Military Advisors Training System (MATS)

The United States provides experienced personnel to advise foreign military and security forces. Success in this critical role requires advisors to be more than just competent warriors. Unfortunately, there is a continuing gap between the degree of training, cultural, and interpersonal expertise that advisors need and the training available to prepare them for success. Aptima, Inc. has partnered with the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) and its Center for Afghanistan Studies (CAS) to propose the development of a training system to improve the ability of military advisors to interact with their host-county counterparts in ways that will be effective in furthering host nation and American interests. The Army needs a theoretical model of how advisors should teach and coach counterparts that considers differences in the individual advisor and the individual counterpart, situational and cultural factors, counterpart learning strategies, and counterpart motivation levels. The model must identify best practices for instruction, relate these best practices to learning theory, account for the success or failure of coaching strategies, describe learning style differences in a specific Middle Eastern culture, and offer recommendations for overcoming language and communication difficulties and interpreter problems. The training must seamlessly integrate into existing Army training systems.