[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-184]
CONTINUED ENGAGEMENT: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE RESPONSES TO THE HOUSE
ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE APRIL 2010 REPORT ON PROFESSIONAL MILITARY
EDUCATION
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
NOVEMBER 30, 2010
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
JIM COOPER, Tennessee MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
GLENN NYE, Virginia CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
Lorry Fenner, Professional Staff Member
Thomas Hawley, Professional Staff Member
Famid Sinha, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2010
Page
Hearing:
Tuesday, November 30, 2010, Continued Engagement: Department of
Defense Responses to the House Armed Services Committee April
2010 Report on Professional Military Education................. 1
Appendix:
Tuesday, November 30, 2010....................................... 29
----------
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2010
CONTINUED ENGAGEMENT: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE RESPONSES TO THE HOUSE
ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE APRIL 2010 REPORT ON PROFESSIONAL MILITARY
EDUCATION
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations................... 1
WITNESSES
Hebert, Lernes J., Acting Director, Officer and Enlisted
Personnel Management, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense
for Personnel and Readiness.................................... 2
Hix, BG William C., USA, Director, Operational Plans and Joint
Force Development, J-7, Joint Chiefs of Staff.................. 3
Lutterloh, Scott, Director, Total Force Training and Education
Division, U.S. Navy............................................ 6
MacFarland, BG Sean B., USA, Deputy Commandant, Command and
General Staff College, U.S. Army............................... 4
Neller, Maj. Gen. Robert, USMC, President, Marine Corps
University..................................................... 9
Sitterly, Daniel R., Director of Force Development, Deputy Chief
of Staff, Manpower and Personnel, U.S. Air Force............... 7
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Hebert, Lernes J............................................. 37
Hix, BG William C............................................ 41
Lutterloh, Scott............................................. 59
MacFarland, BG Sean B........................................ 46
Neller, Maj. Gen. Robert..................................... 68
Sitterly, Daniel R........................................... 64
Snyder, Hon. Vic............................................. 33
Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations....... 35
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
CONTINUED ENGAGEMENT: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE RESPONSES TO THE HOUSE
ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE APRIL 2010 REPORT ON PROFESSIONAL MILITARY
EDUCATION
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,
Washington, DC, Tuesday, November 30, 2010.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:07 a.m., in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND
INVESTIGATIONS
Dr. Snyder. Good morning and welcome to the Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations' hearing on the views of the
Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
the uniform heads of services on the House Armed Services
Committee report on professional military education. The title
of our report was ``Another Crossroads? Professional Military
Education Two Decades After the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the
Skelton Panel.''
In April 2010, after more than a year of studies and
hearings and site visits by both members and staff to all the
relevant institutions, the subcommittee published this report
with 39 findings and recommendations. The report examined
officer in-residence PME [professional military education] as a
critical investment in the most important element of our
military--our people. We concluded that the United States
cannot afford to be complacent when it comes to producing
leaders capable of meeting significant challenges whether at
the tactical, operational, or the strategic levels of warfare.
Further, as a matter of national security, the country's
continuing investment in the PME system must be wisely made.
We also found that although today's PME system is basically
sound, there are areas that need improvement. The committee's
report of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal
Year 2011 required that the Department's most senior leaders
provide their views on the subcommittee's PME report.
DOD [Department of Defense] leadership provided their views
in September and indicated they largely agreed with our
findings and recommendations. We are here today to hear what
they agreed with, what they disagreed with and plans for moving
forward, and also any thoughts about what our report and the
ongoing discussions left out as our country moves forward on
looking at professional military education.
We have a fairly large group of witnesses today. And you
know how the reality is; if you all make an hour-long opening
statement, I am not going anywhere, I don't have an office
anymore, so this is fine with me to sit here, but you all may
have better things to do. But we have your opening statements.
They will be made a part of the record.
And I also want to acknowledge the presence of
Representative Davis from California, who is the current
chairperson, will be the ranking member in the new Congress, on
Military Personnel [Subcommittee]. And as you know, this
subcommittee does not have legislative jurisdiction, but the
Military Personnel Subcommittee does. And she has had an
ongoing interest and will be here in the new Congress.
So we are joined today by--is it Lernes?
Mr. Hebert. Lernes.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Lernes Hebert, the acting Director, Officer
and Enlisted Personnel Management, Office of the Deputy Under
Secretary of Defense; Brigadier General William Hix, Director
for Operational Plans and Joint Force Development, J7, Joint
Chiefs of Staff; Brigadier General Sean MacFarland, Deputy
Commandant, Command and General Staff College, U.S. Army; Mr.
Scott Lutterloh, Director of Total Force Training and Education
Division, U.S. Navy; Mr. Dan Sitterly, Director of Force
Development, Deputy Chief of Staff, Manpower and Personnel,
U.S. Air Force; Major General Robert Neller, President of the
Marine Corps University, U.S. Marine Corps.
Thank you all for being here. Is this the order we are
going to go down? We will begin with you. And we will put the
clock on for 5 minutes. If you see the red light fire off, we
are not going to set off flares or anything, but----
Mr. Hebert. It won't take that long.
Dr. Snyder. Okay. Good. Why don't you go ahead?
[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the
Appendix on page 33.]
STATEMENT OF LERNES J. HEBERT, ACTING DIRECTOR, OFFICER AND
ENLISTED PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT, OFFICE OF THE UNDER SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE FOR PERSONNEL AND READINESS
Mr. Hebert. Yes, sir. Chairman Snyder, members of the
committee, on behalf of the Secretary of Defense and the Under
Secretary of Defense of Personnel and Readiness, I want to
extend our appreciation for the committee's interest in
improving professional military education. The Department is in
the process of analyzing the recommendations of the committee's
report on this subject and reporting back to the Congress on
the proposed changes to the Department's policies and
procedures. We take this task very seriously. We are using a
senior-level review panel to properly evaluate each
recommendation; and while I will not presuppose their
deliberations, the Department's initial review indicates broad
support for almost all of the recommendations and with the
exception of a few that we believe require further study.
That being said, the Department has already taken action on
some of the recommendations. For example, in fiscal year 2009,
we asked the Director of the Joint Staff to review JPME I
[Joint Professional Military Education Phase I] instructor
positions to see if the positions could qualify for joint duty
credit. This report has been reviewed by the Under Secretary of
Defense for Personnel Readiness and forwarded to the House
Armed Services Committee. In addition, the Department proposed
a legislative change to remove the JPME I instructor
prohibition specified in Title 10, which specifically addresses
a recommendation in the report. This places these positions on
equal footing with similar positions across the Department.
The Department also agrees with the committee findings that
the professional military education system is sound but could
use some improvements to become more flexible and attuned to
emerging requirements. The Congress aided this effort
immeasurably by passing legislation in 2007, the National
Defense Authorization Act, allowing the Department to move
beyond the recognition of simple interservice operations and to
recognize interagency and international experiences.
This single change, along with the flexibility provided to
adapt career-long joint qualifications, is the type of
proactive engagement described by the committee's report.
Officers are now being recognized for significant joint
experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and other temporary
operations not initially described in the charter Goldwater-
Nichols legislation.
By extension, these experiences are being institutionalized
by more diverse student populations and broader curricula at
professional military education institutions. The mere fact
that these are now recognizable joint experiences, in turn,
leads to an officer corps who will seek out attainment of these
desirable education experiences and opportunities in these
areas.
Again, I want to thank you for this opportunity to testify
on behalf of the Secretary and Under Secretary of Defense for
Personnel Readiness on this topic. I look forward to your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hebert can be found in the
Appendix on page 37.]
Dr. Snyder. General Hix.
STATEMENT OF BG WILLIAM C. HIX, USA, DIRECTOR, OPERATIONAL
PLANS AND JOINT FORCE DEVELOPMENT, J-7, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF
General Hix. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee,
thank you for the opportunity to discuss your----
Dr. Snyder. Pull that microphone a little closer to you if
you wouldn't mind.
General Hix. Yes, sir. Thank you for this opportunity to
discuss the subcommittee's report. joint professional military
education is and will remain an essential pillar of joint
officer development, a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
focus area. And we appreciate the subcommittee's continued
emphasis on and support for joint professional military
education across the entire education enterprise in the
Department of Defense.
We welcome the subcommittee's review and we broadly concur
with the report's conclusion that the professional military
education system is basically sound and that there are systemic
and institutional areas that require our continued attention.
As you are aware, the Joint Staff continues in conjunction with
our service and DOD partners, a cross-Department effort to
analyze the report's recommendations. We expect this analysis
to inform decisions this winter.
While this effort continues, our preliminary conclusion
gives broad endorsement to the report at the macro level. In
conjunction with the Offices of Secretary of Defense and the
services, the Joint Staff will continue to work through the
report's recommendations in the coming months.
That said, our expectation is that the results of this
effort will ultimately drive changes in policy and procedure,
including the chairman's Officer Professional Military
Education Policy, which guides joint professional military
education across the services. We will persist in exploring all
available avenues to improve and expand joint education to
ensure our forces are equipped with the critical thinking
skills and mental dexterity needed to succeed in all
environments.
One such initiative to expand access to opportunities for
rigorous joint education is our proposal for authority to allow
the Joint Forces Staff College to provide an alternative
nonresident Joint Professional Military Education Phase II
program hosted by the combatant commands and the Joint Staff at
offsite locations. That would be 10 locations in all. The
proposal was carried in the Senate Armed Services Committee
mark for the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act and we
welcome this subcommittee's support.
As in all of our endeavors, Congress' consistent support of
joint professional military education has and will continue to
enable us to maintain a vibrant and relevant education
enterprise. And for that, we are truly appreciative. I stand
ready to address your questions. Thank you for this
opportunity.
[The prepared statement of General Hix can be found in the
Appendix on page 41.]
Dr. Snyder. General MacFarland.
STATEMENT OF BG SEAN B. MACFARLAND, USA, DEPUTY COMMANDANT,
COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE, U.S. ARMY
General MacFarland. Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee, General Casey asked me to represent him here
today because of my responsibilities, which include leader
development for all warrant officers and all officers between
the rank of captain and lieutenant colonel. And it is my
pleasure to be able to provide input on the ``Another
Crossroads'' report today and update you on the continuing
progress in the Army's professional military education
programs.
General Casey provided his personal insights in his letter
on 6 October, and my job is to provide some additional details
and also answer any questions that you might have. As General
Casey noted, the Army appreciates the comprehensive review
conducted by this committee. And we thank in particular, Dr.
Lorry Fenner and her team, for the quality of their work and
the positive and professional manner in which they carried it
out. And we have learned a lot from that experience and we have
already begun to move forward on some of the findings and
recommendations.
The Army fully participated in the survey and concurs with
the analysis, observations, and recommendations. It is
important for me to note that the Army has just approved the
Army Learning Concept 2015, which is a comprehensive approach
to education and training throughout the Army, and it includes
the schools that the report discusses.
And I want to begin my remarks by providing a few of the
most important examples of how the ALC [Army Learning Concept]
2015 supports the findings of ``Another Crossroads.''
One of your key findings noted that DOD should explore
innovative avenues to develop the respective officer corps
through education, training, assignments or experience. The
cornerstone of ALC 2015 is, in fact, supporting a balance of
education, training and experience over a career of
professional growth and development. The document that will
guide the Army through the process of change, and innovation in
its education and training is this ALC. And it applies to all
cohorts within the Army: civilian, noncommissioned officers,
warrant, and commissioned. But it is clearly in step with your
recommendations.
Also, we recognized the finding that we needed a central
focal point or a full-time director of military education and
the ALC 2015 does that. The position is called the Chief
Learning Innovation Officer, or CLIO. And he will be a key
advisor to the Training and Doctrine Command's Commander,
General Dempsey, on military education. ``Another Crossroads''
also observed that TRADOC has been designated the manager for
human capital development for the Army. And although we are
early in that process, we believe that ALC 2015 reinforces our
commitment to continued improvement of PME in the Army. We
don't consider leader development just to be those times spent
in the schoolhouse, but it is something that happens throughout
your career. And now we are trying harder to ensure that we get
the PME windows when it is needed and not just when officers
are available.
I do want to highlight one place where we disagree with the
report, and that is probably because we didn't provide the
necessary information to your team and it may have led to some
confusion. CGSC, Command and General Staff College, does, in
fact, have 70 percent civilian faculty, but they are not
contractors as the report stated. We only have a couple of
contractors and they mostly work in the Digital Leader
Development Center and not as primary instructors.
Finally, I just want to thank the committee for support on
two issues critical to PME. First is extending JDAL [Joint Duty
Assignment List] credit to our nonhost officers. That is
critical, we believe, to providing high-quality JPME I credit
to our students at intermediate level education. And secondly,
we think that the committee did a great service by shining a
light on the need for copyright ownership of scholarly works
produced by our faculty. And your support of the Platts-Skelton
amendment will improve the ability of our faculty to get
published. And that will, we believe, enhance recruiting for
civilian faculty members to come to our schools.
Finally, I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity to
share the Army's views with you today, and we are already
moving forward with many of the issues noted and this report
will guide PME in the future just as its predecessor, the
Skelton report, has for the past 20 years. And I stand ready to
answer any questions. Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of General MacFarland can be found
in the Appendix on page 46.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, General. Mr. Lutterloh.
STATEMENT OF SCOTT LUTTERLOH, DIRECTOR, TOTAL FORCE TRAINING
AND EDUCATION DIVISION, U.S. NAVY
Mr. Lutterloh. Good morning. Chairman Snyder,
Representative Davis, and distinguished members of the
Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to discuss the Navy's views on the committee's
April 2010 report, ``Another Crossroads? Professional Military
Education Two Decades After the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the
Skelton Panel.''
We appreciate the subcommittee's efforts in conducting such
a comprehensive assessment of professional military education
since enactment of Goldwater-Nichols. The major findings are
accurate in identifying the fundamental issues warranting
critical deliberation as we continue in our commitment to
improve PME and the professional development of our officer
corps.
We concur with the subcommittee's assessment that the PME
system is sound. As with any program, there are areas for
potential improvement. Navy places significant value on PME as
we develop and enable resilient and adaptable leaders to meet
challenges at the tactical, operational, and strategical levels
of war.
Navy continues to emphasize PME as we provide unique and
complementary maritime warfighting skills to joint and combined
force commanders.
In response to the need for increased joint and service-
specific subject matter to be taught earlier in an officer's
career, Navy established a career continuum of PME. We have a
sequence continuum of learning that provides relevant education
aligned to clear progression, spanning E-1 through O-8, with a
goal of providing Navy's Total Force with a standardized,
comprehensive understanding of the Navy and its warfighting
capabilities.
We are currently evaluating the report's recommendation
that Navy consider instituting a quality board process for
selection of the in-residence PME students by evaluating our
screening process of top-performing officers for eligibility to
attend service colleges. Under the leadership of the Vice Chief
of Naval Operations, the Navy has appointed a cross-functional
working group to evaluate the current selection processes for
JPME in-residence education.
We concur with the report's observation, that while PME is
a factor in cultivating strategists, it is not the primary
means for developing future strategic decisionmakers. As noted
in the report, Navy has a relatively advanced process for
cultivating strategists. We acknowledge there is more to be
done with respect to developing strategic decisionmakers, and
are actively engaged in a review of how we develop our senior
leaders. Competing demands for time in a career track of
officers of the unrestricted line remains a primary challenge.
Recently, we implemented new approaches to officer
development through introduction of specialty career paths for
unrestricted line officers. These specialty career paths allow
Navy to better integrate training, education, and experiential
tours focused on specialty areas while officers continue to
serve in their warfare communities.
Navy takes a balanced approach to professional education
that views operational competency and primacy of command as key
professional measures for naval officers. professional military
education has been instrumental in developing a highly educated
and more effective leader. We value the flexibility provided by
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff which permits Navy to
manage the content, quality, and conduct of our PME continuum.
On behalf of the Chief of Naval Operations and the entire
Navy, thank you again for your exceptionally strong support of
our military members and their family and for your career-long
leadership in the professional development of our Navy Total
Force.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lutterloh can be found in
the Appendix on page 59.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you. Mr. Sitterly.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL R. SITTERLY, DIRECTOR OF FORCE DEVELOPMENT,
DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR MANPOWER AND PERSONNEL, U.S. AIR
FORCE
Mr. Sitterly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee, for the opportunity to discuss Air Force Chief of
Staff Schwartz's views on the ``Crossroads'' report. This is
the fourth time in this Congress I have had the opportunity to
testify on airmen development. Each time you help us to fine-
tune the development of our most important weapons system, our
Total Force airmen. Thank you.
We continue to develop talented and diverse airmen at the
tactical, operational, and strategic level. We concur with the
report's general tenet that the professional military education
system is still basically sound, but with systemic and
institutional areas that require a heightened focus and effort
to improve. We endorse the idea that education has to be
relevant to the student and the service, as well as inseparable
from the execution of our developmental doctrine in support of
service and joint organizational requirements.
The relevancy of education is one of the main premises that
drive our desire and our ability to incorporate joint and
service-specific subject matter into our curriculum and deliver
that content to officers earlier in their careers, all in an
effort to anticipate and adapt to current and future
challenges.
Central to the report's concern and our focus is the
necessity to develop strategists. Combined with a strong
fellowship program, we recently added advanced academic degree
opportunities in history, political science, international
relations, economics, and philosophy to our portfolio. These
new educational experiences are being earned at some of the
Nation's most prestigious universities.
To an increased focus on critical thinking at junior
levels, we are developing an officer corps that is capable of
and empowered to solve the problems they will encounter
throughout their careers.
I should also mention the importance we place on continuum
of service in our country's entire national security arena.
While we are all familiar with how strategic thinking airmen
like Norty Schwartz and [General] Duncan McNabb transformed
TRANSCOM's [Transportation Command] development and
distribution operations--pardon me--deployment and distribution
operations to the warfighter, for instance, let's not forget
those airmen cultivated to think strategically who still serve
in our country's defense out of uniform.
Dr. Lorry Fenner of this committee received her Ph.D. in
history and is now one of the foremost authorities on military
human capital in our country. Colonel (retired) Will Gunn leads
the Veterans Administration's general counsel office. Colonel
Hal Hoxie is making strategic decisions in matters incredibly
important to our country and to the future of America as the
President of Central Christian College. Airman Les Lyles is a
defense industry strategic thinker, as well as Chairman of the
Congressional Military Leadership Diversity Commission. Mark
Clanton, Chuck Bush, Jim Finch, Chuck Greenwood, Blaine Tingle,
Charles Garcia, are all involved in strategic thinking in the
national security business every day using the education and
experience developed in our Air Force.
Our primary PME mission is on the application of military
power, but our development programs directly contribute to the
diplomatic, international, and economic instruments both in and
out of uniform.
Beyond content and delivery, we also concur with the
report's finding that we have a need to address faculty and
resource concerns at our institutions; therefore, we are in the
process of reviewing policies regarding our hiring practices,
job advancement, and academic freedom, as well as copyright and
intellectual property concerns.
The Air Force has made significant advances in the past two
years in our approach to developmental education. We have upped
our game with a new on-line Air Command and Staff College
program to complete transformation of company-grade officer
professional military education, new advanced courses within
Air Command and Staff College and Air War College, and expanded
enrollment in progress toward a doctoral program in the School
of Advanced Air and Space Studies.
These efforts, combined with conducive military personnel
and developmental opportunities, will allow us to continue
forging the synergistic relationship between Air Force
training, experience, and education.
As evidenced by the ``Crossroads'' report, your insight and
continued support ensures our ability to fly, fight, and win in
aerospace and in cyberspace. Thank you. I look forward to
answering any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sitterly can be found in the
Appendix on page 64.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Sitterly. General Neller.
STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. ROBERT NELLER, USMC, PRESIDENT, MARINE
CORPS UNIVERSITY
General Neller. Chairman Snyder, Representative Davis, good
morning. Thank you for permitting me to discuss and represent
the Marine Corps' views on the report, ``Another Crossroads.''
The Marine Corps deeply appreciates the extensive research,
analysis, and documentation contained in the report.
The work of the subcommittee provided a thorough assessment
of the status of PME and, more importantly, provided sound
recommendations on a variety of issues that will improve our
educational programs. We have carefully reviewed the report and
are already at work implementing many of the recommendations.
Additionally, we continue to work closely with the Joint
Staff and the other services to ensure a coordinated approach
as we examine each issue.
The Marine Corps, and Marine Corps University in
particular, is constantly reviewing and revising our PME
programs to ensure we meet the needs of the operating forces
and prepare our leaders. We strengthen the faculty and the
staff of our schools and colleges and continually review our
curriculum for relevance. We plan infrastructure improvements
and technology enhancements that we believe will dramatically
improve the learning environment for our students.
While we will make our quality resident officer programs
even better, our current emphasis, as you know from your visit
down to Quantico, is the improvement of our enlisted PME
programs. As noted in the ``Issues for Further Studies''
section of the report, progress has been made here, but much
work remains to be done to fully prepare our enlisted leaders.
Last month, General Amos published his Commandant's
Planning Guidance identifying professional military education
as one of his top priorities. In fact, today at 13:30, he is
holding an in-progress review, which I will participate in, to
discuss where we are with education.
Excuse me. His guidance directs that plans be developed to
increase the number of Marines attending resident officer and
enlisted education programs and to continue to further develop
Marine Corps University into a world-class institution. We are
in the process of developing options to increase attendance in
our programs without sacrificing quality or desired learning
outcomes. We believe we have made substantial progress in
strengthening our faculty, students, and curricula.
We are also on course to make significant progress in our
facilities. For example, we have over $120 million in MILCON
[military construction] programmed over the next 3 years for
educational facilities. I am also pleased to report that the
Expeditionary Warfare School Distributed Education Network, or
EDEN, an item of interest during a subcommittee visit, is now
fully funded and will be operational as soon as we can procure
the equipment and implement the concept. The Commandant's
Planning Guidance and the subcommittee report complement each
other and provide a good roadmap to improve our already strong
PME programs.
Again, we appreciate the support of Congress and
specifically this subcommittee for military PME, and I stand
ready to answer your questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Neller can be found in
the Appendix on page 68.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you all.
Mrs. Davis, would you like to begin? [Mrs. Davis indicated
no.] We will go back and forth on the 5-minute clock here. One
of the reasons we did this report is it had been some time
since the Armed Services Committee had really looked at PME.
There has been a lot going on for the last decade, but I think
it was also one of those topics that didn't get the attention
it probably deserved even before the events of the last decade.
My question is, as you look forward 2 years, 3 years, 5
years, 8 years, whatever, down the line, what mechanisms do you
see that are in place to assess how well the PME system is
doing, the in-residence officer PME system, and does it need to
be changed, revisited? What are your assessment tools about how
well the system is working?
I will--General Neller, let us just begin with you and go
backwards this time.
General Neller. We are always in the process of assessing,
at least internally, how we are doing. Obviously the committee
report provides an external assessment. Every class that
graduates from Command and Staff or MCWAR [Marine Corps War
College], or even Expeditionary Warfare School for our
captains, we go out to the operating force who receive these
officers and ask them if they have met the requirement. I mean,
are they satisfied with what they are receiving.
Again, I take the response that people's time is valuable
and short, but we get an almost 100 percent positive response
on the quality of the education that these officers receive. We
also ask the officers if they believe that we prepared them for
their service. And again, their answers, in my opinion, are a
little bit more candid. But, again, the overwhelming majority,
90-plus percent, in almost all categories felt the experience
and the educational experience that they gained while they were
at Marine Corps University helped them better perform their
duties, whether it is in a staff or a command position.
We also look at our own objectives. We use the tasks that
came out of the Wilhelm Study in 2006 to self-assess ourselves
as to whether or not we are making progress. As your report
noted, we do have some facilities and infrastructure issues
which, in the last year, because of decisions by the Commandant
to fund facilities which are going to house the infrastructure,
I really see the new buildings as technology that is just in a
building. I think we are going to make progress there. So those
are what we have internally to self-assess.
Mr. Sitterly. Thank you for that question. I agree, as
primarily a force provider, it is important that we go to our
commanders, our combatant commanders, especially in the field,
to ask if we are providing them officers that have both the
experience and the education necessary to execute our military
requirements in a joint environment. For instance, we found
that we had a gap in our more junior officers and their ability
to operate as we are deploying folks in this environment, more
junior than perhaps we had in the past. So we have totally
revamped now our basic developmental education at the Squadron
Officers School, an Air and Space Basic Course, to adapt the
curricula to that.
Additionally, we found from combatant commanders that they
valued those students that we put through our School of
Advanced Air and Space Studies. And so we have increased that
program so that we are selecting more people to put into that
program with that curriculum, in addition to that feedback that
we get from the field. Thank you.
Mr. Lutterloh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the case of the
Naval War College, in addition to the internal assessments, I
would say that there were some other training objectives that
are completed by the War College. For example, maritime
component commander training, Joint Staff training for our
operational commands that actually put the president of the War
College in training and education situations with COCOMs
[combatant commanders] in theater two to three times a year. So
he is getting direct feedback from those leaders on the quality
of the education.
In addition to that, the significant war-gaming capability
at War College has always led to the identification of areas
where the Navy needs to move in terms of maritime dominance,
and specifically where the War College needs to move with their
curricula.
And finally I would point out that the Military Education
Coordination Council, our robust participation in that, is what
leads to driving change into the curricula across the board and
standardizing it across the services and throughout the joint
community. Thank you.
General MacFarland. Well, right now we are in an era of
persistent conflict. And probably the ultimate indicator of how
well we are doing in PME will be how well we are doing on the
battlefield. And we believe that PME is the key to agile
thinkers. And we are constantly reevaluating and assessing how
we go about creating creative and adaptive leaders.
The assessments mentioned by General Neller and others are
part of our assessment process, both asking the students and
asking their commanders out there. Another way we can assess
the value of PME is based on the demand for PME, the officers
seeking admission to PME, the competition for going to school,
and also the demand in the field for PME graduates.
Right now we are frequently asked to hurry up and graduate
more SAMS, School of Advanced Military Studies, officers. There
is a high demand for those trained planners out there in the
force. Obviously, people attach a great deal of importance on
the value of that professional military educational experience.
So we are doing something right there. And we are hoping to
expand that across all of PME.
Lately, there has been a devaluation in the minds of many
of our officers of the value of education. They value
experience. Getting more hash marks on the sleeve is perceived
as more important than going and sitting in a school. We are
trying to address that balance with the Army Learning Concept
2015. And when more officers vote with their feet and try to go
to school instead of get a third or a fourth tour down range,
we will know that we are obviously providing value to the force
and--when members of the force see that.
General Hix. Mr. Chairman, I endorse the comments of my
colleagues here, and I will offer a slightly different
perspective, given my responsibilities for oversight on behalf
of the chairman.
Since 2000, my staff and members of the various schools,
universities, and colleges run by the military have conducted
44 PAJE visits. And these are Process of Accreditation of Joint
Education visits not unlike the accreditation that universities
and colleges go through to offer civilian master's degrees, but
focused on joint professional military education and their
adherence to the OPMEP [Officer PME Policy], looking at best
practices in terms of how they deliver a joint education and
that sort of thing.
As part of that review, we also dig into their own
assessment programs. And each of them has a very comprehensive
program as they have laid out, focused on not only the
perspective of the student but also of the customer, which is,
of course, the commanders, be they service commanders or joint
operational commanders. And those assessments very clearly
indicate a demand for additional education, more of what these
universities and colleges deliver, as well as a reflection from
many of the students that they were glad that they had gotten
some of that education before they actually went into an
assignment.
I can tell you anecdotally that the staff officers that
work for me and those that I have worked with in the past in
assignments at large headquarters, and also in the Pentagon,
all note the fact that they were leveraging the education they
received at a War College, be it from the National Defense
University, ICAF [Industrial College of the Armed Forces], or
National War College or one of the service schools.
Lastly, to build off of comments of General MacFarland, the
demand from the field is also very clear. We have seen this
from the combatant commands, that they are looking for more
joint education and actually having it sooner. The throughput
at the universities and at the Joint Forces Staff College for
Joint Professional Military Education Level II is challenged to
meet the demands of the joint authorizations out in the
combatant commands and now with forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And so we have looked at how to meet that demand more
broadly. And I think that is your best indicator of whether the
product that is being put out by those who educate our officers
is useful, is the fact that they are demanding more of the
same.
Mr. Hebert. Sir, as my colleagues have described to you, we
have a system of measures, if you will, to ensure that we are
meeting the demands in the future, whether it be the internal
school practices, assessments, the Military Education
Coordination Council, which OSD [Office of the Secretary of
Defense] participates in, as well as the PAJE visits which we
participate in. We see this whole system of measures, if you
will, are indicators taken together. Whether or not change is
required. For our part, OSD is taking the recommendations of
the committee's report seriously in that we are reconsidering
our role in this entire enterprise to determine how we can best
create synergy between the service efforts and the Joint Staff
efforts and lend to creating an opportunity that in the future
we can anticipate the needs of the students far in advance of
when they might be required.
Dr. Snyder. Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you all for your responses. I was
interested--I think General Hix first mentioned the fact that
we are fighting two wars. And I know that in the meetings that
we had, there was some discussion about the fact that it was
difficult for people to take time off for PME time, a very, you
know, big problem that all of the services were experiencing.
So I just wonder if you could respond to that a little bit more
in terms of--I think you have talked about the broadening of
the experiences in many ways.
There probably couldn't be a better teacher than applying
the knowledge and the strategic thinking that is really
required. But I wonder at the same time how difficult a problem
you think that is and if there is anything else that we should
be supporting or helping with to be sure that there is
certainly a high incentive for people to find a way to have
that time. And again, we are talking not just about thinking
about fighting the wars that we are fighting today, but the
future wars and how we get that from those who are in the
services today, and certainly our officers.
Anybody want to--you have sort of talked--you obviously
have plans to think about that. But I wonder if you could just
focus on that and the extent to which you think that is truly a
problem and what we are actually doing to send that message.
General Hix. Ma'am, I will take the first shot, then, as
you mentioned me by name. I would tell you as part of the PAJE
process, we look at not only the delivery of in-resident
education, but also the delivery of nonresident or distributed-
learning education. And as you know, currently JPME II is
delivered only in-residence. And I think that at the time that
those strictures were codified, it made sense because the art
of distributed learning is not what it is today.
And I have to say from my own perspective of having visited
several of the colleges in my time as a J7 [Joint Staff
Operational Plans and Joint Force Development], there are some
pretty innovative approaches and some very interactive means of
instruction that certainly did not exist, you know, years ago,
several years ago. And you actually--in one case, I observed a
class being conducted where students were in a chat room,
literally globally, dealing with a problem, and frankly in some
cases, actually dealing with the problem more as if they would
be--as if they were actually doing it for real, because they
weren't all in the same classroom where they could talk and
make coordination easy.
So in terms of learning how to, you know, deal with a very
critical problem, a complex problem, deliver rapidly critical
thinking, that sort of thing, we have come a long way. And,
frankly, that is really the basis--and I will harp on this one
more time--the basis of our legislative proposal to allow us to
start with looking at the art of the possible and in this case
the delivery of JPME II in a very controlled environment, 10
sites across the combatant commands where you have an automatic
joint pool of officers that provides, you know, one of the key
points of joint experiences--interaction with other services.
And it is done at the combatant commands where they are
demanding more officers have the joint education opportunity.
And from that, we can then learn to--more about how we deliver
JPME II in a distributed environment and see if we can then
transfer that to our combatant command--I am sorry--our service
colleagues who currently are only able to deliver JPME I credit
from a distributed learning perspective. Thank you.
General Neller. I think, Representative Davis, your
question--and correct me if I am wrong--deals with the kind of
inevitable tension between deploying and getting to the fight
and going to school. Again, this is my opinion. I think at the
beginning--and I think General MacFarland talked about this--
there was a tremendous drive that, you know, you had to get to
the fight because, you know, for all the good reasons. You
wanted to participate and test yourself and be involved. But as
this has gone on longer, I think most people have been, and so
now they see--take a longer view.
And so I think there has been a shift and that people
understanding that, all right, I have been, I am competitive, I
am still going to be considered qualified for promotion, I need
to get my education and I get the other benefit of a year where
my family and I get some stability. And I can't prove that, but
that is my personal view that I think that is part of the
reason that the force has been as sustainable as it has,
because officers have been able to take time off to go to
school and not take a break but get educated, but at the same
time have some sort of normalcy in their personal and in their
family life.
So I think at least for the foreseeable future, I think
there will be more and more people who will see school not as
an inconvenience but as both a benefit for them personally and
for them professionally. But that tension is always going to be
there and, again, it is going to depend on where that
individual officer, where he or she is in their career; are
they coming from the operating forces and going to school so
that they feel competent that they have good solid operational
background? Are they coming from the supporting establishment
and there is this desire to get back to the fight, it is their
turn to go again. And professional military education will
assist them in either way. So we are seeing a slight shift, at
least in talking in non--I can't document this. This is my
assessment, that more and more people are seeing the benefit
and advantage of going to resident PME.
General MacFarland. Ma'am, General Neller is exactly right,
as always. But I just wanted to add on a little. The Army has
recognized that perhaps some of our officers need additional
incentive to get into the schoolhouse, because without that
mentoring or coaching to enter resident education, they just
simply will stay away and continue to rack up additional
experience.
So we are trying to put teeth back into our professional
military education policies where promotion and selection for
command will be not available to the officers who do not have
the requisite schooling. So we have kind of drifted away from
that, under the duress of the demands of the operational force.
We are coming back to that.
One of the big challenges we had is the Army is unique in
that we have gone to universal intermediate-level education.
All majors are required to attend some form of school, either
distributed learning, like General Hix mentioned, or resident,
or a blended version of that with partial resident, partial
distributed. And we have looked at our capacity for that and
have expanded that to meet the demand. Now we just need to get
the officers into the programs. And that is what the policies
will do.
Finally, we have looked at our younger officers, the
captains, and we are looking at a pilot program for a captain's
career course that doesn't require as much in-residence time,
and the rest of the resident time will be determined partially
by a learning assessment prior to attending school so it is
more modular tailored to the officer rather than industrial
age--well, this is what year group you are in, so you will
attend this schooling. It is more learner-centric, officer-
centric. And that is all part of the Army Learning Concept
2015. Thank you.
Mr. Lutterloh. Representative Davis, I just would like to
comment on three things quickly. I agree wholeheartedly with
General Hix. Distributed JPME II will go a long way to
providing additional opportunities for our officers to get the
joint qualification, the joint education that they need in
their careers to adequately man those joint combatant commands.
So anything that we can do to facilitate that is very useful. I
understand very well that there is a trade-off between 10
months, 10 to 12 months in residence, and the ability to spend
valuable time in seminars talking and thinking with compatriots
of other services and even the international and interagency
community, but there is also tremendous value in a 10-week very
focused time frame in which those officers are gaining some of
the very same concepts in joint warfighting that are the items
that are needed in theater.
Secondly, I will be leaving next week to travel to Newport
to travel to the War College to invest an entire day in
investigating the art of the possible relative to distributed
learning. Not so much to supplant JPME I or JPME II, but to
look at innovative ways by which we can educate our officers
over a prolonged period of time, perhaps through interactive
distributed seminars, perhaps through war games over a weekend,
perhaps tailored to certain career points, career milestones. I
will be investigating those aspects with the War College to see
where we can go maybe on a different vector than we have
considered so far.
The third and last thing is an aggressive policy pursuit.
So I also agree with General MacFarland here. We have rather
aggressively addressed some of these issues through policy. We
combined our surface combatant executive officer and commanding
officer tours into one, to shorten that period of time aboard
the ship and provide additional opportunity in the career
pipeline for advanced education. We have also insisted, policy-
wise, on completion of JPME I prior to assuming command at the
commander command. We have thought about it at major command
perhaps for JPME II completion. We continue to aggressively
pursue policy issues there.
And in conjunction with our selection process, the review
that was recommended by the panel, I believe the combination of
these three things will put us in pretty good position for the
future. Thank you.
Mr. Sitterly. If I could just add from the Air Force
perspective, we face some of the same challenges. And the
complexity of the current operations does require us, I think,
to look at both the students, but also the faculty. And we
value both the depth and the breadth of experience. So for the
faculty, we want to ensure that we give our instructors the
opportunity not only to establish their academic credentials,
but also to bring into the classroom a current operations
perspective. So there is a very short period of time in a
career to get a lot of things done from command to staff to,
you know, deployments, faculty, so on and so forth. So as we
noted in our report, as General Schwartz noted, we would like
to continue our dialogue with our colleagues on the faculty-to-
student ratio in the OPMEP. Thank you.
Mr. Hebert. Representative Davis, I want to capitalize on
the comments of my colleagues. I would offer that there is no
one ideal method of delivering professional military education.
It differs by officer. It differs in many cases by virtue of
where they are in their individual careers. By having a broad
spectrum of opportunities to deliver joint professional
military education or professional military education in the
services case, we create the diversity of the force and
thinking that you wouldn't normally have if you had a single
institution, just as you wouldn't normally send all of your
engineers to one institution, because they would all come away
with a very similar thought pattern in many cases.
You wouldn't--we believe professional military education is
similarly suited. Having distributed courses at various
combatant commands attunes those officers who attain school
with that combatant command a certain knowledge that others may
not have if they went to National War College or elsewhere. So
I would just leave you with that thought.
Dr. Snyder. Maybe I will just direct this question at the
two of you there. If anyone disagrees--but some of the issues
you have been talking about, both students and faculties, where
does the education fit into their career? And early on when we
were talking with students and even faculty, we would hear
reports from the combatant commanders that some students were
going to a school long past the time that they should have, so
it didn't speak much to them because they had already learned
that; or they are being sent to a billet where they should have
had the school, and 2 or 3 months into that billet that
combatant commander is having to send that person to a school,
which he wished he had had before they got there.
And we heard the same thing with faculty, by the way. If
somebody is assigned to be a faculty member, they really wanted
to be a wing commander or something.
But how much are those kind of things that you deal with
out of your control because they are really a product of the
personnel system and moving people around? How much control do
you all have and influence do you have over having a personnel
system come up so that it really can, in a very sophisticated
manner, look at both where they are at in their career, where
they are going to go, where that particular 10-month break, for
example, fits in an appropriate way both for the student and
the military.
Mr. Hebert. If I may lead off. In 2007, when Congress
enacted legislation which removed the sequencing requirement,
it created the flexibility for the Department to make sure that
we could better time that professional military education in
that officer's career. Whether it be exactly adjacent to that
Joint Staff tour or perhaps it is just prior to sending him off
to the desert for a deployment, what it allowed for was a much
greater flexibility, not less flexibility as we moved forward.
Now, we have only had a couple of years under this enhanced
Goldwater-Nichols legislation, but what we are seeing is the
services do have greater flexibility in timing it to both
attune it to the officer's future potential to serve and
additional grades beyond that, but to also consider whether
that officer is going to be well-timed for a combatant command
tour, a Joint Staff tour, a future deployment. But the
underlying problem is what General Hix identified earlier:
Demand far outstrips our ability to provide or develop
officers, particularly the JPME II level. We believe we have
solved that at the JPME I level but not at the JPME II level.
General Hix. Sir, I will only comment briefly on this, as
my personal responsibilities are focused on the education
aspect and that manpower management is not within my purview.
Dr. Snyder. But it has great influence over what happens.
General Hix. It does indeed, sir. And I will touch on one
issue, particularly regarding faculty. In general, especially
with the joint officers, you know, education in general flows
appropriately in the macro sense. You go to staff college, you
get a branch qualifying job, if you will, within your service,
whether it is a department-head tour or as a staff officer in a
brigade or a division, and then you get a joint assignment,
say, as an action officer. You have JPME I, you have staff
experience, you have combat experience now obviously in many
cases. Where those O-4s may step up or get promoted while they
are in a joint assignment, the combatant command does have the
option, the opportunity to send their officers effectively out
of cycle to the resident JPME II program down at Joint Forces
Staff College to kind of add or hone their skills at the
operational level. That throughput is, admittedly, inadequate.
And again, that is one of the reasons that we have proposed
this expansion of nonresident delivery of that program, so that
more officers at the combatant command level where the majority
of this demand comes from for JPME II-qualified officers,
provides that flexibility so the combatant commander doesn't
have to give up 10 weeks of an officer's time on his staff but
can work this in parallel, if you will, with their day job and
do so in a way that is consistent.
And, in fact, we have looked at some of the ways the
services deliver this capability. They will actually--you can--
regardless of where you are in the world, if you walk into some
of the distributed learning seminars that they have, you may be
assigned to Norfolk. And if you are in Hawaii and you are
attending the distributed learning course, you actually walk
into almost--you know, the course is identical in terms of how
it is delivered. So that is the kind of approach that we are
looking at, so that as officers move, as they are--if you are
in CENTCOM [Central Command] and you are coordinating with
EUCOM [European Command] and you happen to be in Germany and
not down in Tampa, you can still pick up that course on that
day and stick with your education opportunities.
As far as the officers' piece and their participation as
faculty, as Mr. Hebert noted, the opportunity for JDAL
positions for non-host faculty is a great step forward.
However, there are team partners who are from the host faculty
who are teaching joint matters as well, and, frankly, it has
been my observation that there is a great synthesis that is
gained in actually teaching these, you know, joint operational
approaches. And I think expanding that opportunity so that
those officers who are teaching joint matters, even though they
are at the Army War College or at the Command and General Staff
College, would be an opportunity that would expand
participation across the board, and, frankly, I think meet some
of the concerns of the officers that you interviewed.
Dr. Snyder. Do any of you have any comment on that topic?
General MacFarland, by the way, I think that my guess is
that will be a bridge too far, at least at this time, for an
Army officer, at an Army institution teaching joint matters. I
think that will probably be considered a bridge too far.
But I might get in my licks here on the defense bill. I
think there are a couple of items on the Senate side that they
have not yet done their defense bill, and I still have some
optimism that we will get a defense bill out of this Congress
in the next couple or 3 weeks.
But this is complicated stuff, and the sooner you can get
up here, particularly with a new Congress coming in and new
leadership, the more likely you-all's recommendations will be
included as part of the defense bill next year, although I
think a couple of items that we have been supportive of on this
side didn't get in the Senate side, so if we get a defense
bill, we will work to preserve those if we can.
General MacFarland. I appreciate your support on that.
Dr. Snyder. Several issues I wanted to ask. General
MacFarland, I think it was you that brought up the issue of
copyright. We had talked about that. In fact, I think maybe it
was last year I had some thought that we ought to be able to do
something on the House side in the defense bill. It turns out
it is a pretty complicated issue. I know Mr. Platts and Mr.
Skelton had tried it some years ago, I think, unsuccessfully.
So if this issue is important, and I think it is, and it
would seem to me that it is solvable, we may need to get a
little joint discussion group going on with some smart lawyers
from the military side, and some smart lawyers from here, but
also some smart lawyers perhaps from the Judiciary Committee
and some others to sit down and figure out, okay, where are the
concerns that you all have and the concerns of those who think
this isn't perhaps the way to go, and try to sort that out.
Because we tried to come to some language and met resistance
along the way.
So it is easy for us to recognize the problem. I am not
sure it is going to be as easy as I think, or originally
thought, to solve it. That will be something you want to work
on.
General MacFarland, I think, talked in the most detail
about getting students from the civilian side. You mentioned
the interagency swap. Was that your statement? I think it was.
General MacFarland. It is in my written statement.
Dr. Snyder. Written statement, yes.
I would like all of you to comment on that, if you would.
Our experience was that when we visited some of the seminar
groups at the different institutions, that our military
personnel, you know, would have paid money or had a payroll
deduction if they could have had some additional State
Department, Foreign Service officers in their seminar groups
with them.
How are we doing? And as you are looking ahead, how are we
doing, do you think, at getting the numbers of civilian
government personnel from the other agencies of government to
be in these courses?
I will start with you, General Neller.
General Neller. I think our situation is very good, and I
think it is directly related just to our geography. The fact
that we are just south of Washington, it is much easier for the
Federal Government agencies to send someone to be a student
down at Quantico than it is for them to send them to Kansas, or
to Alabama, or even to Rhode Island.
So we are doing very well. I mean, 4 of 27 at MCWAR [Marine
Corps War College], almost 1 per seminar at Command and Staff.
So we are very content, and we are happy with the quality of
person that we get. So I think we are blessed by--hopefully by
reputation, but probably more so by geography.
Mr. Sitterly. We are doing better as well, and the quality
seems to be getting better as well as we continue to go through
this and those students go back and talk about their
experiences with their particular agency.
The other thing we are doing is trying to approach it from
the other end, and that is we are exploring fellowships where
we can actually take our military officers into their programs.
We recently did one at the senior level with the State
Department. So we are approaching it from both ends. But we
certainly appreciate what those interagency folks bring to the
fight.
Dr. Snyder. I think the Army has been the most aggressive
about doing swaps, correct?
General MacFarland. Yes, sir. We have 28 interagency
fellows right now at the major level, ILE [Intermediate Level
Education], and I think the number is about 70 at the War
College fellowship level. But the War College fellows are more
in academia, think tanks, places like that. Our interagency
fellows are plugged right into Homeland Security or U.S.
Department of Agriculture.
I just had a meeting with FEMA [Federal Emergency
Management Agency] last week, and they are looking at sending
two of their officers in exchange for two of ours going to work
in FEMA for a year. And, of course, State Department SCRS
[Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization] is a big
partner of ours, sir.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Lutterloh.
Mr. Lutterloh. Yes, sir. We just recently began expanding
our fellowships into interagencies, most recently discussions
about State Department, so it looks like we will be sending a
couple fellowships to the State Department this year.
Our faculty at the War College has been in the process of
transitioning. Our provost and dean of faculty Ambassador
Peters comes with a very strong background in interagency
support, as well as some of the other members of the faculty
that she is drawing into the fold. We are trying to increase
our student representation from some of the other agencies to
get that vital discussion going. I think we are making progress
there.
The last point I will leave you with is we have also been
focusing over the years on international cooperation, so that
that international piece of it is also important to us.
Dr. Snyder. Yes, it is.
I think I will address this question to the two of you
again as the overseers. One of the detail issues that we talked
about through the last year was it has been difficult to look
at the services and to come up with an apples-to-apples
comparison of cost per student, which I think would be helpful
to everyone. Maybe it is impossible.
I mean, you know, General Neller mentioned geography. Maybe
it is a lot cheaper getting somebody to come to Quantico than
it is to Kansas. I don't know. It seems like it shouldn't be
that difficult.
Where are we at with that issue of having the different
institutions or the different services come up with a cost per
student of doing the kinds of in-residence PME, or are we
nowhere?
Mr. Hebert. Sir, we are further than nowhere, but we are
not where we should be. So it is one of those issues that
continues to plague us. The trade-off, as you probably well
understand, is having the service having a measure that is
meaningful for them versus a measurement that is not meaningful
for them but is universally applied to all at the same time. So
we are working with the services to work through this issue.
Dr. Snyder. It seems like at some point you will come up
with a number, I guess, and send it up here, but it is not
something that is necessarily helpful to us. It seems like it
would be helpful to you on the institutions if you can see, you
know, one service has gotten dramatically more efficient. I bet
that would be helpful in trying to figure out how people save
money. It is consistent with what Secretary Gates is trying to
do as far as saving money also. I think over the long haul you
all are going to try to make the case that you are efficient
and deserve the money.
Does anybody else have any comment on that?
General Hix. Yes, sir, I do. Before I answer that, if I
could just very briefly on the civilian participation thing.
Right now we have about, depending on the year, 5 to 10
percent of the student body across the board is from our other
agencies, and we expect about 290 next year. Some of the
challenges that have been raised to us--we do sensing sessions
as part of this PAJE process--the feedback we get from the
civilian representatives from these other agencies is, one,
their agencies are taking a hit by sending them to school
because they don't have a float.
As you know, the uniformed services have the ability to
transfer an officer into the TTHS [Trainees, Transients,
Holdees, and Students] account, and it doesn't, therefore, take
an officer out of a staff or out of a brigade or out of a
battalion to send them to school. There is a replacement
available. So that is the first thing.
The second thing is, in general, the other agencies appear
to manage the billet, not the man, and so when the person, male
or female, goes off to school, they may or may not have a job
when they come back, and that is a challenge for them
personally.
Then some other feedback we have received is there is
concern about, you know, some of the regulations on housing,
and I know this is particularly true with civilian faculty,
members from other agencies or faculty members who could, if
they were in the military, live on base, but find it is a
challenge for them because of regulatory and other issues.
And the last piece, again anecdotally, is that frankly some
of your fellow committees are less interested in this
integration than others, and that translates into whether there
is support on the Hill for those agencies to be aggressive in
putting their personnel into our military schools at the degree
that we certainly would like to see them.
Dr. Snyder. That may be something as time goes along it
might be helpful to in some informal way figure out who we need
to go talk to, because I think, I mean, it is clear to me when
you talk to the students, both the military and the civilian
side, they both benefit greatly from it. Particularly when you
do these swaps, too, that is very helpful to both sides.
General Hix. Absolutely, sir.
Sir, just very briefly, on the issue of cost comparisons,
we are collecting the cost vectors from the services right now.
They are varied, as you can imagine, and there are a lot of
drivers which, at this point, because we haven't actually
gotten all the data, and I can't give you a firm assessment of
why the costs vary per student, but I am sure there are issues
of geography, physical plant. I mean, there are a number of
issues, transportation of those officers to and from the
schools and that sort of thing. So we will continue to work
that issue, because it is of interest to all of us.
Dr. Snyder. I think back, General, on your comment about
you are getting some pushback from, I guess, the congressional
side on sharing, having civilians participate. I remember on a
report that we did on PRTs [Provincial Reconstruction Teams] a
couple of years ago as coincidentally somebody from my district
who is a veterinarian with the Department of Agriculture, who
served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, at some point she sent us
an e-mail that we included in our report which said--she just
volunteered, she said, I sometimes feel like there are more
barriers between the different agencies of our government than
there are between us and the Iraqis.
I mean, she really meant it, that she could go out and talk
to a group of farmers or government Ag [agriculture] people
that are Iraqi and felt like she made more progress than
sometimes trying to talk to other agencies of government. So I
think that is the motivation. We are trying to break down those
barriers, and maybe it starts here in Congress.
I will direct it here and then any comments you all have
again. As we are talking about these slots and the availability
of PME, if we had a group of National Guard and Marine Corps
Reserve, Army Reserve, Navy Reserve, Air Force Reserve people,
would they all feel like there were adequate slots for their
personnel, adequate opportunities for Guard and Reserve
personnel?
Mr. Hebert. I think it would depend largely on which level
of education we are talking about.
Dr. Snyder. At which level do you think?
Mr. Hebert. Well, JPME II throughput is admittedly short of
demand, both for the Active Component as well as for the
Reserve Components.
Dr. Snyder. Disproportionately for the Reserve Component?
Mr. Hebert. Two percent of officers each year, and 1.5
percent for the Reserve Component. But I think largely the
feedback I have gotten from the Reserve Component service
members dealt with the AJPME [Advanced Joint PME], their
equivalent JPME II course. And it wasn't so much about the
course per se, it was the many demands the reservists face.
They have to balance the demands of a full-time position,
civilian position, the demands of their Reserve Component, the
demands of the family, the demands in many cases of pursuing
advanced education, and the demands of pursuing in some cases
at the same time professional military education.
So it is trying to find ways that we can better facilitate
that within those competing demands so it is not so onerous on
them, so it doesn't come at a time when all of these issues are
brought to bear at the exact same time. So from the Reserve
Component feedback that I have received, that is the largest
issue.
I have also received some feedback on the Capstone course
and not having enough throughput there in order to accommodate
all the demand they have. So it is the top two levels of PME
for them.
General Hix. I would just echo that point, that their real
focus is on JPME II. AJPME provides them with an equivalent
accreditation. I think that there is a concern that it is not
seen as equal to the actual JPME II course. I believe that if
we are able to expand JPME II into this distributed option,
that will be the first step in providing a more flexible access
for our Reserve Component into that curriculum on a larger
basis.
There has, however, been a reasonably significant increase
in the number of Reserve Component, both Reserve Title 10 and
Title 32 National Guard officers, in both resident JPME II as
well as in Capstone, so there is a concerted effort to do that.
But there is a balance, because there is a requirement
particularly to look at the number of joint billets that are
populated by reservists above the State level. I know that the
National Guard has implemented joint headquarters at the State
level, but above the State level, those National Guard officers
who--like General Sherlock, who are--actually, I guess, he is a
reservist--who is the Chief of Staff at AFRICOM [Africa
Command]. I mean, those kinds of Reserve officers clearly need
to have access to that level of education.
But right now, the throughput is a challenge, as your study
outlines, across the board.
Dr. Snyder. Do any of you have any comments on that issue?
General Neller. I think, in the aggregate, that there are
issues with Reserve-Guard PME. In fact, I have got a meeting
next week with General Darrell Moore, who is a Reserve general
who works Reserve Affairs for our manpower, to talk about this.
I think as mentioned, JPME II is probably the toughest one, but
I think it goes further down.
Just as on the officer side you have to have JPME II to be
considered for flag rank, on the enlisted side, if you are a
gunnery sergeant, you have to have the advanced course. And we
recently ran a Reserve advanced enlisted PME course, and we had
slots for 100, and 105 Marines showed up, and we put them all
through, because we knew if they got there, that we are going
to give them the opportunity to go to the course.
So, I don't know what the answers are. We have slots at
Command and Staff and the other schools for Reserves, and they
are filled. We have a very aggressive non-res program through
the College of Distance Education and Training, where I think
most of them get their PME for the officer side.
But just as the Joint Staff and OSD is looking at a
regional approach to JPME II, in line with what the Commandant
has asked us to do, one of our COAs [courses of action] is
probably going to consider a regional campus, more of a hybrid,
a blended-type seminar, where you have a resident and non-
resident portion, which I think most people would feel is
potentially superior to a fully non-res on line, and I think we
will see a lot of our Reserves hopefully, because they are in
the local area, at lower cost, be able to take advantage of
that, too.
So it is an issue. JPME II is probably the biggest, but I
think it filters all the way through the force.
Mr. Lutterloh. Yes, sir. Chairman Snyder, I would just add
that we have increased our Reserve throughput through Navy War
College over the past 2 years, marginally so, but increasing
nonetheless, and the Reserve force is actively interested in
additional quotas through the War College. So we will actively
pursue that movement forward.
I would also point out that we have about 2,900 officers in
the war right now, and nearly half of those are Reserve
officers. So this education is very well needed in that part of
the force. How we resource it moving forward, how we address
that throughput, and our ability to accommodate that throughput
is going to be something we have to deal with. But we are
actively engaged in this issue.
General MacFarland. Sir, I just wanted to add one thing
about the Total Army School System is really tailored to our
Reserve officers and noncommissioned officers and giving them
the opportunity to get professional military education and JPME
I for our majors.
We have a brigade with six battalions distributed around
the country, and it is somewhat blended, where you spend a
couple weeks in residence, places like Fort McCoy, Wisconsin,
and then you meet in seminar or staff group-type formats
instead of your drill periods over the course of a year, and
then you come back together for another couple of weeks. And we
have very good faculty out there doing that for our Reserve
officers. So they get a good JPME educational experience
through the Total Army School System, even though they don't
necessarily come to Fort Leavenworth or one of our satellite
campuses.
Dr. Snyder. I think, as you all know, this subcommittee and
the full committee have taken an interest in foreign language
skills in our military, and, in fact, Mr. Kruse has got a draft
and updated report I need to sign off here in the next day or
two from the report we did a year and a half ago.
I would just like any general comments you have about where
you see foreign-language training fitting into this. And then
specifically one of the concerns all along about this is how do
you get that 25th hour in a 24-hour day for further foreign-
language training?
The QDR [Quadrennial Defense Review] Independent Review
Panel suggested one way to get at that is--for your ROTC
[Reserve Officers' Training Corps] students--is just to
increase the requirement for what they bring in for increased
foreign language proficiency. And I would like any of your
comments about foreign language in general, but also that
specific comment.
I am going to start with you again, General Neller.
General Neller. This is a very difficult issue, Mr.
Chairman. At one point in Command and Staff College, they tried
to implement as part of their curriculum a foreign-language
program, and I think that the consensus was that the effort
just didn't result in a positive benefit. The Command and Staff
still does a key leader engagement exercise where they have to
use an interpreter, but there is not a specific language
requirement.
Recently the Marine Corps has required commanders, because
of key leader engagement mission-essential tasks in theater,
that they have to do 40 hours of language before they deploy.
And the Marine Corps, again, this is out of my area, but at the
basic school, lieutenants still are being assigned a general
area where they are supposed to develop language, but, again,
it is on their own time; there is not an enforcement function
on that.
Again, you are putting more rocks in the ruck of a ROTC
student, but I think many people, as I, depending upon where
you went to undergrad, there was a requirement for a language
where I went to school, and somehow we managed to survive that.
And that would bring at least a basic fundamental knowledge of
language to the force.
There will have to be some forcing function to, I think,
get some traction on this, but it is going to be difficult. The
Marine Corps also has a program called Af-Pak [Afghanistan-
Pakistan] Hands. Actually it has been taken from, I think, when
General McChrystal was ISAF [International Security Assistance
Force], and he had a cadre of people, and all the services are
participating in the Af-Pak Hands program. In fact, we have
three of those officers coming to work for the university as
they prepare to deploy, and part of their preparation will be
language.
So there is a great interest in it, but my personal opinion
is we are struggling to some degree to find the time to meet
all the other additional requirements in addition to the
language, and it is a work in progress, and there is still much
left to do.
Dr. Snyder. You know, there was a--Dr. Fenner and I can't
remember--it was newspaper report, I think, just within the
last month that was discussing foreign-language skills, and,
you know, I remember I had 2 years of--it took me 2 years of
French to get out of high school and 2 years of French to get
out of college. You know, if that is what you are talking
about, you think, okay, what does that have to do with Iraq? As
the article pointed out, I can't remember who was quoted, it
said, well, maybe you don't have Arabic skills going into Iraq,
but the experience of some of our soldiers was the ability to
talk to the allied soldiers was as important, and so the French
or Italian or whatever language it was was helpful. But ramping
up that proficiency level, more than just a 2-year jump to get
out, may be helpful.
Mr. Sitterly, did you have something?
Mr. Sitterly. Yes, Dr. Snyder. The language regional
expertise and culture issue is one that Secretary Donnelly has
asked us to look at very seriously, and we have. In addition to
an extremely robust ROTC program, a very robust Air Force
Academy language program, we also have just held our second
Language Enabled Airmen Program, LEAP program we call it, where
we identify--for the very first board, identify cadets coming
out of ROTC and the Air Force Academy, and in subsequent boards
we intend to look at the Total Force; but we identify those
folks that have a language, either capacity, or they already
have a proficiency that exists, and then we will take those
folks and identify them across their career as LEAP airmen,
language enabled airmen, so that we can send them to some sort
of intermediate, you know, training courses in order to
maintain that proficiency level.
So, in other words, if you bring somebody in, and they have
no aptitude, no proficiency, to send them out to Monterey to
the Defense Language School to get them up to a proficiency
where we could utilize them is a large investment. If they have
the capability or show the capacity or the proficiency early,
then we can send them perhaps to an overseas assignment or just
an immersion program where they can get that proficiency level
up to 2-2. And our studies show that if you can get the
proficiency on the DLAB [Defense Language Aptitude Battery]
score to 2-2, it is a lot easier to maintain that. [Inaudible]
So in our personnel system then, we will have these folks
identified. So if we, for instance, have the ability to send a
C-130 unit or an airman to Germany or Japan, if we can match
their ability to speak German or Japanese to build sort of a,
you know, partnership capacity, then we could make that
decision, all things being equal. So we put a lot into this
program.
Mr. Lutterloh. It is a critical issue for us, Mr. Chairman,
and it comes with a number of initiatives that we have taken
already and a delicate balance in the end.
First off, we have got a strong linguist program for our
cryptologists that gets to the level of 2-2 that is excellent.
We leverage off that, along with some of the postgraduate
school education, the masters programs for our foreign area
officers that focus on language and regional expertise in those
masters programs. We leverage those two activities to provide
targeted just-in-time training and education for deploying
strike groups in units going overseas to get them focused on
the culture and the region and, to a very minimal degree, some
of the language idiosyncrasies.
That said, in general we have increased what we are doing
at ROTC with some additional scholarships. I think the class of
2010 out of the Naval Academy had 2 language majors graduate
and 10 or 11 with minors in language areas graduate. So our
accession mission is also focused on that language education.
Lastly, I would focus on the increased throughput. Both the
foreign area officers and just officers in general, through
postgraduate school and through our curricula at War College,
each class which is focused on regional areas has been some of
the actions we have taken to date.
The balance that I want to talk about has to do with the
balance between language education and what we believe is
inherent to our force in science, technology, engineering, and
math. So we have recently tried to increase our percentages of
graduates to 65 percent out of ROTC and the Naval Academy in
science, technology, engineering and math. So that is where the
balance is going to come, how we balance language against those
hard educational curricula.
General MacFarland. Sir, I just wanted to add, one of my
additional hats is the Defense Language Institute works for me,
and so I just wanted to tell you that DLI is doing some really
good work in developing new instructional techniques for
language training. The language-training detachments that are
now global and spread around the world, and the Af-Pak Hands is
part of that, is an important way that we are infusing language
training into the field, giving units that are deploying the
language skills that they need so that there is somebody who is
language enabled in each platoon and developing our own
language specialists within the force.
We have an LTD, a language training detachment, at Fort
Leavenworth, and we offer electives in language to our
officers, and every officer is required to study and conduct a
regional--have a regional elective. So if you have a language
skill, that language elective is also available so that you can
do a culture and language study, which is very valuable if you
are about to deploy somewhere.
So the Army is right now in the process of developing what
we call the Army Cultural and Foreign Language Strategy, and,
in fact, DLI teaches culture-based language. And you have to
link culture with language instruction, and we think that this
is really the model for the future.
How we are going to inject that into our PME for enlisted,
warrant officers, civilian, and officer is still being studied
though. But we are looking cradle to grave, pre-commissioning
through general officer, to ensure that there is a continuum of
lifelong learning available for those officers with language
skills.
Thank you.
Dr. Snyder. I think since the last time this subcommittee
had a discussion about foreign language, I forget which TV
network it was had the embedded reporter, that terrible
incident where the contracted interpreter was just flat out
wrong in what they were saying and was exasperating for our
military officers who thought they were being given false
information by the local villagers. And it turned out, in fact,
that they were being given--somebody was putting themselves at
risk by giving accurate information, but the interpreter didn't
pick that up. It just seemed to me that was a piece of film
that ought to be part of a training exercise for a long, long
time to illustrate this.
General MacFarland. It is, sir.
Dr. Snyder. It is. And then I think it was last week, a
couple of weeks, before Thanksgiving, Susan Davis was a host of
a breakfast, General Neller, for some of the women Marines--
what do you call those teams that go out?
General Neller. Female engagement teams.
Dr. Snyder. They were wonderful women, it was great, one of
the speakers. But one of the young women brought up her
frustration with interpreters, the varied skill levels of the
interpreters they have.
And the unfortunate part for me was I can remember I think
it was with Jim Saxton, before the events of 2001, was holding
classified hearings in this room talking about how we are going
to get the language skills we need to keep track of what is
going on with all the areas around the world, and I am thinking
it must have been a decade now, and we are still having young
Marine officers tell us we have got a real problem with having
the right language skills. It just seems like it is hampering
their activity. But I appreciate the work that you all are
doing on it.
I think those are about the things that I wanted to get at.
Maybe a few closing comments.
General Neller, you have mentioned enlisted PME, and we did
hold the one hearing on enlisted PME, and I have to acknowledge
it since Gunnery Sergeant Hector Soto-Rodriguez is sitting
right behind you and has been my Marine Fellow for this last
year. But I appreciate your mention of it. We focus so much on
the in-residence officer PME, but the enlisted PME is so very,
very important, and they have some frustrations, too, as you
know.
A couple of you acknowledged the presence of Dr. Lorry
Fenner, who will not be with the committee after this year, and
the great work that she has done, as has the staff.
I also want to recognize Julie Zelnick on my staff, who--
you know, you wonder about why do these folks get interested?
Ike Skelton made a speech a couple of weeks ago about his fear
that we may be having a separation from the civilian world and
the military world, and why does a young woman like Julie get
involved in this? Well, she has got a brother in the military.
His wife is in the military. They actually let them serve
together in Iraq because they are lawyers.
Are they both lawyers, Julie?
One lawyer in the family, but they let them serve together
in Iraq as a married couple, which is quite unusual. But when
you have it that close, then these things become important to
you. I also have to mention Julie, because since I am leaving,
she still needs a job.
But I appreciate all the work you have done on this. Mr.
Skelton will no longer be here, and I will no longer be here. I
chose not to run for reelection because I have so many babies
at home that need their education.
But this topic is one I know Mr. Wittman is very interested
in it. I ask unanimous consent--since I am the only person
here, I will give it--that his statement be included as part of
record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the
Appendix on page 35.]
Dr. Snyder. But this topic is one that is very important to
you, it is very important to the military, it is very important
to the Congress. It is not going to go away. And I appreciate
all the work that you have done, and it has been an honor to
chair the committee.
We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 10:37 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
=======================================================================
A P P E N D I X
November 30, 2010
=======================================================================
=======================================================================
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
November 30, 2010
=======================================================================
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