The Air Force Message We Need

In a December 17th speech at the Maneuver Captain's Career Course, John Nagl did something I consider extraordinary. After congratulating the students on their battlefield adaptation to challenges the Army never prepared them for, and after expressing his confidence in their future leadership, he made a request. "I ask that you help us build the Army we need to fight the wars of today and tomorrow."

I will quote his speech at length, because I believe it's that important:

In between combat patrols and meetings with village elders and local security forces, I’m asking you to think about what you need to do your job better. What can we back here do to help you build strong local and provincial governments that meet the needs of their people and gain their support? What organizational changes should we implement to give the companies on the ground what they need to understand and influence the local situation, from a company intel section in the TO&E so that you don’t have to make one out of hide to a battalion Political Advisor to help with negotiations and tribal dynamics? What doctrine or training did you not receive here in the training base that would have helped you more effectively build the Afghan National Army into a force that can secure Afghanistan on its own, so that my son and yours don’t have to do so?

Your nation needs you to lead soldiers into harm’s way to fight a determined and often invisible enemy who knows no laws of war or man. Your nation needs you to be a diplomat as well as a warrior, because we can’t kill or capture our way to success in this fight; victory comes from building local institutions that can stand on their own. But your nation also needs you to tell us what you need to fight your fight better, to build an Army that is truly a learning institution able to defeat adaptive insurgent enemies.

So don’t throw your books away at the end of the course. Take ‘em with you—your Galula, your FM 3-0 and 3-07 and yes, your FM 3-24--and tear ‘em apart. Tell us what we got right and what we got wrong. Tell us over email distro lists that you send to everybody in your small group and by blogging at Small Wars Journal, that gift to the American military that every soldier should read every day, and by publishing in your branch journals and in Military Review. Think and read and publish, when you’re in the fight and, in some ways even harder, when you’re back here after the fight, once the kids are in bed.

I want to throw down the gauntlet for my own service, the Air Force. This is your chance. The Army is reinventing itself as an adaptive learning organization that empowers and learns from anyone willing to speak up--even its most junior officers. The Air Force needs to do the same thing. In 2007 Lieutenant General Stephen Lorenz, commander of Air University, urged airmen to “challenge accepted paradigms to propose new ways of fighting from air, space, and cyberspace.” That's a start, but we have a long way to go.

The organizational learning process in the Air Force is largely stalled, especially at junior levels. In 2007 my Squadron Officer School correspondence curriculum mentioned the word "counterinsurgency" only one time I could find; the in-residence course hardly mentioned it at all. The intellectual environment of the in-residence course is stagnant. It indoctrinates its captains with the existing body of airpower doctrine--which is largely derived from DESERT STORM--and actively discourages critical thinking. When I attended in the summer of 2007, the course included two writing assignments. The first was a paper discussing techniques to keep a failing Officer's Club open. Six years into a grueling war that requires learning and adaptation, it's unforgivable that half our writing at an Air Force PME school was devoted to the Club. Worse, students had to follow a sentence-by-sentence outline provided by the faculty. The last time I wrote an essay in such a rigid format was in 9th grade. The second paper, thankfully, was a country report discussing American interests and security issues in that country. The problem was that students had to fit their report into a rigid framework taught by the school. The framework denied space for intellectual exploration and fresh, original thinking. It also meant every report inclined towards certain kinds of answers.

When I raised my feedback up the SOS chain, I was told that intellectual creativity simply wasn't an emphasis at SOS; the goal of the papers was to learn writing skills. Granted, SOS is primarily a leadership school, not an academic school. I was assured I would find the academics stronger at ACSC. Perhaps, but when is the right time to begin encouraging innovation? To quote Paul Yingling, "It is unreasonable to expect that an officer who spends 25 years conforming to institutional expectations will emerge as an innovator in his late forties."

The Air Force is also largely absent from the dynamic, creative exchanges about strategy and transformation on websites like Small Wars Journal, which has become an intellectual powerhouse in the Army and Marines. Only a handful of Air Force officers regularly engage with this community, like Maj. John Bellflower, who has written a couple articles suggesting ways to employ "soft" airpower successfully in small wars. When it comes to blogging in general, the Air Force lags behind the other services. Most blogs are still banned on Air Force networks. Reversing some of these policies and encouraging officers to join the lively strategic conversations in the Army and Marines would be a good place to start.

It's true that the Army has a ways to go. My Army classmates at DLI assure me that organizational learning has not yet penetrated vast swaths of the Army, and Tom Ricks is writing about the stifling of intellectual freedom at the Army War College. It's also true that in many areas, the Air Force is learning and evolving. The Air Force deserves credit for that. Nevertheless, I believe there is a marked difference between the intellectual climate in the Army and Air Force right now, particularly at the strategic level. Contrast Nagl's message about organizational learning to the implicit message I received at Squadron Officer School. Which organization is doing a better job equipping its captains to lead the Armed Forces into an uncertain future?

So with a nod to John Nagl and plenty of shameless plagiarizing, here is my suggestion for the message the Air Force should deliver to its officers of every rank:

We've done a good job teaching you about airpower; but we need more. We need you to go out and learn about war in its entirety. Burn the midnight oil learning all you can about history, foreign affairs, strategy, and culture and language. Brainstorm ideas. Consider how the Air Force should adapt to our fast-changing world, and how it can more effectively participate in a full range of conflicts, from stability operations to counterinsurgency to conventional wars. Do this jointly. For decades, the Air Force has largely defined itself in opposition to ground forces. It's time to get past that. We're an established service with a lot to offer, and we can stand on our own. So go talk to the Army and Marines. Learn from them. Challenge them. Read and think over the new Army manuals alongside the Air Force's recent Irregular Warfare manual. Hang out on Small Wars Journal and the other good blogs. Read journals across all the services--and from outside the military as well. Join the conversation. When you think others are wrong, call them on it. When you think they're right, bring the lessons back to the Air Force. To meet 21st century challenges, we need to think, challenge each other, and innovate as a joint team.

Just my humble view about the Air Force message we need.