Joint Professional Military Education: Timing is Everything. Getting the Commander What He Needs
Abstract
This paper focuses on identifying what joint commanders' need and why they are not getting it. It begins with the premise that although the Joint Professional Military Education system has significantly improved since the inception of the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 and the creation and refinement of a joint education program, current timing of this education does not fully meet the need of the war-fighting commander. The paper first explores what commanders need and why they need it, concluding that the current educational process is largely sufficient, but ill timed in an officer's career for junior officers and complicated by service issues that preclude many field grade officers from attending prior to their joint assignment. It illustrates the need for junior officer education based on evolving trends toward increasing involvement by junior officers in joint operations and the need to educate junior officers for this likelihood. The paper will specifically focus on commanders' needs to have junior officers exposed to basic joint fundamentals and for officers being assigned to joint warfighting commands to be able to take advantage of existing educational structures prior to their assignment. Additionally some areas within the current curriculum will be highlighted that need to be emphasized to better support the commanders' needs, including the Crisis Action Planning, Deliberate Planning, and Time Phased Force Deployment Data processes. The methodology of the paper is to first determine commander's needs, though a review of the results of various recent studies and commander interviews. Next the paper will quickly assess the current educational structures and will address the two unsatisfied commander needs in greater detail. The paper will offer a counterargument, then recommendations and will conclude.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 09, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA425970
Entities
People
- A. K. Schweikert
Organizations
- Naval War College