Congruence between acquired and requested leader competencies in asymmetric warfare: analyses of leadership curriculum at military academy

Modern armies are no longer operating conventional wars. Military personal gain operational experience on the fields of unconventional or so-called asymmetric warfare. These asymmetric operations such as PSO, PRT, etc. when military personnel is acting under the flags of NATO, UN, OSCE are widely described by military sociologists Kaldar (1999) Leech (2002) Wagemaker (2009) Soeter, Fenema, Beeres (2010), Caforio (2013), etc. The content analysis of literature on asymmetric warfare operations allowed identifying the list (18) of specific traits of asymmetric warfare (Kaminskaite, 2018; 2019). On this circumstances useless to mention that changing environment of military actions requires new or so called other professional skills of military personnel. The role of military officers and commanders is undertaking changes as well. Distinct level of military commanders requires distinct expertise in order to apply unconventional measures and to make unconventional decisions. What asymmetric leader’s competencies have be learned? Where it have to be train? The research study (Kaminskaite, 2018) done on this field identified that only 7 out of 18 competencies requested from leaders operating in asymmetric environment were developed during the pre-deployment training. Noncommissioned officers with the field experience in Afghanistan noted that most leader’s competencies requested in the asymmetric war was train not during predeployment, but developed during the everyday military routine and excessing. The results suggested further research questions about asymmetric warfare leadership training especially at the military academies. Graduated from the military academy young officers has the lieutenant military rank and the knowledge to lead platoon. During first two years of military service, majority of them are deploy abroad and getting asymmetric warfare field experience as platoon commanders. Does acquired platoon leader competencies according to leadership curriculum at military academy are congruous with requested platoon leader competencies in asymmetric warfare. Is leadership curriculum good enough for platoon officer training or needs a revision for so to speak a new future leader? That is important because modern theories of leadership emphasize that decisions of lower level leaders recently became veryimportant (Robbins, S. 2007) and it is true for asymmetric leadership. Platoon commanders more often than higher-level leaders are the subject of asymmetric battlefield and their decisions has vital significance. Conference paper seeks to answer questions above and focuses on the research data extracted from content analyses of leadership curriculum at Lithuania military academy as well as from feedback interviews of the graduated officers