Close the Skills Gap with Expeditionary Civilians

In the Army, commanders are assigned missions related to an array of purposes, so they do not have the luxury of treating everything as if it were the proverbial “nail.” The concern is commanders can fall prey to this cognitive bias trap through unintentionally limiting the available resources at their disposal, which can lead to seeking to adapt the mission to the available “tools” rather than adapting the tools to the mission.

History demonstrates that commanders can benefit by utilizing expeditionary civilians, a vital component of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Total Force. Civilians offer a vast amount of experience and possess special skill sets to augment unit formations.