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Leadership in LSCO

Leading and Training Conscripts, Lessons from Ukraine, NATO Allies, and Our Own Past

 

Maj. Callum Knight, British Army

 

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When Gen. William DePuy fought through the beaches of Normandy, he “saw his division lose 100 percent of its enlisted men and 150 percent of its officers, in six weeks.”¹ Such attrition is unheard of in modern U.S. Army campaigns, though any return to large-scale combat operations (LSCO) means that we must prepare for such eventualities. Inevitably, this will mean the need to rapidly recruit, train, and then lead U.S. citizen-soldiers. This training needs to be as efficient as possible, and future commanders must understand the best mechanisms to motivate and lead this new generation of soldiers if the U.S. Army is to succeed in its next LSCO campaign. DePuy’s own wartime experiences left him with bitter lessons on the impacts of poor leadership and insufficient training. This article aims to address both these issues in tandem.

First, it will examine the experience of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) since the Russian invasion of 2022. This will offer insights into some of the issues the UAF has encountered in training and then leading conscripts, providing examples of what to prioritize and mistakes to avoid for the U.S. Army. Second, it will review lessons from DePuy’s own experiences, both in World War II and in later life when he commanded the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, identifying some of the most salient issues when considering leadership development, organizational transformation, and conscript training. Finally, the article examines lessons from North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies that apply to training and leading conscript soldiers today. Ultimately, the article concludes that this is an issue that the U.S. Army must think about now, and that U.S. Army officers must seriously discuss the prospect of leading conscripts today to avoid making the same mistakes in leadership that many nations, including our own, have made in the past.

Lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian War

The UAF has learned several important lessons from its conflict with Russia in the last three years, and such lessons are every bit applicable to the U.S. Army. These are the importance of low-level leadership and leadership training, the importance of mission command at all levels to succeed and survive on the modern battlefield, and the need to make training both as efficient and realistic as possible.

Low-level leadership and leadership training. This remains one of the most requested items by the UAF of their partners since the war’s outset. The British Army offers a clear view of what the UAF needs in this regard. The British Army’s Operation Interflex aims 60 percent of its conscript training regime for the UAF at the most basic level.² This is the shortest period of training at seven weeks. A further 30 percent of Interflex’s regimen identifies and then provides additional training for future low-level leaders (noncommissioned officers).³ The final 10 percent identifies and trains those suitable to be instructors or officers.⁴ The UAF stresses that identification and training of these leaders is pivotal due to the impact that low-level commanders have on the battlefield and the role they play in motivating raw recruits operating in extreme LSCO environments.

Mission command. Mission command is espoused doctrinally by the U.S. Army, but its application has arguably eroded over the past two decades due to advances in communication across vast distances. However, the prevalence of electronic warfare targeting combined with precision and massed fires on the modern battlefield means that we should abandon the idea of having near-total control down to even the company level in LSCO. It is, therefore, vital to trust subordinates provided with a clear intent to execute their missions without the ability of higher headquarters to check on progress or provide support with anything like the frequency we have come to expect in recent battles.⁵ While many in the U.S. Army support the idea of mission command, it is hard enough in practice for leaders to embrace mission command when dealing with subordinates who have had years of training. It will be harder still to adhere to mission command principles when dealing with soldiers who have had only days of training. Nonetheless, without embracing fully the principle of mission command, experience has shown in Ukraine that both the higher headquarters and the soldiers executing the mission are exceedingly vulnerable to massed or precision fires.

Efficient and realistic training. Finally, we must look at how the UAF attempts to make its training efficient, effectively imparting the maximum knowledge in the shortest possible time to get conscripts into combat or supporting roles more quickly. We must temper this with the need to teach conscripts enough to survive for more than a few days without becoming a casualty. Data indicates that at the start of the war, between 50 and 70 percent of fresh conscripts deployed to the front line had become casualties within a few days of their deployment.⁶ To combat this, training had to become more realistic. This involves teaching conscripts the necessary real-world military skills, showing them exactly how to apply these skills, and then giving them the requisite amount of time to build these skills up to appropriate levels. Crucially, this also means practicing skills in realistic scenarios, including the need to make scenarios more psychologically demanding to better simulate combat.⁷ Such training, incorporating emerging technology and techniques from the battlefield, can have a dramatic impact on the survivability of raw recruits. Leaders have an important role to play in this process, and training staff must actively seek information from the battlefield as to the techniques being employed to rapidly incorporate them into lessons and update training to make it of maximum utility.

Lessons from General DePuy

Gen. William DePuy had similar issues to contemporary Ukrainian commanders during his time in the 90th Infantry Division in World War II. Soldiers would deploy with the formation, particularly battlefield casualty replacements, with little understanding of the enemy they were fighting let alone their own formation. This led to needlessly high casualties, continuing the cycle of replacements and further undermining the effectiveness of the organization. To combat this, DePuy championed two concepts throughout his career, particularly when commanding Training and Doctrine Command. The first of these was to ignite a conversation about leadership and the need for continuous learning through his work on Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations.⁸ The second was to apply the lessons he learned from both World War II and the 1973 Yom Kippur war to identify those things that soldiers must understand to win on the battlefield and then relentlessly pursue excellence in those items while understanding the need to limit friendly force casualties.

Turning first to DePuy’s work on FM 100-5, this doctrine was vital for changing not only how the Army fought but also how the Army thought. Learning organization theory became popular through the work of MIT Professor Peter Senge in the 1990s, but much of DePuy’s work in 1973 contains the seeds of what Senge would later codify in his own work. In particular, DePuy pursued methods that align closely with Senge’s work The Fifth Discipline.⁹ Through DePuy’s leadership, the U.S. Army effectively began the process of becoming, and codifying the process of becoming, a learning organization. In particular, throughout his career, DePuy emphasized the need to continually expand one’s personal capacity through learning to master their own profession. DePuy also championed the idea of what Senge would call “systems thinking”; he vigorously pursued outreach and collaboration with different areas of the forces to maximize the ability of the Army to fight within and alongside them.¹⁰

Put simply, DePuy initiated a paradigm shift in the way that the U.S. Army thought about not just fighting, but the way it would equip and train itself as well as how it would work as part of a larger system. LSCO, and particularly the employment of conscripts in LSCO, will demand a similar paradigm shift in the U.S. Army today. Thinking about this problem before we have to address it is the best way for the U.S. Army to tackle this issue, in much the same way that DePuy’s thinking in 1973 paved the way for the dramatic successes in Desert Storm in 1991.

Second, DePuy’s experiences witnessing the destruction of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War imbued him with a firm conviction that the Army must focus relentlessly on its core objective—lethality—if it was to maximize its performance in combat. DePuy had seen that the new weapons in use on the modern battlefield were far more lethal than those he had personally seen or employed, even as recently as Vietnam. Modern LSCO represents a similar step-change in lethality from then to now.¹¹ For DePuy, this meant a relentless focus on training in combined arms, maneuver, and concealment to maximize one’s own fighting power while offsetting the enemy’s ability to employ theirs. These principles are every bit as applicable to today’s LSCO battlefield as they were in 1973.

However, the crucial question is, how does the U.S. Army train conscripts in short periods of time to understand advanced concepts like multidomain operations and survive in such an environment? The only realistic answer is that it cannot, and so we must consider a more cautious approach. DePuy recognized this, understanding that in order to be successful in LSCO against a Soviet adversary, the Army had to husband its combat resources more carefully. A similar lesson is being relearned in the U.S. Army today. Recent Warfighter exercises have demonstrated that U.S. Army formations can achieve their tactical objectives but generally do so while sustaining 40 to 50 percent casualties.¹² This has devastating implications not only for follow-on operations but also for troop morale and leadership. Similar stories in Ukraine have led to desertions of conscript soldiers, allowing Russian forces to take more terrain at low cost. The U.S. Army must address this approach to operations if it is to perform optimally during LSCO. It must give greater consideration to endurance, sometimes over and above the need to accomplish tactical objectives. This is at odds with an Army that focuses on aggression and initiative, but we must view these attributes through a lens of sustaining combat power and enabling aggression and initiative over the course of an operation rather than maximum aggression in short bursts, which ultimately proves unsustainable.

Lessons from NATO Allies

Finally, it is important to look at lessons from NATO allies who already employ conscripts. The nature of Generations Z and Alpha has led these countries to adapt their approach to conscription to maximize the efficacy of their conscripts for service. This has important ramifications for the leadership of conscripts, with lessons from Estonia implying that effective leaders are adopting different approaches to conscripts during training that are very different to leadership methods in volunteer armies. Separately, it is important for leaders to think about the reality of what it would take to train conscripts today. Lessons from Lithuania suggest the infrastructure required to adequately train even modest numbers of conscripts are significant. Finally, experience has shown that conscripts now possess talents that are unfamiliar to most military leaders. Conscripts join the military with skills in AI, drones, or the cyber domain that radically shift where they may be best employed in a conscript environment.

The Estonian army has been practicing conscription for over three decades, continually modernizing its approach during that time. A recent study of conscript attitudes offers useful perspectives on how conscripts view their service as well as important nuances for how to best lead and motivate soldiers throughout this process.¹³ One of the study’s focuses is the difference in leadership style generally applied to newer conscripts. These conscripts seem to benefit from a flatter, less hierarchical command structure, and they expect to be able to offer their perspective on issues. Lessons from Ukraine indicate that this behavior may initially seem disruptive, but it can actually lead to better tactical outcomes on the battlefield. In particular, this attitude of increased collaboration, questioning, and challenge can lead to greater battlefield innovation and initiative.¹⁴ Estonian conscript training principles promote this, encouraging open dialogue between conscripts and their leadership as well as questioning decisions to understand why leaders are making them. Ultimately, this increased understanding can enable mission success through increased awareness of the commander’s intent, empowering subordinates to take the initiative. This comes with risks, and Estonian commanders recognize that breaking down hierarchical barriers can lead to other leadership issues such as favoritism, whether perceived or real, and the potential for rises in insubordination. It is vital that future U.S. Army leaders of conscripts remain cognizant of these risks and the impact they can have on mission success.

Another impact on conscript leadership and training is the infrastructure available in which to train. Lithuania reinstituted conscription in 2015 following the Russian annexation of Crimea. While a popular decision in the country, met with enthusiasm by the populace, the infrastructure required to adequately train these conscripts took several years to develop.¹⁵ The U.S. Army needs to consider these realities now; when LSCO breaks out, it will already be too late. Conscript training conditions are important not just for maintaining the health and motivation of troops but also for maximizing their education and training. Better facilities allow for greater streamlining of training, resulting in conscripts entering the active force trained to higher levels and with greater knowledge retention. This stands in stark contrast with the U.S. Army’s own experience in World War I, where hastily arranged training programs delivered in substandard facilities by ill-prepared instructors served as essentially a waste of the trainees’ time before deployment to Europe.¹⁶

Additionally, better facilities and treatment of conscripts, including everything from accommodations and nutrition to social, welfare, and medical provisions, result in better motivated conscripts and higher levels of voluntary service. This can also have a concomitant increase in the number of conscripts who, following their initial period of service, choose to serve in the reserves.¹⁷

Mentioned several times throughout this article is the idea that today’s conscript possesses skills that are useful on the modern battlefield, but that their leadership may not understand how best to employ. Here, again, NATO nations can offer us useful insight into how to maximize these talents. Estonia, for example, offers mechanisms by which conscripts can self-identify the particular skills they have, and the Army then streams those conscripts into the areas where they can use their skills to best effect. Additionally, this process can result in radically altered conscript training regimes, providing further training efficiencies.¹⁸ Cyber conscription offers an interesting perspective in how the U.S. Army should preevaluate the career types it thinks it will need in LSCO; to enhance the way it might conduct conscription in the future. Cyber conscripts across NATO generally train to different standards and are recruited differently from most of the other types of conscripts. Almost always, cyber conscripts have preexisting knowledge of the career field, generally eschewing some of the other practical elements of conscript training in favor of either increasing time spent learning cyber skills or to enable faster employment within the military cyber field.¹⁹ Naturally, the conscription of specialists presents another unique challenge for U.S. Army leaders, at least some of whom are unlikely to be specialists in the fields in which they find themselves commanding. This requires further refinements to leadership approaches, and the U.S. Army should think early about not just how it will employ these specialists in war time but also who it will train to lead them. Failure to do so will only undermine the efficacy of these troops in support of the warfighter.

Conclusion

The U.S. Army’s history contains few constants, but one is that whenever the United States has engaged in LSCO, it has had to resort to conscription to generate the numbers of troops it requires to fight and to win.

Leading conscripts in LSCO is not a distant hypothetical—it is a plausible reality that we must prepare for now. By studying Ukraine’s adaptations, honing DePuy’s transformational leadership philosophy, and learning from our NATO partners, Army leaders have the chance to shape the systems, mindset, and training that will win future wars. Training and leading conscripts is not a notion that will come naturally to any serving member of the U.S. Army today, and this shift in approach is what is required to lead a citizen-soldier force effectively. The Army cannot afford to wait. The time for a paradigm shift is now. DePuy showed us that we will not get it right first time, and early experimentation is vital to avoid defeat in the future. He also showed us that transformational leadership begins not on the battlefield but in how we think, develop, and lead today.

 

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Notes

1. Katie Crombe and John Nagl, “A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force,” Parameters 53, no. 3 (Autumn 2025): 22, https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3240&context=parameters.
2. Yevhen Buderatskyi and Anhelina Strashkulych, “Operation Kudu: Ukrainian Soldiers Training in the UK,” Ukrainska Pravda, 24 March 2025, https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/articles/2025/03/24/7504203/.
3. Buderatskyi and Strashkulych, “Operation Kudu.”
4. Buderatskyi and Strashkulych, “Operation Kudu.”
5. Brian A. Dukes and Vincent R. Scauzzo, “Sustaining Effective Combat Leadership: Observations from the Russo-Ukraine War,” in A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force, ed. John Nagle and Katie Crombe (Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, June 2024), 142–3.
6. Alexandra Chinchilla et al., “The Polish Experiment in Military Advising: Improving the European Union Training Mission to Ukraine,” Modern War Institute, 14 October 2024, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-polish-experiment-in-military-advising-improving-the-european-union-training-mission-to-ukraine/.
7. Chinchilla et al., “The Polish Experiment in Military Advising.”
8. For more on Field Manual 100-5, see Paul H. Herbert, Deciding What Has to Be Done: General William E. DePuy and the 1976 Edition of FM 100-5, Operations, Leavenworth Paper no. 16 (monograph, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1 June 1988), https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA531279.
9. Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (Doubleday, 1990).
10. Jeffrey S. Wilson, “Transformational Leadership: William DePuy’s Vision for the Army,” Military Review 91, no. 5 (September-October 2011): 75.
11. Eric Michael Burke, “Ignoring Failure: General DePuy and the Dangers or Interwar Escapism,” Military Review 103, no. 1 (January-February 2023): 52.
12. Steven Vass, Maintaining Unit Endurance through Tactical-Level Training (Center for Army Lessons Learned, March 2025), 2, https://api.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/2025/03/31/dc30a0a5/25-928-maintaining-unit-endurance-through-tactical-level-training-mar-25.pdf.
13. Eleri Lillemae et al., “Revisiting Military as a Total Institution: The Case of Conscript Service in Estonia,” Armed Forces & Society, 18 February 2025, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0095327X251317439.
14. Boerre A. Langum, “Adapt, Lead, Win: NCO lessons from Ukraine,” NCO Journal, 18 October 2024, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/NCO-Journal/Archives/2024/October/NCO-Lessons-from-Ukraine/.
15. Sophia Besch and Katrine Westgaard, Europe’s Conscription Challenge: Lessons from Nordic and Baltic States (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, July 2024), 6.
16. Walter E. Kretchik, U.S. Army Doctrine: from the American Revolution to the War on Terror (University Press of Kansas, 2011), 127.
17. Lillemae et al. “Revisiting Military as a Total Institution,” 16.
18. Lillemae et al. “Revisiting Military as a Total Institution,” 16 .
19. “Applying for Cyber Conscript Training,” Finnish Defence Forces, accessed 5 December 2025, https://intti.fi/en/cyber.

 

 

 

 

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January-February 2026