Almost three weeks have passed since the Washington Post printed Tom Ricks' article Why We Should Get Rid of West Point (which is really about all the service academies and PME schools). I've enjoyed watching the blood fly. I've read dozens of responses to Ricks, but have yet to see a single mention of the Air Force Academy.
It's important to differentiate between the different service academies, because the strengths and weaknesses in each institution may not be the same. Consider institutional culture. Many people argue that the academies are important vehicles for preserving the institutional culture in the armed forces. I believe this is true, but what if the institutional culture is itself flawed and in need of reform? I believe this is the case in the Air Force today, and it was definitely the case when I attended USAFA.
West Point's strength, Robert Kaplan argues in a quote Tom Ricks repeated on his blog, is the wartime experience of its professors and their deep thoughtfulness about war. He writes, "their intense experience in war zones had caused them to mature into voracious readers of the classics of war: Thucydides, Clausewitz, Mahan, and the like. To listen to a war veteran react to the literature of the Peloponnesian War is not something necessarily common to community colleges. I think the combination of fine civilian academics and battle-hardened and well-read junior officers made for a stellar combination in the department where I taught." If this is indeed the case at West Point, that is a culture worth preserving.
The service culture I encountered at USAFA and in follow-on PME schools was different. At no point in my career so far has the Air Force prepared me to fight and win the nation's wars at the operational or strategic levels; instead, it has trained me over and over to fight Desert Storm. The numerous PME courses I've taken are all built on the same canon: a cursory introduction to Jomini and Clausewitz, overviews of historical airpower theories, then discussions of how airpower was used and misused in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. The saga culminates with John Warden and his strategic airpower theory which was successfully employed in Desert Storm. This is the holy grail of airpower. Airpower post-Desert Storm is treated only briefly. When I attended Squadron Officer School I had 1.5 hours of instruction on airpower in the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. All these lessons focus exclusively on airpower and are missing any broader strategic context. The service culture at USAFA--at least when I attended--was a top-notch aviation and engineering school where graduates can look forward to flying kick-ass fighter jets. There was a lot of talk about a "warrior ethos", but mostly in the context of tactical accomplishments like putting bombs on target or successfully passing fuel from a tanker. With one notable exception--a fantastic political science instructor who opened my eyes to the world and set my life on a new path--the institution did not teach me to think critically about war.
Consequently, my military education has come from unlikely sources. Thucydides? I can thank my first professor in my online master's degree program, who was not a soldier but a Hungarian economist. Half his course was built around The Peloponnesian War. Homer? I tried and gave up on several translations before my wife--who studied humanities and philosophy in a small liberal arts school--introduced me to the masterful translations by Robert Fagles, which I fell in love with. Conflict resolution and management? Another professor in my online degree program, this one a Baha'i pacifist. Class dynamics, poverty, race relations? I can thank my wife again, who worked at an alternative, inner city high school. Other shaping influences include NGOs like International Crisis Group and journalists like Bob Woodward and Tom Ricks. Most importantly, I've learned from the United States Army. It's embarrassing that a captain in the United States Air Force has to turn to the Army for an education about war, but that is exactly the situation I've found myself in. While the Air Force was sitting out the FM 3-24 development process, I was on Small Wars Journal every morning and working through reading lists by top Army thinkers.
Should the Air Force Academy be closed? I have no idea. My gut instinct is no, but I'm not prepared to back that up with data. It's a good school and a public symbol that draws a lot of talent. The character shaping, stress inoculation, and confidence-building changed me in ways I never would have experienced at a civilian university. My education was top-notch, the flying programs were a superb foundation for Undergraduate Pilot Training, and I made a lifelong community of friends. But I believe the service culture--both within USAFA and the Air Force at large--is a liability, not an asset. USAFA and the Air Force PME schools may not need to be closed, but they need to be reformed.
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