Learning by Doing: the Lessons Learned Mission

Published March 21, 2016
By Army Spc. Travis Terreo
Air Forces Central Command Public Affairs

AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar -- Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Mark A. Welsh III once said, "Innovative organizations adapt, and our Air Force's success is found in innovation. To remain the best in the world, we must learn from history's lessons."

Learning from experiences is an important ability for any military organization, and the U.S. Air Forces Central Command recognizes and accomplishes that through its Lessons Learned directorate.

“We have had thousands upon thousands of Airmen rotate in and out of the AFCENT area of operation over the past 26 years,” said Col. Brian P. Duffy, AFCENT Chief of Staff. “As we have focused our fight in different areas, the air component has been a constant. If we were unable to take some bumps and bruises along the way, and recognize them for they were, work our way past them, and integrate the solutions into our daily business, we would never have been able to evolve as an organization.”

A large portion of the responsibility for this process rests on the shoulders of the two commissioned officers of the AFCENT Lessons Learned Directorate, Maj. Juan Matias, Lessons Learned director, and Capt Christopher De La Pena, Lessons Learned deputy director.

“For the most part we are just facilitators, but we are more than willing to help units along the way,” De La Pena said. “We can assist them in putting together their after action reports, providing memo templates when necessary or just answering questions. Sometimes we even travel to their location with a pen, paper and recorder to help gather information.”

Units from across the AFCENT area of operations conduct patrols, exercises, transport personnel, or a multitude of other tasks daily. Every time they do, information is collected through observations or after action reports. The unit conducting the operation then sends that information to the Lessons Learned Directorate.

“We are constantly meeting to make sure we record those key things that we fix along the way, but then have to integrate into our daily operations to be effective,” Duffy said. “As an organization we do a good job of observing shortfalls, but we have a hard time learning lessons unless it’s something traumatic. In general, though, we are getting better.”

Once the observations and AARs reach the lessons learned directorate level, they either approve them, which is known as validation, or, depending on what they are about, pass them to a higher level for validation. Once they have been validated the directorate members add them to the Joint Lessons Learned Information System. Upon being uploaded, the reports are saved and made available for later use.

“Airmen are the backbone of the Air Force. Anytime there is something difficult or challenging, it is the Airmen who do it,” said De La Pena. “If they don’t have to worry about relearning past lessons they have more time to innovate or learn new lessons. It all leads to efficiency in execution.”

Though many view gathering observations and AARs as the responsibility of senior leaders, anybody can contribute, De La Pena said. Regardless of rank, every member of an operation makes observations about the people, material or methods chosen to achieve the given task, and whether it needs to be changed.

“It is incumbent upon all of us to look back on our period of service here and remember some of those things that were difficult so we can write them down,” explained Duffy. “Wouldn’t it be nice if someone else took the time to do that so that you didn’t have to learn it the hard way?”