Document created: 24 March 04
Air University Review, September-October 1972

The Whole Man? 

A Look at the Neglected 
Half of Air Force Education

Lieutenant Colonel William L. Anderson

Today’s Air Force officer is expected to solve more divergent and complex problems than ever before. This requires a renewed emphasis on managerial skills that go beyond the well-defined technical background possessed by many officers now caught up in far-reaching decision-making situations. As today’s officer progresses to greater and more involved responsibilities, he must bring to bear a broader knowledge of the many factors involved, which of necessity cannot be limited to his own personal experience. As has always been recognized, such expanded knowledge can most quickly be gained by a broad-base education, an education that encompasses more than just the scientific-technical fields and provides the opportunity to learn from the experience of others.

The professional career schools of the Air Force now give increased emphasis to those areas that make up this broad base upon which officers can develop the capability to make correct decisions when faced with complex problems. At least for the small percentage of officers who attend these schools, from whose ranks may come many of tomorrow’s leaders, the necessity for a broad-base education is recognized, and an effort is being made to provide it.

The new Air Force Personnel Plan for officers, “Topline,” also recognizes this need.

The basic officer qualification will continue to provide an individual who can satisfy the “whole man” requirement:

(1) He must perform effectively in his assigned specialty.
(2) He must have the potential to progress to high levels of command or staff responsibilities.
(3) He must have the potential to adjust to a changing and intellectually demanding environment and to perform effectively in more than one functional area.¹

While a scientific or technical background allows the young officer to contribute significantly in a specialized area early in his career, the fact is that it does not afford him the opportunity to broaden his background for the years ahead. “The Air Force must continue to produce officers whose interests and capabilities become broader as they become more senior in grade, and move up the levels of staff and command.”² It goes without saying that if the “whole man” requirement exists, then the Air Force should offer all its officers who have demonstrated the potential to grow beyond their early specialties the opportunity to extend their experience and background through a broad-base education.

As Morris Janowitz has aptly pointed out, “the military establishment requires a balance between the three roles of heroic leader, military manager, and military technologist . . . .”³ With the defense establishment’s share of the national budget drastically decreasing each year in terms of constant dollars, an ever increasing need exists for better management techniques as well as a better understanding of how the Air Force can best accomplish its mission under the pressures coming from the surrounding society in which it must function. This need has been recognized by General Ryan:

. . . there is the problem of maintaining a flexible force, capable of rapidly responding to changing demands. We must consider just how much “generalization” and “specialization” we can afford in terms of cost-effectiveness. . . . This factor of increased specialization could, unless anticipated and wisely monitored, adversity impact on our force structure and on the flexibility for assignment and employment of individual officers, airmen, and civilians.⁴

Like the other services, the Air Force has been awakened in the recent past to the realization that, if people are her most valuable resource, managing them in the future may require different, if not new, approaches. It is readily apparent that any single individual is more complicated than any machine. General John C. Meyer has emphasized that the future Air Force leader must “. . . be part manager, part sociologist, part psychologist, part student of history.”⁵

The Air Force must prepare officers today for the managerial and executive tasks to which they will fall heir tomorrow. The need exists for officers who can manage not only people but also ideas and concepts on a broad basis; these will be the future leaders, and it is important that the Air Force begin to prepare them now. Yet this preparation cannot be accomplished by confining ongoing educational opportunities primarily to scientific and technical fields; rather, it can be accomplished by a continuing emphasis on a broad-base education upon which can be built the professional competence necessary for development as career officers. Samuel P. Huntington’s 1957 assessment of this requirement is even truer today:

The military skill requires a broad background of general culture for its mastery. The methods of organizing and applying violence at any one stage in history are intimately related to the entire cultural pattern of society. . . . To understand his trade properly, the officer must have some idea of its relation to these other fields and the ways in which these other areas of knowledge may contribute to his own purposes. In addition, he cannot really develop his analytical skill, insight, imagination, and judgment if he is trained simply in vocational duties. . . . The fact that, like the lawyer and the physician, he is continuously dealing with human beings requires him to have the deeper understanding of human attitudes, motivations, and behavior which a liberal education stimulates. Just as a general education has become the prerequisite for entry into the professions of law and medicine, it is now almost universally recognized as a desirable qualification for the professional officer.⁶

As further evidence of the desirability of such a broad-base background, the Air Force Academy offers thirteen science and engineering majors but fifteen social sciences and humanities majors. “Course offerings in the undergraduate program are designed to acquaint the student with major areas of knowledge in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities as well as to lay a foundation for Air Force careers.”⁷ However, the Air Force Academy cannot supply the Air Force with all its future leaders. The young men who will come from other sources—AFROTC, AECP, and OTS—must also be given the opportunity for this same educational experience. Their continuing education cannot be narrowly limited to anyone particular scientific field but should consist of those subjects that will best prepare them for their future responsibilities.

Lieutenant General Harry E. Goldsworthy recently noted the challenge that lies ahead:

And as we look ahead to the 1970’s, there will be an even greater need to justify dollars for military use and, at the same time, systems will be more complex and costly. The answer is rather obvious. The officers we will need to have must be educated, experienced and mature in order to discern between proposals to secure for all three services the best for the least, and to comprehend and articulate the socioeconomic impact of what we do. It follows, then, that we need officers who possess an entire array of skills, who are educated in as many different disciplines as possible, and who have the desire to participate in decision-making.⁸

The educational opportunities to fulfill this long-range Air Force requirement should be made available to all Air Force officers, regardless of their previous educational specialty, in order to better prepare them for the responsibilities that lie ahead. And these educational opportunities must include the humanities and the social sciences if the Air Force does indeed desire the “whole man” as a future leader.

The Present-day Emphasis

The Air Force has already begun to recognize that the ability to communicate ideas and concepts in the English language, as well as foreign languages, is an ability too long neglected among the officer corps.

Yet a look at the educational opportunities available in the Air Force today illustrates the difference in emphasis within the Air Force itself. The professional military schools—Squadron Officer School, Air Command and Staff College, Air War College—are all concerned with broadening the background and increasing the communicative skills of those officers selected for attendance. Their curricula are substantially devoted to the areas which the Air Force has recognized as providing the knowledge that will broaden the perspective and increase the effectiveness of her officers: English, history, economics, geography, and political science, as well as psychology and sociology. Yet only slightly more than 3000 Air Force officers attend these schools each year, and more than two-thirds of them attend the comparatively short ten-week SOS course. Moreover, a much smaller number of officers attend even two of the three schools during their career, thus further restricting their opportunity to enhance their future capability.

By contrast, the Air Force Institute of Technology has the mission of providing “. . . education and training to meet Air Force requirements in scientific, technological, managerial, medical, and other fields as directed by HQ USAF.”⁹ To accomplish this mission AFIT conducts university-level education along with continuing education and specialized training programs. The former provides the broad background that gives officers the ability to “. . . satisfy specific Air Force needs for special skills of immediate applicability.”¹⁰

However, in the regular FY 1973 program entries leading to degrees, AFIT has opened up 947 master’s degree programs, but only 25 of them are in the humanities and social sciences; of the 38 Ph.D. programs available, three are in the social sciences and none in the humanities.¹¹

Although now offering officers the opportunity for lateral degrees, this program is good only for those engineering areas for which a specific career field can be identified and only in those academic areas where AFIT has had difficulty filling its quotas.

The short courses offered and the special AFIT programs available, such as the Area Specialist Program or the Commander’s Option Program, are open only to a mere handful of officers, as indicated by the fact that under the latter program the Air Force recently granted a quota of only three slots a year for the next five years to one of its largest commands, Strategic Air Command.¹²

The most recent major educational program offered by AFIT, the Airman Education and Commissioning Program (AECP), limits its academic fields of study to those areas which “will meet Air Force technological, scientific, and other professional requirements.”¹³ Even though “other professional requirements” are thus acknowledged, the large majority of AECP’S 300 annual program slots are in technical and scientific areas.

The emphasis today is on educating officers in specific, clearly defined career fields that call for certain academic prerequisites needed by the specialist. The Air Force has made but a limited attempt to offer educational opportunities in those areas that have already been acknowledged as being a necessary adjunct to the development of the future decision-maker. Moreover, the real problem here lies not so much in meeting the ever present scientific and technical quota presently established for AFIT as in fulfilling the educational desires of those motivated and qualified officers who wish to broaden their experience beyond their particular scientific field. To a large extent, given the opportunity to increase their knowledge in the humanities or social sciences, these same men may immeasurably aid the Air Force in carrying out its ever broadening mission.

The greatest strength of many officers lies outside scientific areas. These valuable officers should not be allowed to lose career motivation simply because they lack the qualifications, ability, or even desire for a degree in an engineering field. Perhaps most important of all, the Air Force cannot afford to lose what in the long run could be a prime source of future aerospace leadership.

As already noted, the emphasis on specific scientific and technical expertise becomes increasingly less important as an officer progresses through his career. This is not to argue that no need exists for the scientifically oriented officer; rather, it is to argue that the scientist, as well as the nonscientist, should be given the opportunity to expand his horizon beyond his immediate field.

With the exception of several courses in business management, the educational programs offered by the Air Force are primarily concerned with getting an immediate result: young engineers who are equipped to handle today’s technical complexities. Although the present emphasis in the Air Force is designed to meet these immediate problems, there still remains the equally urgent requirement to prepare tomorrow’s leaders today. The Air Force can meet this responsibility by emphasizing more than one aspect of its educational needs, thus developing the “whole man” as a future leader.

The Plan

Steps taken now to prepare tomorrow’s leaders today can be the beginning of a long-lasting, valuable program which over the years can provide a broad-base background for many selected officers. The Air Force has at present all the administrative procedures and personnel necessary to implement what in essence would be an expanded program rather than a new one. The present AFIT program for selecting young officers for training in the scientific fields need not and should not be cut back; today’s program has met and should continue to meet the Air Force need for well-trained officer-engineers. Indeed, these officers have the scientific and technical education upon which a broader background may readily be built.

The plan proposed is relatively simple: expand the already constituted AFIT program to include a greater number of officers for schooling in the humanities and social sciences. Those fields in the humanities—English, history, philosophy, and foreign languages—as well as those in the social sciences—economics, geography, law, political science, psychology, and sociology—are all of vital importance to the Air Force. The criteria for officers applying for these courses should be comparable to the entrance requirements for engineering courses.

AFIT can meet this required flexibility and the standards as expressed by Dr. Robert C. Seamans: “One of the prerequisites to solving many current issues is more effective education, education which is geared toward preparing the individual for a productive, rewarding role in our economy and in his personal life. To do this, the educational system must be able to work effectively with people of widely varying backgrounds and abilities.”¹⁴  

Such course offerings, to be taken at selected civilian institutions under AFIT, would give maximum opportunity to active duty career officers to demonstrate their ability to grasp and handle new ideas. Few officers could then contend that their talents are not needed by the Air Force simply because they are not directed toward a scientific field. The Air Force would be assured a continuous input of motivated young men willing and able to grasp the complexities of the ever changing world of international relations, economics, social history, and communications. The past has indicated that in times of crisis such men are usually at a premium. In fact, such a recognition of “the diversity of excellence” might go a long way toward “motivation of excellence” in the Air Force.¹⁵

As a final adjunct to this plan, the Air Force needs merely to open a wider range of career fields to officers who do not possess a technical degree. As an officer today progresses through the ranks, his knowledge in a particular field becomes relatively less important than his ability to deal with the broader scope of increased responsibility. Under this program, for instance, many officers who have been given this opportunity to expand their backgrounds can become excellent managers upon returning to a field in which they previously have had some practical experience. Such a broad, solid background should make many officers eligible for a wider array of assignments than has heretofore been possible. And, as we can undoubtedly expect as we move into the seventies, new career fields in the management of human resources will open up, not to mention a new “office for the study of national character as it relates to cross-cultural and persuasive communication,” which would be manned “by officers . . . who have professional experience and academic training in anthropology, sociology, psychology, communication, and international affairs.”¹⁶

Such a plan embodies no new concept; it merely proposes implementation of a concept that already has Air Force acknowledgment. This proposed plan, which would give recognition to that part of a military leader’s education now so neglected, does require a longer look at Air Force needs of the future. A longer look would recognize that such a plan can include all officers in the Air Force, regardless of their background, and lead to some very able engineers becoming very able leaders.

Today, the Air Force must look to the whole man—the man who has demonstrated the ability to deal with the complex concepts of a world with a changing balance of power. The education of tomorrow’s leaders today cannot go only halfway toward fulfilling this ultimate objective; rather, it must provide the young officer with the broad-base background upon which he can build the attributes so necessary for future leadership. All officers, including the technical specialist of today, should be given the opportunity to become the specialized “generalist” of tomorrow.

The long-range goal of the Air Force is unchanging: superiority in aerospace power. This sustained dominance can be accomplished by continuing to provide the type of education so essential to a competent leader, not one that trains an officer to be a specialist only. A broad-base education can provide the future leader with the expanded ability and background to deal effectively with the rapidly changing world he must face tomorrow. This can be the real answer to the Air Force’s future needs if, in the years to come, the Air Force is to have those officers with the flexibility of mind, firmness of philosophy, and intellectual breadth that will make them the true leaders of the aerospace age.

Maxwell AFB, Alabama

Notes

1. “Officer Structure (Topline),” The USAF Personnel Plan, vol. II. Department of the Air Force, 1 April 1971, pp. 1-3.

2. Ibid.

3. Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1960), p. 21.

4. General John D. Ryan, “Focus on People,” Air Force Magazine, vol. 54, May 1971, p. 49.

5. General John C. Meyer, “Managing the USAF: The Now and Future Challenges,” Air Force and Space Digest, vol. 53. January 1970, p. 51.

6. Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 14.

7. United States Air Force Academy Catalogue, 1971-1972, no. 16, Air Force Academy, Colorado, May 1971, p. 18.

8. Lieutenant General Harry E. Goldsworthy, “Leadership—Challenge and Responsibility,” Air Force Policy Letter for Commanders, Supplement 8, August 1971, p. 10.

9. USAF Formal Schools Program, AFM 50-5, Department of the Air Force, July 1971, p. 3-AFIT-1.

10. Air Force Institute of Technology Catalog, 1971-1973, vol. XIII, no. I, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, July 1971, p. I-3.

11. “AFIT Slots Due 1547,” Air Force Times, September 22, 1971, p. 41.

12. “SAC Picks 3 for PhD Plan,” Air Force Times, July 14, 1971, p.41.

13. Airman Education and Commissioning Program, AFR 53-2, Department of the Air Force, 24 June 1971, p. 1.

14. Dr. Robert C. Seamans. Jr., “Facing Conflicting Demands,” Air Force Policy Letter for Commanders, Supplement 8, August 1970, p.2.

15. Dr. David C. Korten, “The Motivation of Excellence,” Air University Review, XXII, 4 (May-June 1971), 27.

16. Lieutenant Colonel Russell A. Turner II and Dr. Hamid Mowlana, “Factors in Military Decision-Making,” Air University Review, XXII, 3 (March-April 1971), 32.

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