good morning and welcome to the sixth in a series of hearings on officer in residence professional military education which we know throughout the military and here on the hill as pm me hearings us far have explored various aspects of the service specific and joint institutions  that make up the current p m s system with examinations curriculum standards of rigor the quality of staff faculty and students and organization resourcing at the pre commissioning primary intermediate and senior pm eleven professional military education is an investment in the most important element of our military our people the primary purpose of to me is to develop military officers throughout their careers for the rigorous intellectual demands of complex contingencies and major complex major conflicts we can't afford  complacent when it comes to producing leaders capable of meeting significant challenges without the tactical operational or strategic levels as a matter of national security we must invest wisely the pm a system bears a special responsibility for staying relevant amid change as a key mechanism for individual imports development p m a must both respond to present needs and to support a future one p m eastern most continuously evolve in order to enable officers to assume expanded roles and perform new missions in an increasingly complicated and constantly changing security environment for instance we know that p m a can empower officers to contribute to interagency and multinational operations and to effectively utilize foreign languages and cultural skills we have heard from some of the schools that they are currently striving to embrace these and other important educational priorities are they doing a good enough in short the pm a system has consistently improved twenty years ago the skeleton panel report  d although many of its individual courses programs and faculties are excellent the existing system must be improved to meet the needs of the modern arms and that statement is true today twenty years ago we were educating officers to engage against our cold war habits very clearly much about our military and our world has changed since then much will continue to change as we look to the future with respect to the immediate questions should always apply how well are we educating our officers presently and what should we be doing to educate them more effectively in the future are witnesses for this hearing are prominent former senior military and civilian academic leaders each of whom have significant experience with the preemies system and i look forward to hearing your views and now we recognize to enhance our system of pm here in the united states this morning the subcommittee conducts its sixth and final scheduled hearing on officer in residence professional military education and we begin the study with testimony from outside experts who posed issues for the subcommittee to consider then conducted for sessions in which we heard from many military service witnesses who discussed various components of the p m a system and how it all fits together we will conclude this final hearing with additional thoughts from you very well qualified witnesses and your thoughts and ideas on what we can do to make sure we round out this p m a experience for our men and women in uniform and i think our approaches committee  sound and hope that today's panel will put the issues in perspective for the subcommittee and suggest a path forward during the course of the study i've come to specked in my or our professional military education system there is nothing else in the rest of the federal government or to my knowledge private industry which begins to emulate the significant and continuous investment we make in educating and developing our military officers it's important for all of us to keep in mind that today system produces quality successful officers who operate in a wide range of demanding and difficult positions that does not mean that there aren't areas that need improvement but we should not lose sight of the fact that we have a system that for the most part serves us well  this process of have the opportunity to listen to witnesses travel to pee in the institutions and meet with senior leaders alongside chairman snyder in fact this past friday i visited the u s naval academy and had the unique opportunity to observe some of the quality training our junior officers receive at the service academies and by the way i was there as the football team was leaving to go play ohio state and i can i can tell you it was an exciting saturday for midshipmen there where they almost were victorious there against ohio state quite a quite a great day for them and from all of these business and discussions to a recurring theme stand out in my mind is the most valuable aspects of p and the first i heard mostly from the students is the value of interacting with fellow students of different background particularly those from the state department international students and those from other military services the second most valuable skill the students can develop is critical thinking as there is no way to anticipate the ever changing situations officers face in today's world of continuous deployments whatever we may suggest i think it's imperative that we retain these aspects of today's system it was time that we undertook this effort and i'm pleased to have been a participant in what i think is an extraordinary effort and i want to thank chairman snyder for his leadership and all of his direction in pursuing this effort over the past twenty years the united states has significantly changed the way it employs its military forces sending troops abroad to address regional issues with far greater frequency than we did during the cold war it's also apparent that the system like any large system involving people faces challenges in today's dynamic environment of high operational momentum even so i think today's a system by and large serves the nation well and we should carefully consider any potential recommendations from this committee again mr chairman thank you for your leadership and i look forward to hearing from the witnesses thank you mr whitman  witnesses today are lieutenant general david barno u s army retired director of the near east south asia center for strategic studies dr john allen williams de williams ph d professor of political science at loyola university  chicago and president of the inner university seminar on armed forces and society and dr williamson with murray ph d professor emeritus of the ohio state university and senior fellow at the institute for defense analyses we appreciate your being here written statements will be part of the record i read your written statements and i think i'm excited about this discussion today we mentioned our previous five hearings the visits we've had we've been doing a lot of waiting down in the weeds as you know way is now with the whole lot of staff effort to put together everything that we've learned on all their visits and travels and our meetings our hearings and what recommendations can we make the congress and the military to move ahead on this and   but that combined with my time having commanded from lieutenant a company commander all the way to lieutenant general as a commander in afghanistan will provide a bit about balance to look at to what may become academic in some respects but professional military education is a critical competency of the military i'm i'm involved in the academic world today have been for the last three years as the director of the new center national defense university but i'll give my comments today out of my own personal views opposed to speaking for the government and also highlight to the committee that i've got a personal stake in this with two sons in uniform two army captain out there in the field want to serve a year in afghanistan already so i have a vested personal interest in ensuring that our long term national military education remains strong i think i'd like to talk a bit about my characterizations of where we are today and some of the demands on the force today in terms of our leadership and then highlight  in my opening comments here five recommendations for the committee to consider first i would note that we are in an environment where warfare is changing at a very rapid pace if we were to have this hearing just ten years ago in one nine hundred ninety nine and we had some distinguished military officers up here to ask about what the future war was going to look like we would have heard them talk about rapid decisive operations and strike and focused logistics information dominance and what they would have drawn their understanding of warfare from the one hundred ninety nine kosovo war which would have just concluded which involve no ground combat troops at all and if we were to just moving forward a couple years they would have seen a lot of those ideas played out in the opening gambits in afghanistan where we were able to collapse the taliban regime in about ninety days after a standing start in what reminder this week with the anniversary of nine eleven and then a few years later in iraq where in a six week you know lightning ground campaign we saw our military forces overwhelm an extraordinarily large and capable army by really shattering their ability to resist that we're been their view of warfare today if we asked that same group what warfare looks like we would have found a very different description of warfare today we're clearly actively involved in two major irregular warfare conflicts one in iraq one afghanistan which you have taken us down a very very different road than our outlook on warfare just ten years ago the beginning of this decade so i highlight that fact because i think it describes the complexity of the challenge that face our military leaders today and all the way from the tactical level toon leaders and company commander and all the way to our senior most general s the bloody uncertain chaotic nature of war is not change but the character of war how it plays out what the options are are ever changing between irregular warfare conventional warfare and not what some are now calling hybrid warfare a combination  such we saw more of fight in south lebanon in two thousand and six this is an extraordinarily more difficult environment to think about warfare than the environment i entered into the army in one nine hundred seventy six where the cold war was very much deal the centerpiece of  predictable military confrontation so we have set the bar higher for the requirements i think for our military leaders i also think characterized by decision making in strategic thinking over the last ten years is somewhat questionable  acceptable cost has been declining for some decades they want to say that reversing this decline in u s should teach a competence is an urgent issue for the american national security establishment the twenty first century i'm not sure i'd go as far as my friend krepinevich would in this but i think he's on to an issue of concern which is our ability to convert our current educational establishment and development officers into effect of strategic leadership we've seen articles such as the failure of generalship who've been very critical of america's military leadership and of course all of our military leadership myself included have gone to our professional military schools so i think it's appropriate to look at how we're teaching how we're developing lobsters and ask questions about whether we've got it fully correct or not i would say however and i think all the panelists would agree with me as i heard already on the on the committee members knowing that we have an amazing military we have an incredible force we have some of the best leadership we've ever had in the field under the most difficult conditions and i think that that's a hallmark of who we are preserving that asymmetrical advantage we have in our intellectual capability and all terry is extraordinarily important and i would highlight that i think the majority of our investment in a lot of ways has been made at the tactical and operational level and i and i look at the amount of time we're spending at the strategic level throughout our programs especially as officers reach flag rank and i have some question in my mind as to whether we got that quite right specifically i think that our our educational develop rosters peters out diminishes to near nothing at the flag officer level at the brigadier at the one star admiral level and where as a lieutenant i might go to a course for six months before i stood in front of a platoon of forty soldiers as a flag officer the longest course i will go to is six weeks long but there's something perhaps not right about that given the complexity and the impact of the demands at that level so five brief recommendations first i think we need to look at our civilian graduate programs incentivize that for our highest performing officers there's no substitute for our civilian graduate degree to sharpen the thinking of our officers as they move up through the ranks and they become senior officers that help me more my graduate school in georgetown university as a captain helped me more than perhaps any other developmental experience at the strategic level most officers today will not have that experience the vast majority will not they will have master's degree but they'll get them from military schools that's a major change when i was a young officer can i think we need to make military intellectual ism and military thinking and thinking warriors respectable again we've been on a run now for the better part of nine years we have a great muddy boots generation of leadership we need to make sure they're thinking muddy boots leaders and we need to incentivize with our senior leaders and how they speak about thinking about warfare that being a military intellectual is an expectation of all of our leaders to be thinking warrior is what we're looking for junior service college our senior service colleges the army war college national defense university is our or the last major investment we make in education for our officers i think we have to look very carefully at that curriculum to ensure it's rigorous enough it's focused enough on strategy and that we don't outsource aspects of it to fellow ships that don't have nearly the same degree of rigor which is becoming a common practice particularly in the u s army for a service officer personnel systems personnel systems drive the selection development senior leaders and we have to look very care have in effect a forty year career for our generals we should invest more of that time in their education the time is available i cannot be convinced that we can't find time to invest in the most important part of the officers education that at the senior and most  level and then finally to flag officer program which reinforces that i think our current capstone program has major shortfalls in it it's been reduced from a nine week program just a few years ago it has very little educational rigor and is not representing the needs  success requires adaptive leaders and strategists are able to deal with ambiguity imagine the unimaginable and handle a truly unruly environment that is upon us studying theories about war must never make war itself  theoretical exercise however military scholarship must contribute to the primary purpose of the force which is to prevail in combat the military education system must support not subvert or detract from rigorous military training and the mindset that makes victory possible i propose two goals for the military system first to develop strategists and leaders to meet future complex and ambiguous challenges and secondly to strengthen civil military relations during the clearly what are the prospective enemy was apparent we knew how we would fight we even knew the likely axes of attack with the attacks of nine eleven however a new much less certain paradigm emerged unfortunately threats still remain and the major military mission became all of the above domestically military reflect the societies they serve whether it's the vietnamese era vietnam era tolerance for drug use or the evolving comfort level with diversity of all kinds and with nontraditional roles for women demands for the military to change accordingly will not be far behind it will require the most educated and adaptive leadership to manage the military successfully as such changes inevitably occur the military might also be called upon to operate domestically in ways never envisioned with posse comitatus restrictions waived in view of a civil emergency this could be to restore order in the wake of some catastrophe or even to enforce a quarantine we want the most broadly and humanely educated officers thinking about how to operate in this environment the military education system should encourage potential strategists broaden their intellectual arise and help them develop the skills they need to be effective and to do so as early in their careers as possible it must also ensure that all officers form the habit of thinking strategically rigorous educational experiences will help students develop the intellectual capital they will need later in their careers this applies to the increasingly professionalised enlisted ranks as well the subject of further study i think the mix of technical social science moral and humanist components and curriculum at all levels need to be rebalanced if we are training officers to lead people as opposed to machines it is past time to reemphasize the importance of the humanities and social sciences deemphasized in the navy for example for at least three decades because of the presumed need for officers to emphasize highly technical competence above all else we need to retain also a variety of  that are not subject to the political whims of the university professors the service academies are repositories of service culture a source of pride to the american people and by virtue of the appointment process of this congress ensure a gagement with the civilian academic community would be beneficial to officer examples include accreditation programs for the military's master's degree programs first rank civilian professors  military residential schools participation and rigorous scholarly professional societies such as the one i had the privilege of heading the university seminar on armed forces and society and enhanced civilian graduate education opportunities especially at the mid career level as general david petraeus noted this experience helps bridge the gap between those in uniform and those who have had little contact with the military as the congress considers these issues i recommend that the following be included as important considerations not to repair a broken system but to make an excellent system still better enhancing the word or the humanities and social sciences including language and cultural studies considering the effect of the system on the relations between the military and civil society encouraging the flow of highly qualified civilian instructors into the academic portions of residential military programs whether as visiting professors or permanent encouraging the best officers to interact with civilian academic institutions and organizations making performance in educational institutions a strong factor in subsequent assignments and promotion finally focusing on the increasing professionalization of the enlisted force and considering how enlisted educational opportunities can better meet evolving security challenges thank you and i look forward to our discussion this morning thank you dr williams and dr murray dr snyder it's great pleasure to address the committee and yourself first first question i want to ask you i just want to give you each an opportunity you all are involved in academic work some in some way and are used to critiquing things like give each of you the opportunity to either critique or compliment position which we may or may not agree with in public so we i think all of us are free to speak from a lot of experience in this arena and a lot of commitment to where this goes i think as i have noted down you know the comments from both of my contemporaries aired on my last but we seem to have built a program that has created extraordinary tactical and operational officers and a lot of that i think it could be could do the fact that most of the program is at that level their career when the lieutenants captains majors tended colonels we have done far less well in most of our estimation i think i heard that from each of the participants up harry to what we've done for russia while at the strategic level we need to ask why and what can be done to rectify that i'm not sure i would agree that that has to occur at the very beginning of a career i think there's a part of it that stars there but i think we will have to look at the more senior levels of how we grow these people in develop them when they become senior for the senior jobs pleased to very difficult to do particularly given the concept of our forces have the day but significant number of officers do it and they are the ones who should be rewarded provided that they're doing a really well and are going operational there's an old line about you know what do you call the person who our witnesses testimony and your important work both civilian and in uniform general and i had the pleasure good many years ago although not on the committee have been to iraq nine times now and afghanistan five and continue to educate especially in afghanistan i've seen the importance of our work between our military commanders and us a foreign service officers department state foreign service but especially usa id and in as part of this education process and suggestions of what way or to what extent should that occur you again i live on the edge of your district there in dickinson township so i'm not too far from from your area there and spent a lot of time in the army war college and you've been a tremendous supporter of that great institution as well i think we're seeing a very slow growth of  other agencies government us department state you know justice and so on simply don't have enough people to be able to bear any to go to school and so when a in the military as we alluded to earlier we have a pool in the army called the training transit holding in school a count of people who are basically over strength to allow a substantial number of officers and noncommissioned officers always be in school so i take someone out of a seat i've got someone else to take that job for the year that  their majors going in the state department that's not true and u s id that's not true so they are so tightly controlled with the number of overseas requirements they have that they simply can't get people to go to school so perhaps that should be addressed but the benefit of that is huge for their people that go to these schools such as the army war college or national war college and it's equally huge for the military people to get exposed to this sort of thinking before they get to meet these people on the battlefield which is not how you would like to see that evolve let me just let  something along the lines similar to the military broadening experience if we're going to have the kind of interagency cooperation in places like afghanistan i think congressman plats raise an important question it's difficult enough to get the services to come together and do joint education and work in everyone's career path it becomes exponentially more difficult when you have the energy agency process process as well but different career path different they have to go through as well plus they are perhaps even  less robustly staffed in the military the military has as enough problems to make it even more complicated and in that environment you're also dealing with non governmental organizations of various kinds that you have no control over and they may not be american emphasizing education or allowing for those opportunities i think is kind of the catch twenty two because they're not yet they're expecting there to be out there right with the military leaders hand in things chairman now i ask all of you this question and looking over all we've heard a lot recently about the whole of government approach to our contingency operations and taking that in perspective with the current system how do you think this system can emphasize agency in our governmental and multinational aspects of our future military activities  into into the instructional efforts that we're currently undertaking now in our in our peony system in general i think that's evolving and is underway as a result of the experiences that plastic live out in the field and in afghanistan iraq now military officers are much different than ten or fifteen years ago running into all these people and finding in many cases that they now have to have a partnership that works with these other parts of government in order for them to accomplish their military mission that's a completely new environment and what anyone would invision you know ten or fifteen years ago so they've already brought that knowledge with them when they come to these military pm a course is i think where we could probably add some more capacity is having instructional support at the colleges the war colleges and colleges that are either from those agencies of the government or are retired members with experience in the field doing those types of things  it's not good enough for a colonel of infantry to get up and talk about usa id operations and and how they're structured and what their culture is and how they think and how they approach things the credibility simply is not there and that's what we have to rely on because of our set up in all of our one of the purposes of course of the education system is to plan a game for things before you are in a crisis and the kinds of initiatives that john was talking about are quite good we opened up as many opportunities for people from those other agencies and  forward the comment was made by at least a couple of our opening panel witnesses a plea was that the chair of the joint chiefs i think the word was need to take more ownership of it in terms of making sure that  relationship with a new national defense university president i also think it's equally if not one born at the service chiefs are visible champions of their preemie programs of their service colleges of their staff colleges and that varies widely i mean as we would expect given the military education and i would argue that in a lot of ways our four stars have to be champions of military education they have to talk about it they have to make it respectable they have to convince those young up and coming all sure that this is part of their professional responsibility and  record performance and whatever school they attend it should be as important in terms of judging that officer for promotion as a service in the field i think i think that there's also been really is given the kind of environment we confront in the twenty first century i'm going to run out of time i want to spend some time talking about the civilian post graduate degrees  what it was ten years ago because all the officers in the newer group had graduate degrees but the vast vast majority came from military institutions whereas ten years ago there were a substantial number of civilian but i i'm sure we could get that poten number of other experts and they met both monday and tuesday and i'm wondering if if you believe that there is sufficient focus is their focus on these issues as it relates to military culture within the the education of our men and women in the programs that you that you're very much engaged in what are we doing at on the course that tailhook scandal was it turned out to be teachable moment for everyone and i think from that point on it was a very high priority of the congress and therefore of the military but also people awesome part of the total force you can't operate without them they're absolutely vital and they need to be treated at all times of dignity and respect when those occasions occur they are not it is and should be a career seeking missile to anyone who  would behave inappropriately so i think it i think it even in civilian world it doesn't ever but i think it's so much better and i think it deserves continuing its attention so it continue to be a  other issues that would go before any panels and would you concur with that do you think that it should be an important metric if you will of of whether or not somebody actually is is seen as  moving up in leadership i would hope anybody reaching senior levels would be sensitized to this issue obviously there is always a possibility of someone having an undeserved bad reputation  because people differ on what happened and when and what the what was done so as long as the standards of fairness are observed obviously i quite agree with you that this does need to be a consideration i would look at i think from their overall performance standpoint as a leader that this is an important part of their leadership responsibilities are exercising a properly or are they involved at the right level or somewhere if we get too focused on individual performance in this area that we get across the legal thresholds because most commanders have got legal responsibilities and i think we would be not well advised to intrude and make decisions are made judgments based upon what their legal decisions were in that system but i do think it's clearly and i you know very very confident are watching officers look at us as part of the leadership responsibilities every officer has out there and how they perform that obviously will dictate their future promotion potential but i would argue that it's it's it's  we've had hearings on the national security subcommittee and specifically focused on the service academies and you know thankfully there is more focus and attention to this issue because i think it's at a critical stage where we do send that message that there will be zero tolerance for this type of misconduct and it will be treated what unfortunate when we had a hearing and we had i believe all the commandant's or the you know the senior officials from the academies in the one hearing and only one of them never use the word crime in their remarks because that's what we're talking about here and type of conduct being a concern and it needs that wherever so that they're not wearing the uniform if they gauge in that context so i appreciate the importance of that i just i think i know the answer general barno to the question based on your statements written testimony is a little bit of  follow up to where the chairman concluded and that is on the issue of vance degrees ph d s is my understanding is the service specific schools and the joint looking at increasing ph d possibilities for the students seeing that that seems to run contrary to your belief in the importance of getting our senior leaders into civilian institutions for those higher  all around the globe and also again doesn't it advantage the military officer by getting him into the civilian world and in the thinking out there in order to provide access to the north or offshore on those civilian faculties and among those civilian students also if we lose out in  programs come back into a military and are then marginalized and no longer part of the command track in the military there's some rash that if we expand these opportunities that we're specializing these officers into fields that don't want any longer include command the army has a wonderful program called functional area fifty nine army strategist at the typically at the senior captain major level if you attend college they go into this program they get an educational experience at the army war college and they go out to the field and they are many more examples of that i think out there particularly in the army it is where it is worth noting that the one of them has actually just been promoted to brigadier general because nobody thought that anyone would ever be promoted to general but bill hicks he will declined military history programs and strategic study programs in the united states it's worth noting that in canadian universities and in british universities there will always be at least one professor two or three dealing with these issues and a number of major university programs in the united states dealing with military and strategic history is down to about two or three and that's i think a significant weakness and a dangerous weakness general petraeus talked about the importance of civilian military lead civilians and i want them interacting with each other i wanted to put a human face on one another i want the military to get how civilians think and i want the civilians to get how military things and not be lured into stereotypes i think it would be beneficial for civil military relations especially since they don't really have to come together on many occasions i agree because as we have a smaller percentage of the population having any tied directly or family to the military to make but it's nice to have a smaller percentage of people who understand the sacrifices being made i use my family's ample my dad was one of nine children he has four brothers and all four of his brother in laws were military one generation later one of us five boys and girls son or daughter or in laws one of five military service and that's not good i think for that understanding of our history and the needs of our military in the important role so the more interaction that we can promote i agree it is critically important in whatever way we can do it in fact the fact that reserve forces are actually mobilize and actually use and interact and are sold themselves so penetrating in the community i think that fills in for some of it i doubt thing that isn't often thought about in terms of reserve forces about the civil military dimension is in the current environment you're right that i guess one of the silver  to talk more about the civilian degree of the give me some practical your practical thoughts about how the work that you are all recommending that be increasing assume you mean increasing fairly large numbers military history and strategic studies program at ohio state for twenty year period there was a history department west point had a very clear list of institutions that they regarded as being first class  constrained and they had to get accepted at the institutions given the quality of the officers and here i think one isn't really talking about sending the entire army captain to graduate school i think it should be an elite three paybacks a crucial element general barno mentioned absolutely must not be punished for and there is an element in the service cultures that somebody who's gone out got a ph d or a master's degree for two years and then school is not feasible and a whole lot of dimensions i have no problem with outlining what courses of study would be most acceptable to the military to pay for or to give time off to do a certain locations obviously some of the great programs out there and i think that have to be some plex ability for someone who proposes something especially interesting and useful to make exceptions but for a student to be able to go study with charlie moscow's back in the day at northwestern was a great idea even point they know what they want they know what they've had success and it works very well but i would reinforce the comment you can't punish people because they were out playing at an educational institution rather than standing on the bridge immense credit my judgement about five years ago four years ago put a program in place to offer top notch incoming army captains a two year opportunity to go to graduate school with no follow on assignment to west point that would take them away from the field for even more years they could go out they would go to graduate school they would sign up for a little bit of additional required duty in the army but it was designed to retain high quality officers and anecdotally what i heard from that is after running it for three years it was under subscribed and it was not attracting the top tier of candidates just the opposite of what you would expect in this gets into this issue of the muddy boots army at war right now we are recognized that armies in a major fight the marine corps the soldiers are all fighting in iraq and afghanistan so the expectation been that i'm either back here getting ready to go to afghanistan as a captain or i'm in afghanistan or iraq as a cap and if i'm out of graduate school that's in a time of war this is even more debilitating for officers careers and it would be under normal conditions and so we got again changed the senior leadership mindset of what should but what's most valued i note in my my written testimony as well that you know in talking to some individuals involved in one story selections or recently those repeat operational tours are what counts towards that absolutely absolutely and so you know when we take people out of the pipeline for even two years of graduate school in the midst of a war and that's not really incentivized by a requirement that i can't get promoted  early promotion to my next rank if i don't do this if we don't connect that as almost a requirement then you know we really have devalued out in force one final numbers that i think west point assignments are and i saw this even when i was a captain are probably looked down upon inside of the operational career force that those are viewed now as assignments that you will paid a five year price to go there following graduate school but you will come out of there and you won't be a commander anymore you will be a specialist you'll no longer be competitive for went to west went to the teaching program graduate program at universal north carolina wrote a dissertation wrote the finest book on how we got into vietnam story indeed and then went out to  right thing if you've been at school or teaching at west point and i think that's a very deleterious and i don't know what to do to change it and our last question we talked a little bit if not what we do within those agencies to create policies or initiatives to direct people into the system both to instruct and to study to sort of round out that experience and i know we've heard from some other folks in the past are there inertia there within the agency that say hey listen that's outside of our daily way we don't want to participate they don't see value in it but it seems like to me if we're going to really round out this experience we have to have that and we have to find ways to make that work in a way that the agencies deep at all but having worked with him in the field i think that one of the great benefits the military has that perhaps could be mandated in the other agencies of government is to at least establish a small schools account of officers of ten fifteen twenty whatever the right number is that that that agency is required to keep in a school environment and then theoretically you could build their strength their resource and strength up to that level state department actually did this when general power was a secular state  years ago but the immediate expansion of state requirements consumed all of those people and they went right now to iraq and afghanistan so they had the right idea they got it all the way to fruition and they were consumed by a new unexpected requirement in many of these other agencies i think it could be a much smaller number but the fact that they are the number zero gives them no incentive if they were to establish a school flow if you of ten people to attend schools on a regular basis that would help give them the top to be able to do that on the instructional side  talk about how hard it is get all the services on board the best people to join schools and then rewarding them when they get out of it much more difficult is it for people looking at their own career when they're outside of the military thinking well what do i want to send this person here and why would i want to go there because i'm going to be hammered when i get home in my own agency that's a problem i don't know how to get out of that one i would argue that even more deeply than that for example  really at that level and what you're saying about the inner agency that in fact people coming from other agencies don't have the they don't have the academic background to be able to  any better the only mitigating possible i could be to try and either encourage or require those participants to have started in the field and in that setting with knowledge or officers so that at least they have an experiential background even if they don't have an part of it is the openness of the services as well because i think that again this is really more it at a different level rather than an education but clearly the military has a much deeper bange than the civilian community does certainly than the state department does and so people can flow more easily you don't have as many people to parole and i thought your idea about trying to preserve a number of positions that actually are not just it's almost not just for their own education but it's also for their opportunity to provide their perspective to others i mean they're in a very different role in that when they're doing that and we need to try and facilitate that process i'm not sure the answer either but i think it's it's an important one i wanted to just ask you briefly about the role that professional military education has in  typically that is a recruiting and a perhaps a superficial level of training in some ways that that that that that that our o t c has had a role in that way i know just speaking from my own experience with a number of our instructors wonderful wonderful people but probably were not able to play a broader role in terms of the education of many of the men and women in in our own do you think that we should be focusing more on that should the schools be trying to use that as a much stronger vehicle for helping to at least inspire young people whether they actually go into the service or not but learning more command and control structures how to get things done whether it's in national security homeland security is that iran would that be of benefit to you as you see young people coming into your schools as  well i have a vested interest in this i guess i did teach at the naval academy and i came from o c s myself but i work closely with the program at northwestern university students go up there and across town arrangement it is an excellent program and the people that go through there are as fine as any i saw at apple and they have a very rigorous and a very serious military component to their program and they have required courses that put them in my classes for example and other classes at northwestern that sort of meet the requirements i would hope that they would be doing so i it's an excellent program i strongly support it plus as a civil military actions i discussed earlier  to strengthen the programs that you've seen that i suspect that's probably not the same throughout the country although i'm there are exceptional programs let me just add something to because i think it's a rather interesting perspective