In a July-August 2015 article in Military Review discussing the Army University, Lt. Gen. Robert B. Brown, commanding general of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, states, "Our current [Army educational] system is inadequate for addressing the growing complexity, volatility, and uncertainty of the twenty-first century security environment." (1) The Army's system for professional military education, if not upgraded, will be unequal to the challenges that the Army and its leaders will face in the future. Building an educational architecture to better develop critical and creative thinkers in the Army is not a tax on the force. Instead, it is a long-term investment in the health of the force. It is a critical component for enabling education, which, in Brown's words, "is the most reliable strategic hedge in investment that the Army can make in the face of an uncertain future." (2)
The Army's brigade commanders of 2025 are entering the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) this year. Increasing the rigor in professional military education (PME), one of the goals of the newly created Army University, offers a method for building the Army's strategic hedge. (3) One element of the hedge is a rigorous intermediate-level education (ILE) that selects, educates, and places officers in a way that maximizes the intellectual capability in the force, beyond tactical training and experience. Doing so requires challenging two tacit assumptions in the traditional system: that all officers can complete ILE, and that board selection is more important than education for assessing promotion potential. As units at lower levels are thrust into circumstances that tactical training and experience cannot answer, a more rigorous ILE would provide those units an insurance policy against the unknowns they will face.
The State of Intermediate-Level Education
The Army has tried various approaches over time to provide high-quality ILE that meets the needs of the force. From 1946 to 2004, attendance at resident ILE was determined by a command and staff college (CSC) board, which selected approximately the top 50 percent of a year group for resident attendance at CGSC, another service college, or a foreign staff college. (4) The officers who did not get the benefits of that education perceived their nonselection as a negative discriminator, and in turn did not perceive that they had a reasonable expectation of future service. (5)
To address that training disparity and its cultural perceptions, consistent with the recommendations in the 2003 Army Training and Leader Development Panel Officer Study Report to the Army, the Army instituted universal resident ILE common core attendance from 2004 to 2012 at Fort Leavenworth and at several satellite campuses. (6) Officers in their basic branches then completed ILE through the Advanced Operations Warfighting Course, later the Advanced Operations Course (AOC) at Fort Leavenworth or via distance learning, while officers in functional areas completed ILE through their qualification courses. This approach, combined with the Army's operational requirements, created several challenges to effectiveness.
As the Army started growing in 2004 to meet wartime requirements, increasing demand from the force for field-grade officers resulted in shorter promotion timelines and less-selective promotion boards. Officers had fewer opportunities to pursue broadening assignments. Over time, the constant rotation of forces in and out of combat, while building a solid basis in small-unit tactics and leadership, left little time for most officers to gain doctrinal and theoretical foundations in combined arms warfare beyond the small-unit level. (7)
The separation of the common core and the AOC pushed most of the functional area and special branch officers out to the satellite campuses, and it closed off their access to the additional skill identifier elective programs such as the strategic studies, joint firepower, historian, homeland security, and space operations tracks. …
