The Pentagon has quietly set in motion a yearlong strategy to unify the military services’ approach to boosting human performance and reaching “Total Force Fitness,” emphasizing a data-driven approach to achieving the desired results.
Two Pentagon memos released in May and obtained by Military Times offer a roadmap for “Warfighter Performance Optimization,” culminating next year in the rollout of new programming, professional military education and the launch of pilot programs aimed at closing performance gaps.
The first memo, signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on May 6, directs Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata to deliver a report within 60 days that reviews and assesses existing warfighter performance optimization initiatives across the services, with action points “to equip our service members and leaders with the tools, data and resources necessary to meet and exceed readiness standards and to maximize their lethality and effectiveness.”
The end result, according to the memo, is a department-wide performance optimization action plan.
Among Hegseth’s goals in advancing a unified “Warfighter Performance Optimization” approach is accelerating the fielding of technology that improves performance — including wearable devices and other data analytics tools — and elevating “cognitive performance as a key to readiness.”
“The Department will establish cognitive performance as a core occupational readiness competency, measuring and managing it with the same attention and discipline we apply to our physical standards,” the memo states. “We will mitigate brain health risks that erode cognitive performance and leverage tactics, techniques, and procedures to train and optimize Warfighter cognition.”
A seven-page memo for senior Pentagon leaders and commanders of the U.S. combatant commands lays out a timeline for achieving Hegseth’s directives. It includes a June deadline for component heads to deliver data on “human performance capabilities and programs.”
“Information will include overviews, definitions, resource data, best practices, collaborators, coordination with clinical care, utilization of digital health technologies (e.g., wearables, mobile sensors), research priorities, and data capabilities,” the memo states.
Following the rollout of a WPO strategic plan in September that institutes department-wide performance goals and metrics, the Pentagon will launch new “human performance program enhancement activities” by January that establish standards and data management methods “to ensure consistent development, implementation, and evaluation using best available scientific evidence and applied best practices.”
Other plans include creation of a comprehensive WPO dashboard to aggregate military performance data in a single location, and identification of training gaps that detract from performance.
At least three pilot projects, to be launched by next July, will feature “innovative capabilities designed to address mission gaps.”
The new directives underscore the varied and sometimes disjointed approach the military services have taken to achieving the shared goal of boosting warfighter performance.
The Army has touted the success of its Holistic Health and Fitness initiative, which began a slow rollout around 2020 and emphasizes cognitive performance, nutrition and spiritual health as performance contributors.
The Navy is in the process of rolling out its own variation, the Human Performance Optimization program, “designed to enhance an individual’s physical, mental, emotional, and nutritional capabilities in order to maximize effectiveness, productivity, and overall well-being.”
The Air Force this year broke ground on a new HPO facility at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, intended to strengthen the resilience of Air Force Special Warfare personnel, while the Marine Corps has its own human performance branch, with resiliency-focused centers on major bases.
The goals of leveraging data through wearables to improve performance and sharpening cognition have spawned a broad range of pilot programs, from evaluation of neural-stimulating devices and pharmaceutical supplements for special operators to trippy relaxation cubes and a wide spectrum of field tests with data-collecting rings and watches.
A former military human performance official who spoke with Military Times on background said what’s been missing is a way to look at all these efforts in concert and determine what’s best worth the services’ time and investment.
“Hopefully this effort will find out what the best practices are, so those which stand out and can be done at scale while being compliant with different cyber security mandates,” the former official said. “Wearables aren’t the answer to everything. They’re complementary to a lot of the other practices, but we’ll see what the yield is.”
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