My task is to comment on three papers delivered to a conference on the development of expertise, and included herein. One, by Ralph Chatham, outlines changes in U.S. military training in the late 20th century (Chapter 2). I will also make brief mention of a second paper by Chatham (Chapter 10) in this book), which deals with computer-based training systems. Susan Lajoie (Chapter 3) describes Sherlock, an intelligent tutoring system developed for the U.S. Air Force in the 1980s, and then remarks on some medical intelligent tutoring systems that are now under development, which she regards as follow-ons from the Sherlock project. The third paper, by Michael Mumford and colleagues (Friedrich, Caughron, & Antes), presented as Chapter 4 in this book, reviews and analyzes leadership training. While these papers do not have a common theme, they are somewhat complementary. Chatham lays out a comprehensive set of issues and examples related to learning, training, and retention of skills in the armed services. Are these the right issues? Can psychology help? To what extent do Lajoie and Mumford address the issues Chatham raises? I will try to organize my review around these three questions. In the process I will make some comments that I hope will be useful in thinking about how expertise may be acquired and used, both in the armed services and elsewhere.

At the outset, though, I should say that it may be hard to find a common theme in my own critiques.