ACSC launches force-development curriculum

  • Published
  • By Maj. Mike Paoli
  • Air Command and Staff College
MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. (AFPN) --  More than 500 majors attending Air Command and Staff College here are the first to experience a more robust and tougher curriculum.

The changes, directed by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper, prepare officers for operational career broadening and increase their knowledge of military strategy and expeditionary employment.

Besides revising more than 50 percent of the program, the college staff initiated a modular school-year calendar to accommodate air and space expeditionary force rotations, said Col. Jim Forsyth, dean of education and curriculum.

Three modules, independent of each other, allow officers to enter the course either in August or January, and graduate in either June or December.

Module 1 -- Strategy, Airpower and Leadership -- includes two new courses focused on military strategy and AEF operations.

“In an officer’s development at the intermediate level, we want (him or her) to know how to apply air and space power to affect events on the battlefield,” Forsyth said. “(Officers) also need to know how the Air Force organizes, deploys to a bare base, builds up that bare base, generates aircraft and employs expeditionary forces in a joint fashion.”

During Module 1, students complete nine major exams.

“The demands here are nothing close to what most of us experience in our jobs, although it’s still a demanding course,” said Maj. Heather Knight, student academic officer for this year’s class. “Given all the changes, I think the class is doing well.”

Module 2 covers joint warfighting, including campaign planning, and leads into Module 3, the new “specialized studies.”

“Module 3 is the key piece, the center of gravity to the chief of staff’s force-development ideas,” Forsyth said. “Specialized studies are specifically designed to introduce (students) to something (they are) unfamiliar with. The idea is that at some point in (an officer’s) career (he or she will) branch into one of these functional areas.”

Module 3 includes specialized-study courses in air and space power employment, plans and programs, acquisition management, political-military strategist, space operations, mobility operations, information operations and agile combat support.

Most study groups, comprising about 70 officers, will take a one- to two-week field trip for first-hand orientation of their study area. For example, space operations students will visit the space wings at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.; F.E. Warren AFB, Wyo.; and U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt AFB, Neb., Forsyth said.

Unlike the research course, however, students will have little input as to which specialized course they pursue, Forsyth said. Career-field directors or equivalents on the Air Staff will decide which studies match the most likely career broadening potential for their people and will then direct that course through the college staff to the students.

Air Force Personnel Center officials at Randolph AFB, Texas, will then track which specialized course an officer took, adding greater flexibility to both the permanent assignment and AEF deployment systems.

“Your assignments will be tailored to offer you … breadth once you have proven your depth of experience,” wrote Jumper in his November 2002 “Chief’s Sight Picture.”

A parallel Module 3 is being developed for international officers -- about 70 at the college here -- and will offer “an opportunity to refine their understanding of democracy and American society, and further refine their operational capability,” Forsyth said.

“At the end of this year, we will have asked more of this ACSC class and staff than any that have come before,” he said. “I think students will look back and say, ‘Ran pretty fast; learned a lot; was well worth it.’”

Big changes also affect the college’s nonresident program beginning in January.

Version 4.0 of the distance-learning program will allow majors, major-selects and GS-11 civilians to stay current with the same primary concepts covered by the in-resident program, including lessons taken from most recent operations, said Col. Mike Harris, dean of distance learning.

“Distance learning will focus on joint operations from an Air Force perspective and continue to provide joint professional military education credit,” Harris said.

The program will include 50 operationally focused lessons, six exams and four exercises.

Beyond the college, Air Force officials added 140 master’s degree opportunities for a total of 670 slots for Air Force officers at the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, Calif.; Joint Military Intelligence College at Bolling AFB, D.C.; and the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.

That number will rise to 780 slots in 2004 and possibly more in the future, he said.

To ensure benefit to the Air Force, these advanced-degree students must pursue a course of study directly related to either their functional area or a previous degree with operational application. As a return benefit to students, degree completion now provides in-resident intermediate-developmental education credit, equal to college attendance at Maxwell AFB, Harris said.

Replacing the term “intermediate-service school,” intermediate-developmental education includes this college and other select post-graduate degree programs at universities throughout the nation. (Courtesy of Air Education and Training Command News Service)