Today I read the new CNAS report Keeping the Edge: Revitalizing America's Military Officer Corps. This report draws together a lot of the best ideas on reforming the military's personnel and education systems. The themes of the report are probably familiar to most of my readers: we need to identify and promote the right leaders, broaden the education of our officer force, increase opportunities for joint, interagency and multinational assignments, allow for more career flexibility, etc.
I was pleased to see that the report includes a chapter by an Air Force officer, Col Roderick C. Zastrow. The Air Force has struggled to find its place in the messy, ground-centric "small wars" in which the US is presently engaged. Col Zastrow offers a number of practical ideas on how to improve Air Force integration in joint operations. He emphasizes the importance of mutual learning between the Air Force and other services, something I firmly agree with. I appreciate his tone. He rightly insists that airpower specialists can bring unique perspective and abilities that our sister services might not fully understand, but he also admits that the Air Force needs to learn from them as well. This is a much more helpful perspective than the "siege" mentality I have seen in many other articles, which suggests that airmen need to fight tooth and nail to protect sacred doctrine from commanders in rival services who do not understand airpower or the airman's broader view of war.
The report is probably intended for an audience of senior leaders who can shape the military's personnel and education systems, but it should be read by junior officers as well, because it suggests a roadmap for the skills and abilities they will need to cultivate in their careers. I do not expect our personnel or PME systems to change much, but that shouldn't stop individual officers from running ahead of the system as much as possible to learn and grow.
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