The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.

Sir William Butler

My first thoughts upon being ordered to command the Air University were, for me, rather shocking ones. It occurred to me that, after more than three decades in uniform as an officer in the Army Air Corps and the United States Air Force, I had no fundamental belief whatsoever in systematic professional military education. Although I had always believed in the necessity for education in order to prepare the whole man for any professional career, I had not satisfied myself that professional military education was essential or even desirable for progression to the higher ranks—or indeed for the execution of the tasks that might be expected of an officer as he approached and reached the responsibilities of the general officer. I was, of course, familiar with the elements of the total system that is the underpinning for the professional officer corps, especially with precommissioning programs and with my own experience as a student at the National War College. Nonetheless, I had not experienced any elements of Air Force precommissioning or career educational programs. I had indeed gone to the National War College when more than four years of service as a colonel was behind me. I had already served a tour on the Joint Staff and two tours on the Air Staff prior to being assigned to a school that was supposed to prepare me for higher staff and command!

While indorsing the concept of professional military education and thoroughly enjoying my sabbatical at the National War College, I had not come to grips with the need for a systematic educational process after commissioning, nor had I in any way convinced myself of the advisability of the systematic approach. Rather I was skeptical of the necessity for sidetracking capable career officers to education assignments, in particular for attendance at the Squadron Officer School and in general for attendance at an Air Command and Staff College or an Air War College.

As a putative historian, I had read much about the evolution of professional military education and was aware of the reasons for creation of the eponymous Kriegsakademie. I had read with interest about early efforts in the United States, England, and France more or less to emulate the example of the Prussians and inaugurate professional military education in those countries. In our own nation, I was familiar with the background underlying the efforts of Commodore Luce and Admiral Mahan in establishing the Naval War College in 1884 and of Major General Emory Upton and Elihu Root in establishing the Army War College in 1901. On his return from a two-year tour of foreign military establishments in 1878, General Upton stressed that for American Army officers

. . .we have not as yet .. . provided them the means of acquiring a theoretical and practical knowledge of the higher duties of their profession.

Abroad it is the universal theory that the art of war should he studied only after an officer has arrived at full manhood, and most governments have established postgraduate institutions for nearly all armed services, where meritorious officers come up from whatever sphere they may enter the army, may study strategy, grand tactics, and all the sciences connected with modern war.

Implicit in Upton’s views is the notion that a direct cause-and-effect relationship exists between the complexity of military arts and sciences and the need for post-graduate professional education for officers. I viewed the works of these men and what they created, along with the efforts of General Tasker Bliss, in a historical context. I made no effort to extrapolate from them the fundamental theory of career education for the professional officer, nor did I test any career educational theory for its viability and applicability to the United States Air Force in the 1970s.

Again, my reading of the history of the establishment of the Air Corps Tactical School shortly after World War I left me with the view that it was an effort by airmen to break away from the patterns of Leavenworth and the Army War College and establish a formal school of their own in competition, more of less, with the land forces and sea forces of the nation. All of this interests and is well known to the military historian. It should be of interest to any professional officer.

Professionalism in the officer corps as we know it today really is an outgrowth of the first half of the nineteenth century. It probably is founded on the French concept of the leveé en masse, but it is most certainly the child of the Prussian whose theory it was that mass warfare in an industrial society made soldiering too complicated for the gentleman amateur (who purchased his commission).

Prussians such as Gneisenau and Scharnhorst believed that the collective brain could guard against total incompetence, and hence they founded the modern General Staff. These ideas spread throughout Europe and even early in the nineteenth century were fostered in this country by John C. Calhoun, one of our greatest secretaries of war. The Prussians proved their theories in the payoff campaigns of Schleswig-Holstein, Austria-Hungary, and, finally, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and other nations began to see the necessity for a similar approach, based on events peculiar to them. France, which had blinded itself with the Napoleonic illusion that élan was all, renovated its war college after the defeat by the Prussians. Britain turned front the “bad show” of the Boer War and from fighting colonial wars to the Haldane reforms. And the United States Army found out after Cuba and the Philippines that it had to evolve from a band of Indian fighters into defenders of an industrial society in the modern age. This, in turn, led to the Root reforms.

It was during the last century that the American public became conscious of the widespread canard that the “generals always fought the last war over again” when faced with different circumstances. I concluded that if there were truth in this accusation it was certainly more accurate before the initiation of career education in the professional officer corps.

Against this knowledge I measured my own experience. For a long time I was inclined to draw conclusions about the professional military education (PME) system solely from this experience and from my peers and their experiences. I knew many outstanding general officers who had no PME throughout their careers in the United States Air Force. Indeed, many had no military education as such during the same period. I also know many products of PME in staff and command who in no way distinguished themselves from their peers of the same age and rank who had not the advantage of attending staff or war colleges.

Looking among one’s peers as justification for professional military education or as reason for condemning professional military education is quite obviously committing the fallacy of the circumstantial argument, ad hominem. It became painfully obvious to me that my enthusiasm in accepting the charge of the Chief of Staff as the Commander of the Air University needed to be matched with an understanding of the reasons for systematic professional military education. This in turn seems to require an analytical and objective assessment of PME before concluding that my skepticism was unjustified or my enthusiasm badly founded.

After 18 months in command I have come to the firm conclusion that I not only understand the underlying rationale for professional military education for the USAF officer corps but that I can explain it in reasonable, even convincing terms. To be able to make that statement I had to reread the historical antecedents to Air Force PME and place PME in the context of today’s society and today’s Air Force, keeping in mind that we were entering the period when the entire common defense was to be left in the hands of professional forces.

Also to be kept in mind is that we are in a period of Western civilization when technical knowledge becomes rapidly obsolescent. This is an age of discovery unequaled in the annals of man, and most of what is known today in disciplines such as medicine, physics, biology, and anthropology was unknown twenty years ago. If General Upton was worried about the complexity of warfare in a modern industrial society, should we not be concerned to a much greater degree a century after his report was written?

I came to realize that the military art cannot be mastered either solely in the classroom, as within the graduate or precommission training, or solely by experience, as with participation in warfare or on-the-job training. Most of us, if asked, would reaffirm the classical Greek approach to the whole man, which encompassed not only the mind and the body but also the spirit. To be considered a professional, one must belong to a corps that embodies formal education, a sense of corporateness, a mystique, and a responsibility to a higher authority. Contrary to popular opinion and to the educational practices of other professions, the officer in the beginning stages of his career knows relatively little about the art and science of warfare, and it will be years before he can be described accurately as being truly professional in the sense that he can deal effectively with broad, complex problems of strategy, tactics, or high command and staff. In the precommissioning programs conducted in the academies and civilian institutions, the student spends most of his time on formal undergraduate studies and relatively little time on professional military subjects,which are taught in postgraduate schools. This is not to denigrate the extremely valuable contributions of precommissioning programs in motivating and inculcating ethical and moral attributes that will serve the officer throughout his career. Rather, it is to emphasize that the precommissioning education is relevant to the young man or woman at that particular stage of his or her professional development. This focuses our attention on the unique feature of the PME system, which is that it is phased in time to match the officer’s potential with his years of service. The educational opportunities ideally should be interspersed with suitable intervals to allow the officer to acquire maturity and experience while using the knowledge gained in the previous educational program.

PROFESSIONAL military education in the Air Force is essential, I find, because it is the best known way to fulfill the needs implicit in the following basic tenets:

· To make sure that the officer’s knowledge beyond his specialty is not limited, as often happens in other professions, PME imparts attitude, knowledge, and skills on the art of warfare and national security to all officers.

· Each level of education should be given when it is most relevant to a particular stage of career development. This permits the Air Force officer corps to develop expertise in aerospace concepts, doctrine, and strategy from a progressively higher level of experience and maturity.

· PME prevents obsolescence of professional knowledge and skills in highly technical and constantly evolving fields of knowledge. Information gained at the beginning of a career may well become obsolete before the individual reaches the point in development where he is capable of applying this knowledge.

· The ever growing problems of national security require that all officers be informed. PME provides education that is timely to the officer’s career in resolving these problems.

· All professionals, regardless of career field, need periodically to reflect on their profession, where they have been and where they are going. PME allows the professional Air Force officer to review all aspects of the military profession and the Air Force at designated intervals.

· Manpower requirements within the Air Force remain fluid at all levels. PME provides skilled manpower for Air Force and defense community leadership positions at the right level and at the right time.

· Though often overlooked, the faculty and student bodies of the PME schools represent a pool or ready reserve of highly trained and qualified officers. These individuals could quickly be returned to their specialties in the event of national emergency.

· A vast reservoir of experienced and specialized talent in the form of students is brought together at each school. The interaction of these students among themselves and with the faculty in effect serves as a review board of aerospace experts to evaluate and recommend improved aerospace concepts, doctrine, and strategy.

· The question of ethics is always paramount among any professional corps. PME provides the necessary forum for addressing, reviewing, and imparting military ethics and professional officer responsibilities.

The various levels of professional military education should be constituted as a series of experiences in solving problems of increasing complexity. As weapon systems grow more and more complex, as the weight of firepower increases, as the spectrum of war widens to include operations in space, and as U.S. relations with other countries become more interdependent, the importance of the professional military education of the officer corps, in my view, continues to grow. Air Force PME should provide the knowledge and understanding of the contemporary issues needed by the military leaders of tomorrow. Nor should it neglect the ethical aspects of the individual’s own life and his own spirit. We are reminded by Bertrand Russell that “the performance of public duty is not the whole of what makes a good life; there is also the pursuit of private excellence.”

God will see to it that war shall always recur as a drastic medicine for ailing humanity.

Using an analytical and objective approach, we at Air University have now devised a model for professional development which seems to be congruent with all the general concepts and philosophical standards against which we have measured it. It traces the professional development of the new officer into a senior officer throughout his career and encompasses all the different facets of career education toward his total growth. (Figure 1)

Whereas one may not accept Treitschke’s theological view of the inevitability of war, one would hardly hesitate to subscribe to the historical view expressed by Will and Ariel Durant that “war is one of the constants of history, and has not diminished with civilization or democracy.’ Regrettably, man has not rid himself of this ultimate form of competition in the latter half of the twentieth century, and so, because of the great destructiveness of modern weaponry, it behooves the airmen of the Republic to be prepared for the next war better than any who may seek to bring on that competition. We cannot afford to be ignorant of the art of war, and we cannot afford the fatal expense of ignorant practitioners of the art. Having concluded that there is a fundamental necessity for PME, I should say a word about how we at Air University go about the business of conducting professional military education.

I shall leave to the following article a more detailed discussion of the Air University education system, but we have, we believe, conceptually and philosophically, strengthened a three-tiered system of professional military education. Progress is depicted and contrasted with the approaches used by the United States Army, United States Navy, and United States Marine Corps. Comparing PME among the services, while useful, is not the concern of this article, for our PME relates to the unique features of the United States Air Force, its mission, and the necessity of providing to it experts in the application of air power. Air University makes no pretense of producing experts in the manipulation of land forces or sea power or of producing political scientists manqués, or diplomats of the first water. We concentrate on the production at all levels to differing degrees of expertise in the application of air power.

My studies since arriving at Air University, which have caused great attitudinal changes in my approach to PME, have convinced me that the founders of PME for airmen at AU’S predecessor, the Air Corps Tactical School at Langley Field, Virginia, in the twenties were basically sound thinkers. Among other things they foresaw a need for the emerging science of air power to be pursued by practitioners trained in this facet of the art of war. Implicit in the motto of that school and now of Air University, Proficimus More Irretenti—We go forward unhampered by tradition—is the notion that professional military education can go a long way in making certain that airmen will not attempt to fight the last war over if that human tragedy occurs again under different circumstances at a later time in a different place.

President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard once said, “Universities are full of knowledge. The freshmen bring a little in, and the seniors take none away, and knowledge accumulates.” We here at Air University think President Lowell would not have minded if we revised his saying on a more serious note: Our students do indeed bring a great deal of knowledge with them as they come, but we believe they leave here taking more knowledge with them, yet having enhanced Air University’s accumulation of knowledge concerning the application of air power.

Lieutenant General F. M. Rogers (B. S., University of Maryland) is Commander, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. A squadron commander and fighter ace in World War II, he has held responsible positions with Headquarters USAF, the Joints Chiefs of Staff, the Officer of the Secretary of Defense, and Air Force Systems Command. He was senior member of the Military Armistice Commission with the United Nations Command in Korea in 1970-71 and served as Vice Commander of Air Training Command prior to assuming leadership of Air University Command in November 1973. He is a graduate of the National War College.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

Why Professional Military Education