Leadership Still Trumps Digits

Maj. Gen. James Terry, director of the Army future forces integration directorate, standing in front of a hill at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., which I'm willing to take if properly motivated.

I spent a couple of days last week hanging out with the Army Evaluation Task Force at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. They're testing all kinds of exotic systems and networks key to the Army's future modernization projects, and I wondered if troops in the future will be into battle at the click of a mouse.

I ran into Maj. Gen. James Terry, director of the Army's future forces integration directorate, out in the boonies at White Sands. He pointed out a distant hill, and I asked him if I was on active duty, would he send me a digital order to "take that hill."

Since the hill was a rather tough, high and craggy looking monster -- and the temperature was 106 in the shade, and there was little shade -- I mused to Terry that digits might not exactly motivate me to undertake such a tough slog.

Terry told me that while digitization will enhance battlefield decision making, it will never replace personal leadership. Terry assured me that if he ever wanted me to take a hill, he would give the order in person, not over a computer.

I'd do it, too, because Terry, who will take command of the 10th Mountain Division later this summer, strikes me as the kind of guy I would follow anywhere.