missions in a combat simulator, where they were required to direct the activities of 3 subordinate leaders and computer-generated forces in 4 different operations in a virtual urban setting. Objective and subjective assessments of the training value of the simulations showed that both experienced an inexperienced platoon leaders improved their decision-making across the four missions, and both groups rated this “virtual environment” training procedure as useful and positive. Lessons learned and implications for designing similar training protocols for other domains are discussed.

Use of doubly labeled water technique in soldiers training for jungle warfare.

The doubly labeled water method was used to estimate the energy expended by four members of an Australian Army platoon (34 soldiers) engaged in training for jungle warfare. Each subject received an oral isotope dose sufficient to raise isotope levels by 200-250 (18O) and 100-120 ppm (2H). The experimental period was 7 days. Concurrently, a factorial estimate of the energy expenditure of the platoon was conducted. Also, a food intake-energy balance study was conducted for the platoon. Mean daily energy expenditure by the doubly labeled water method was 4,750 kcal (range 4,152-5,394 kcal). The factorial estimate of mean daily energy expenditure was 4,535 kcal. Because of inherent inaccuracies in the food intake-energy balance technique, we were able to conclude only that energy expenditure, as measured by this method, was greater than the estimated mean daily intake of 4,040 kcal. The doubly labeled water technique was well tolerated, is noninvasive, and appears to be suitable in a wide range of field applications.