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i 

63–159 2011

[H.A.S.C. No. 111–184] 

CONTINUED ENGAGEMENT: DEPARTMENT 

OF DEFENSE RESPONSES TO THE 

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

APRIL 2010 REPORT ON PROFESSIONAL 

MILITARY EDUCATION 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND 

INVESTIGATIONS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

NOVEMBER 30, 2010 
(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS 

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman 

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania 

GLENN NYE, Virginia 

CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

ROB WITTMAN, Virginia 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

LORRY FENNER, Professional Staff Member 

THOMAS HAWLEY, Professional Staff Member 

FAMID SINHA, Staff Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2010 

Page 

HEARING: 

Tuesday, November 30, 2010, Continued Engagement: Department of Defense 

Responses to the House Armed Services Committee April 2010 Report 

on Professional Military Education .................................................................... 1 

APPENDIX: 

Tuesday, November 30, 2010 .................................................................................. 29 

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2010 

CONTINUED ENGAGEMENT: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE RESPONSES 

TO THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE APRIL 2010 REPORT 

ON PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman, Subcommittee 

on Oversight and Investigations ......................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

Hebert, Lernes J., Acting Director, Officer and Enlisted Personnel Management, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness ........................................................................................................................ 2 

Hix, BG William C., USA, Director, Operational Plans and Joint Force Development, J–7, Joint Chiefs of Staff ...................................................................... 3 

Lutterloh, Scott, Director, Total Force Training and Education Division, U.S. 

Navy ...................................................................................................................... 6 

MacFarland, BG Sean B., USA, Deputy Commandant, Command and General 

Staff College, U.S. Army ...................................................................................... 4 

Neller, Maj. Gen. Robert, USMC, President, Marine Corps University ............. 9 

Sitterly, Daniel R., Director of Force Development, Deputy Chief of Staff, 

Manpower and Personnel, U.S. Air Force .......................................................... 7 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Hebert, Lernes J. .............................................................................................. 37 

Hix, BG William C. .......................................................................................... 41 

Lutterloh, Scott ................................................................................................. 59 

MacFarland, BG Sean B. ................................................................................. 46 

Neller, Maj. Gen. Robert .................................................................................. 68 

Sitterly, Daniel R. ............................................................................................. 64 

Snyder, Hon. Vic ............................................................................................... 33 

Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking Member, 

Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations ......................................... 35 
Page

IV 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.] 
(1) 

CONTINUED ENGAGEMENT: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 

RESPONSES TO THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE APRIL 2010 REPORT ON PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS, Washington, DC, Tuesday, November 30, 2010. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:07 a.m., in room 

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder (chairman 

of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS 

Dr. SNYDER. Good morning and welcome to the Subcommittee on 

Oversight and Investigations’ hearing on the views of the Secretary 

of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the uniform 

heads of services on the House Armed Services Committee report 

on professional military education. The title of our report was ‘‘Another Crossroads? Professional Military Education Two Decades 

After the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the Skelton Panel.’’ 

In April 2010, after more than a year of studies and hearings 

and site visits by both members and staff to all the relevant institutions, the subcommittee published this report with 39 findings 

and recommendations. The report examined officer in-residence 

PME [professional military education] as a critical investment in 

the most important element of our military—our people. We concluded that the United States cannot afford to be complacent when 

it comes to producing leaders capable of meeting significant challenges whether at the tactical, operational, or the strategic levels 

of warfare. Further, as a matter of national security, the country’s 

continuing investment in the PME system must be wisely made. 

We also found that although today’s PME system is basically 

sound, there are areas that need improvement. The committee’s report of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 

required that the Department’s most senior leaders provide their 

views on the subcommittee’s PME report. 

DOD [Department of Defense] leadership provided their views in 

September and indicated they largely agreed with our findings and 

recommendations. We are here today to hear what they agreed 

with, what they disagreed with and plans for moving forward, and 

also any thoughts about what our report and the ongoing discussions left out as our country moves forward on looking at professional military education. 
2 

We have a fairly large group of witnesses today. And you know 

how the reality is; if you all make an hour-long opening statement, 

I am not going anywhere, I don’t have an office anymore, so this 

is fine with me to sit here, but you all may have better things to 

do. But we have your opening statements. They will be made a 

part of the record. 

And I also want to acknowledge the presence of Representative 

Davis from California, who is the current chairperson, will be the 

ranking member in the new Congress, on Military Personnel [Subcommittee]. And as you know, this subcommittee does not have legislative jurisdiction, but the Military Personnel Subcommittee does. 

And she has had an ongoing interest and will be here in the new 

Congress. 

So we are joined today by—is it Lernes? 

Mr. HEBERT. Lernes. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Lernes Hebert, the acting Director, Officer and 

Enlisted Personnel Management, Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense; Brigadier General William Hix, Director for 

Operational Plans and Joint Force Development, J7, Joint Chiefs 

of Staff; Brigadier General Sean MacFarland, Deputy Commandant, Command and General Staff College, U.S. Army; Mr. 

Scott Lutterloh, Director of Total Force Training and Education Division, U.S. Navy; Mr. Dan Sitterly, Director of Force Development, 

Deputy Chief of Staff, Manpower and Personnel, U.S. Air Force; 

Major General Robert Neller, President of the Marine Corps University, U.S. Marine Corps. 

Thank you all for being here. Is this the order we are going to 

go down? We will begin with you. And we will put the clock on for 

5 minutes. If you see the red light fire off, we are not going to set 

off flares or anything, but—— 

Mr. HEBERT. It won’t take that long. 

Dr. SNYDER. Okay. Good. Why don’t you go ahead? 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the Appendix on page 33.] 

STATEMENT OF LERNES J. HEBERT, ACTING DIRECTOR, OFFICER AND ENLISTED PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT, OFFICE OF 

THE UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR PERSONNEL AND 

READINESS 

Mr. HEBERT. Yes, sir. Chairman Snyder, members of the committee, on behalf of the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary of Defense of Personnel and Readiness, I want to extend our 

appreciation for the committee’s interest in improving professional 

military education. The Department is in the process of analyzing 

the recommendations of the committee’s report on this subject and 

reporting back to the Congress on the proposed changes to the Department’s policies and procedures. We take this task very seriously. We are using a senior-level review panel to properly evaluate 

each recommendation; and while I will not presuppose their deliberations, the Department’s initial review indicates broad support 

for almost all of the recommendations and with the exception of a 

few that we believe require further study. 

That being said, the Department has already taken action on 

some of the recommendations. For example, in fiscal year 2009, we 
3 

asked the Director of the Joint Staff to review JPME I [Joint Professional Military Education Phase I] instructor positions to see if 

the positions could qualify for joint duty credit. This report has 

been reviewed by the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel 

Readiness and forwarded to the House Armed Services Committee. 

In addition, the Department proposed a legislative change to remove the JPME I instructor prohibition specified in Title 10, which 

specifically addresses a recommendation in the report. This places 

these positions on equal footing with similar positions across the 

Department. 

The Department also agrees with the committee findings that 

the professional military education system is sound but could use 

some improvements to become more flexible and attuned to emerging requirements. The Congress aided this effort immeasurably by 

passing legislation in 2007, the National Defense Authorization 

Act, allowing the Department to move beyond the recognition of 

simple interservice operations and to recognize interagency and 

international experiences. 

This single change, along with the flexibility provided to adapt 

career-long joint qualifications, is the type of proactive engagement 

described by the committee’s report. Officers are now being recognized for significant joint experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and 

other temporary operations not initially described in the charter 

Goldwater-Nichols legislation. 

By extension, these experiences are being institutionalized by 

more diverse student populations and broader curricula at professional military education institutions. The mere fact that these are 

now recognizable joint experiences, in turn, leads to an officer corps 

who will seek out attainment of these desirable education experiences and opportunities in these areas. 

Again, I want to thank you for this opportunity to testify on behalf of the Secretary and Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel 

Readiness on this topic. I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hebert can be found in the Appendix on page 37.] 

Dr. SNYDER. General Hix. 

STATEMENT OF BG WILLIAM C. HIX, USA, DIRECTOR, OPERATIONAL PLANS AND JOINT FORCE DEVELOPMENT, J–7, 

JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF 

General HIX. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, 

thank you for the opportunity to discuss your—— 

Dr. SNYDER. Pull that microphone a little closer to you if you 

wouldn’t mind. 

General HIX. Yes, sir. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss 

the subcommittee’s report. joint professional military education is 

and will remain an essential pillar of joint officer development, a 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff focus area. And we appreciate 

the subcommittee’s continued emphasis on and support for joint 

professional military education across the entire education enterprise in the Department of Defense. 

We welcome the subcommittee’s review and we broadly concur 

with the report’s conclusion that the professional military education system is basically sound and that there are systemic and 
4 

institutional areas that require our continued attention. As you are 

aware, the Joint Staff continues in conjunction with our service 

and DOD partners, a cross-Department effort to analyze the report’s recommendations. We expect this analysis to inform decisions this winter. 

While this effort continues, our preliminary conclusion gives 

broad endorsement to the report at the macro level. In conjunction 

with the Offices of Secretary of Defense and the services, the Joint 

Staff will continue to work through the report’s recommendations 

in the coming months. 

That said, our expectation is that the results of this effort will 

ultimately drive changes in policy and procedure, including the 

chairman’s Officer Professional Military Education Policy, which 

guides joint professional military education across the services. We 

will persist in exploring all available avenues to improve and expand joint education to ensure our forces are equipped with the 

critical thinking skills and mental dexterity needed to succeed in 

all environments. 

One such initiative to expand access to opportunities for rigorous 

joint education is our proposal for authority to allow the Joint 

Forces Staff College to provide an alternative nonresident Joint 

Professional Military Education Phase II program hosted by the 

combatant commands and the Joint Staff at offsite locations. That 

would be 10 locations in all. The proposal was carried in the Senate 

Armed Services Committee mark for the 2011 National Defense 

Authorization Act and we welcome this subcommittee’s support. 

As in all of our endeavors, Congress’ consistent support of joint 

professional military education has and will continue to enable us 

to maintain a vibrant and relevant education enterprise. And for 

that, we are truly appreciative. I stand ready to address your questions. Thank you for this opportunity. 

[The prepared statement of General Hix can be found in the Appendix on page 41.] 

Dr. SNYDER. General MacFarland. 

STATEMENT OF BG SEAN B. MACFARLAND, USA, DEPUTY COMMANDANT, COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE, U.S. 

ARMY 

General MACFARLAND. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, General Casey asked me to represent him here today 

because of my responsibilities, which include leader development 

for all warrant officers and all officers between the rank of captain 

and lieutenant colonel. And it is my pleasure to be able to provide 

input on the ‘‘Another Crossroads’’ report today and update you on 

the continuing progress in the Army’s professional military education programs. 

General Casey provided his personal insights in his letter on 6 

October, and my job is to provide some additional details and also 

answer any questions that you might have. As General Casey 

noted, the Army appreciates the comprehensive review conducted 

by this committee. And we thank in particular, Dr. Lorry Fenner 

and her team, for the quality of their work and the positive and 

professional manner in which they carried it out. And we have 
5 

learned a lot from that experience and we have already begun to 

move forward on some of the findings and recommendations. 

The Army fully participated in the survey and concurs with the 

analysis, observations, and recommendations. It is important for 

me to note that the Army has just approved the Army Learning 

Concept 2015, which is a comprehensive approach to education and 

training throughout the Army, and it includes the schools that the 

report discusses. 

And I want to begin my remarks by providing a few of the most 

important examples of how the ALC [Army Learning Concept] 2015 

supports the findings of ‘‘Another Crossroads.’’ 

One of your key findings noted that DOD should explore innovative avenues to develop the respective officer corps through education, training, assignments or experience. The cornerstone of 

ALC 2015 is, in fact, supporting a balance of education, training 

and experience over a career of professional growth and development. The document that will guide the Army through the process 

of change, and innovation in its education and training is this ALC. 

And it applies to all cohorts within the Army: civilian, noncommissioned officers, warrant, and commissioned. But it is clearly in step 

with your recommendations. 

Also, we recognized the finding that we needed a central focal 

point or a full-time director of military education and the ALC 2015 

does that. The position is called the Chief Learning Innovation Officer, or CLIO. And he will be a key advisor to the Training and 

Doctrine Command’s Commander, General Dempsey, on military 

education. ‘‘Another Crossroads’’ also observed that TRADOC has 

been designated the manager for human capital development for 

the Army. And although we are early in that process, we believe 

that ALC 2015 reinforces our commitment to continued improvement of PME in the Army. We don’t consider leader development 

just to be those times spent in the schoolhouse, but it is something 

that happens throughout your career. And now we are trying harder to ensure that we get the PME windows when it is needed and 

not just when officers are available. 

I do want to highlight one place where we disagree with the report, and that is probably because we didn’t provide the necessary 

information to your team and it may have led to some confusion. 

CGSC, Command and General Staff College, does, in fact, have 70 

percent civilian faculty, but they are not contractors as the report 

stated. We only have a couple of contractors and they mostly work 

in the Digital Leader Development Center and not as primary instructors. 

Finally, I just want to thank the committee for support on two 

issues critical to PME. First is extending JDAL [Joint Duty Assignment List] credit to our nonhost officers. That is critical, we believe, to providing high-quality JPME I credit to our students at intermediate level education. And secondly, we think that the committee did a great service by shining a light on the need for copyright ownership of scholarly works produced by our faculty. And 

your support of the Platts-Skelton amendment will improve the 

ability of our faculty to get published. And that will, we believe, enhance recruiting for civilian faculty members to come to our 

schools. 
6 

Finally, I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity to share 

the Army’s views with you today, and we are already moving forward with many of the issues noted and this report will guide PME 

in the future just as its predecessor, the Skelton report, has for the 

past 20 years. And I stand ready to answer any questions. Thank 

you, sir. 

[The prepared statement of General MacFarland can be found in 

the Appendix on page 46.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, General. Mr. Lutterloh. 

STATEMENT OF SCOTT LUTTERLOH, DIRECTOR, TOTAL 

FORCE TRAINING AND EDUCATION DIVISION, U.S. NAVY 

Mr. LUTTERLOH. Good morning. Chairman Snyder, Representative Davis, and distinguished members of the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss 

the Navy’s views on the committee’s April 2010 report, ‘‘Another 

Crossroads? Professional Military Education Two Decades After the 

Goldwater-Nichols Act and the Skelton Panel.’’ 

We appreciate the subcommittee’s efforts in conducting such a 

comprehensive assessment of professional military education since 

enactment of Goldwater-Nichols. The major findings are accurate 

in identifying the fundamental issues warranting critical deliberation as we continue in our commitment to improve PME and the 

professional development of our officer corps. 

We concur with the subcommittee’s assessment that the PME 

system is sound. As with any program, there are areas for potential 

improvement. Navy places significant value on PME as we develop 

and enable resilient and adaptable leaders to meet challenges at 

the tactical, operational, and strategical levels of war. 

Navy continues to emphasize PME as we provide unique and 

complementary maritime warfighting skills to joint and combined 

force commanders. 

In response to the need for increased joint and service-specific 

subject matter to be taught earlier in an officer’s career, Navy established a career continuum of PME. We have a sequence continuum of learning that provides relevant education aligned to 

clear progression, spanning E–1 through O–8, with a goal of providing Navy’s Total Force with a standardized, comprehensive understanding of the Navy and its warfighting capabilities. 

We are currently evaluating the report’s recommendation that 

Navy consider instituting a quality board process for selection of 

the in-residence PME students by evaluating our screening process 

of top-performing officers for eligibility to attend service colleges. 

Under the leadership of the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, the 

Navy has appointed a cross-functional working group to evaluate 

the current selection processes for JPME in-residence education. 

We concur with the report’s observation, that while PME is a factor in cultivating strategists, it is not the primary means for developing future strategic decisionmakers. As noted in the report, Navy 

has a relatively advanced process for cultivating strategists. We acknowledge there is more to be done with respect to developing strategic decisionmakers, and are actively engaged in a review of how 

we develop our senior leaders. Competing demands for time in a 
7 

career track of officers of the unrestricted line remains a primary 

challenge. 

Recently, we implemented new approaches to officer development 

through introduction of specialty career paths for unrestricted line 

officers. These specialty career paths allow Navy to better integrate 

training, education, and experiential tours focused on specialty 

areas while officers continue to serve in their warfare communities. 

Navy takes a balanced approach to professional education that 

views operational competency and primacy of command as key professional measures for naval officers. professional military education has been instrumental in developing a highly educated and 

more effective leader. We value the flexibility provided by the 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff which permits Navy to manage the content, quality, and conduct of our PME continuum. 

On behalf of the Chief of Naval Operations and the entire Navy, 

thank you again for your exceptionally strong support of our military members and their family and for your career-long leadership 

in the professional development of our Navy Total Force. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lutterloh can be found in the 

Appendix on page 59.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. Mr. Sitterly. 

STATEMENT OF DANIEL R. SITTERLY, DIRECTOR OF FORCE 

DEVELOPMENT, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR MANPOWER 

AND PERSONNEL, U.S. AIR FORCE 

Mr. SITTERLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the 

subcommittee, for the opportunity to discuss Air Force Chief of 

Staff Schwartz’s views on the ‘‘Crossroads’’ report. This is the 

fourth time in this Congress I have had the opportunity to testify 

on airmen development. Each time you help us to fine-tune the development of our most important weapons system, our Total Force 

airmen. Thank you. 

We continue to develop talented and diverse airmen at the tactical, operational, and strategic level. We concur with the report’s 

general tenet that the professional military education system is 

still basically sound, but with systemic and institutional areas that 

require a heightened focus and effort to improve. We endorse the 

idea that education has to be relevant to the student and the service, as well as inseparable from the execution of our developmental 

doctrine in support of service and joint organizational requirements. 

The relevancy of education is one of the main premises that drive 

our desire and our ability to incorporate joint and service-specific 

subject matter into our curriculum and deliver that content to officers earlier in their careers, all in an effort to anticipate and adapt 

to current and future challenges. 

Central to the report’s concern and our focus is the necessity to 

develop strategists. Combined with a strong fellowship program, we 

recently added advanced academic degree opportunities in history, 

political science, international relations, economics, and philosophy 

to our portfolio. These new educational experiences are being 

earned at some of the Nation’s most prestigious universities. 
8 

To an increased focus on critical thinking at junior levels, we are 

developing an officer corps that is capable of and empowered to 

solve the problems they will encounter throughout their careers. 

I should also mention the importance we place on continuum of 

service in our country’s entire national security arena. While we 

are all familiar with how strategic thinking airmen like Norty 

Schwartz and [General] Duncan McNabb transformed 

TRANSCOM’s [Transportation Command] development and distribution operations—pardon me—deployment and distribution operations to the warfighter, for instance, let’s not forget those airmen cultivated to think strategically who still serve in our country’s defense out of uniform. 

Dr. Lorry Fenner of this committee received her Ph.D. in history 

and is now one of the foremost authorities on military human capital in our country. Colonel (retired) Will Gunn leads the Veterans 

Administration’s general counsel office. Colonel Hal Hoxie is making strategic decisions in matters incredibly important to our country and to the future of America as the President of Central Christian College. Airman Les Lyles is a defense industry strategic 

thinker, as well as Chairman of the Congressional Military Leadership Diversity Commission. Mark Clanton, Chuck Bush, Jim Finch, 

Chuck Greenwood, Blaine Tingle, Charles Garcia, are all involved 

in strategic thinking in the national security business every day 

using the education and experience developed in our Air Force. 

Our primary PME mission is on the application of military 

power, but our development programs directly contribute to the 

diplomatic, international, and economic instruments both in and 

out of uniform. 

Beyond content and delivery, we also concur with the report’s 

finding that we have a need to address faculty and resource concerns at our institutions; therefore, we are in the process of reviewing policies regarding our hiring practices, job advancement, and 

academic freedom, as well as copyright and intellectual property 

concerns. 

The Air Force has made significant advances in the past two 

years in our approach to developmental education. We have upped 

our game with a new on-line Air Command and Staff College program to complete transformation of company-grade officer professional military education, new advanced courses within Air Command and Staff College and Air War College, and expanded enrollment in progress toward a doctoral program in the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. 

These efforts, combined with conducive military personnel and 

developmental opportunities, will allow us to continue forging the 

synergistic relationship between Air Force training, experience, and 

education. 

As evidenced by the ‘‘Crossroads’’ report, your insight and continued support ensures our ability to fly, fight, and win in aerospace 

and in cyberspace. Thank you. I look forward to answering any 

questions you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Sitterly can be found in the Appendix on page 64.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Sitterly. General Neller. 
9 

STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. ROBERT NELLER, USMC, 

PRESIDENT, MARINE CORPS UNIVERSITY 

General NELLER. Chairman Snyder, Representative Davis, good 

morning. Thank you for permitting me to discuss and represent the 

Marine Corps’ views on the report, ‘‘Another Crossroads.’’ The Marine Corps deeply appreciates the extensive research, analysis, and 

documentation contained in the report. 

The work of the subcommittee provided a thorough assessment 

of the status of PME and, more importantly, provided sound recommendations on a variety of issues that will improve our educational programs. We have carefully reviewed the report and are 

already at work implementing many of the recommendations. 

Additionally, we continue to work closely with the Joint Staff and 

the other services to ensure a coordinated approach as we examine 

each issue. 

The Marine Corps, and Marine Corps University in particular, is 

constantly reviewing and revising our PME programs to ensure we 

meet the needs of the operating forces and prepare our leaders. We 

strengthen the faculty and the staff of our schools and colleges and 

continually review our curriculum for relevance. We plan infrastructure improvements and technology enhancements that we believe will dramatically improve the learning environment for our 

students. 

While we will make our quality resident officer programs even 

better, our current emphasis, as you know from your visit down to 

Quantico, is the improvement of our enlisted PME programs. As 

noted in the ‘‘Issues for Further Studies’’ section of the report, 

progress has been made here, but much work remains to be done 

to fully prepare our enlisted leaders. 

Last month, General Amos published his Commandant’s Planning Guidance identifying professional military education as one of 

his top priorities. In fact, today at 13:30, he is holding an inprogress review, which I will participate in, to discuss where we 

are with education. 

Excuse me. His guidance directs that plans be developed to increase the number of Marines attending resident officer and enlisted education programs and to continue to further develop Marine Corps University into a world-class institution. We are in the 

process of developing options to increase attendance in our programs without sacrificing quality or desired learning outcomes. We 

believe we have made substantial progress in strengthening our 

faculty, students, and curricula. 

We are also on course to make significant progress in our facilities. For example, we have over $120 million in MILCON [military 

construction] programmed over the next 3 years for educational facilities. I am also pleased to report that the Expeditionary Warfare 

School Distributed Education Network, or EDEN, an item of interest during a subcommittee visit, is now fully funded and will be 

operational as soon as we can procure the equipment and implement the concept. The Commandant’s Planning Guidance and the 

subcommittee report complement each other and provide a good 

roadmap to improve our already strong PME programs. 
10 

Again, we appreciate the support of Congress and specifically 

this subcommittee for military PME, and I stand ready to answer 

your questions. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of General Neller can be found in the 

Appendix on page 68.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you all. 

Mrs. Davis, would you like to begin? [Mrs. Davis indicated no.] 

We will go back and forth on the 5-minute clock here. One of the 

reasons we did this report is it had been some time since the 

Armed Services Committee had really looked at PME. There has 

been a lot going on for the last decade, but I think it was also one 

of those topics that didn’t get the attention it probably deserved 

even before the events of the last decade. 

My question is, as you look forward 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, 8 

years, whatever, down the line, what mechanisms do you see that 

are in place to assess how well the PME system is doing, the inresidence officer PME system, and does it need to be changed, revisited? What are your assessment tools about how well the system 

is working? 

I will—General Neller, let us just begin with you and go backwards this time. 

General NELLER. We are always in the process of assessing, at 

least internally, how we are doing. Obviously the committee report 

provides an external assessment. Every class that graduates from 

Command and Staff or MCWAR [Marine Corps War College], or 

even Expeditionary Warfare School for our captains, we go out to 

the operating force who receive these officers and ask them if they 

have met the requirement. I mean, are they satisfied with what 

they are receiving. 

Again, I take the response that people’s time is valuable and 

short, but we get an almost 100 percent positive response on the 

quality of the education that these officers receive. We also ask the 

officers if they believe that we prepared them for their service. And 

again, their answers, in my opinion, are a little bit more candid. 

But, again, the overwhelming majority, 90-plus percent, in almost 

all categories felt the experience and the educational experience 

that they gained while they were at Marine Corps University 

helped them better perform their duties, whether it is in a staff or 

a command position. 

We also look at our own objectives. We use the tasks that came 

out of the Wilhelm Study in 2006 to self-assess ourselves as to 

whether or not we are making progress. As your report noted, we 

do have some facilities and infrastructure issues which, in the last 

year, because of decisions by the Commandant to fund facilities 

which are going to house the infrastructure, I really see the new 

buildings as technology that is just in a building. I think we are 

going to make progress there. So those are what we have internally 

to self-assess. 

Mr. SITTERLY. Thank you for that question. I agree, as primarily 

a force provider, it is important that we go to our commanders, our 

combatant commanders, especially in the field, to ask if we are providing them officers that have both the experience and the education necessary to execute our military requirements in a joint environment. For instance, we found that we had a gap in our more 
11 

junior officers and their ability to operate as we are deploying folks 

in this environment, more junior than perhaps we had in the past. 

So we have totally revamped now our basic developmental education at the Squadron Officers School, an Air and Space Basic 

Course, to adapt the curricula to that. 

Additionally, we found from combatant commanders that they 

valued those students that we put through our School of Advanced 

Air and Space Studies. And so we have increased that program so 

that we are selecting more people to put into that program with 

that curriculum, in addition to that feedback that we get from the 

field. Thank you. 

Mr. LUTTERLOH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the case of the 

Naval War College, in addition to the internal assessments, I 

would say that there were some other training objectives that are 

completed by the War College. For example, maritime component 

commander training, Joint Staff training for our operational commands that actually put the president of the War College in training and education situations with COCOMs [combatant commanders] in theater two to three times a year. So he is getting direct feedback from those leaders on the quality of the education. 

In addition to that, the significant war-gaming capability at War 

College has always led to the identification of areas where the 

Navy needs to move in terms of maritime dominance, and specifically where the War College needs to move with their curricula. 

And finally I would point out that the Military Education Coordination Council, our robust participation in that, is what leads to 

driving change into the curricula across the board and standardizing it across the services and throughout the joint community. 

Thank you. 

General MACFARLAND. Well, right now we are in an era of persistent conflict. And probably the ultimate indicator of how well we 

are doing in PME will be how well we are doing on the battlefield. 

And we believe that PME is the key to agile thinkers. And we are 

constantly reevaluating and assessing how we go about creating 

creative and adaptive leaders. 

The assessments mentioned by General Neller and others are 

part of our assessment process, both asking the students and asking their commanders out there. Another way we can assess the 

value of PME is based on the demand for PME, the officers seeking 

admission to PME, the competition for going to school, and also the 

demand in the field for PME graduates. 

Right now we are frequently asked to hurry up and graduate 

more SAMS, School of Advanced Military Studies, officers. There is 

a high demand for those trained planners out there in the force. 

Obviously, people attach a great deal of importance on the value 

of that professional military educational experience. So we are 

doing something right there. And we are hoping to expand that 

across all of PME. 

Lately, there has been a devaluation in the minds of many of our 

officers of the value of education. They value experience. Getting 

more hash marks on the sleeve is perceived as more important 

than going and sitting in a school. We are trying to address that 

balance with the Army Learning Concept 2015. And when more officers vote with their feet and try to go to school instead of get a 
12 

third or a fourth tour down range, we will know that we are obviously providing value to the force and—when members of the force 

see that. 

General HIX. Mr. Chairman, I endorse the comments of my colleagues here, and I will offer a slightly different perspective, given 

my responsibilities for oversight on behalf of the chairman. 

Since 2000, my staff and members of the various schools, universities, and colleges run by the military have conducted 44 PAJE 

visits. And these are Process of Accreditation of Joint Education 

visits not unlike the accreditation that universities and colleges go 

through to offer civilian master’s degrees, but focused on joint professional military education and their adherence to the OPMEP 

[Officer PME Policy], looking at best practices in terms of how they 

deliver a joint education and that sort of thing. 

As part of that review, we also dig into their own assessment 

programs. And each of them has a very comprehensive program as 

they have laid out, focused on not only the perspective of the student but also of the customer, which is, of course, the commanders, 

be they service commanders or joint operational commanders. And 

those assessments very clearly indicate a demand for additional 

education, more of what these universities and colleges deliver, as 

well as a reflection from many of the students that they were glad 

that they had gotten some of that education before they actually 

went into an assignment. 

I can tell you anecdotally that the staff officers that work for me 

and those that I have worked with in the past in assignments at 

large headquarters, and also in the Pentagon, all note the fact that 

they were leveraging the education they received at a War College, 

be it from the National Defense University, ICAF [Industrial College of the Armed Forces], or National War College or one of the 

service schools. 

Lastly, to build off of comments of General MacFarland, the demand from the field is also very clear. We have seen this from the 

combatant commands, that they are looking for more joint education and actually having it sooner. The throughput at the universities and at the Joint Forces Staff College for Joint Professional 

Military Education Level II is challenged to meet the demands of 

the joint authorizations out in the combatant commands and now 

with forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

And so we have looked at how to meet that demand more broadly. And I think that is your best indicator of whether the product 

that is being put out by those who educate our officers is useful, 

is the fact that they are demanding more of the same. 

Mr. HEBERT. Sir, as my colleagues have described to you, we 

have a system of measures, if you will, to ensure that we are meeting the demands in the future, whether it be the internal school 

practices, assessments, the Military Education Coordination Council, which OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] participates in, 

as well as the PAJE visits which we participate in. We see this 

whole system of measures, if you will, are indicators taken together. Whether or not change is required. For our part, OSD is 

taking the recommendations of the committee’s report seriously in 

that we are reconsidering our role in this entire enterprise to determine how we can best create synergy between the service efforts 
13 

and the Joint Staff efforts and lend to creating an opportunity that 

in the future we can anticipate the needs of the students far in advance of when they might be required. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you all for your responses. I was interested— 

I think General Hix first mentioned the fact that we are fighting 

two wars. And I know that in the meetings that we had, there was 

some discussion about the fact that it was difficult for people to 

take time off for PME time, a very, you know, big problem that all 

of the services were experiencing. So I just wonder if you could respond to that a little bit more in terms of—I think you have talked 

about the broadening of the experiences in many ways. 

There probably couldn’t be a better teacher than applying the 

knowledge and the strategic thinking that is really required. But 

I wonder at the same time how difficult a problem you think that 

is and if there is anything else that we should be supporting or 

helping with to be sure that there is certainly a high incentive for 

people to find a way to have that time. And again, we are talking 

not just about thinking about fighting the wars that we are fighting today, but the future wars and how we get that from those who 

are in the services today, and certainly our officers. 

Anybody want to—you have sort of talked—you obviously have 

plans to think about that. But I wonder if you could just focus on 

that and the extent to which you think that is truly a problem and 

what we are actually doing to send that message. 

General HIX. Ma’am, I will take the first shot, then, as you mentioned me by name. I would tell you as part of the PAJE process, 

we look at not only the delivery of in-resident education, but also 

the delivery of nonresident or distributed-learning education. And 

as you know, currently JPME II is delivered only in-residence. And 

I think that at the time that those strictures were codified, it made 

sense because the art of distributed learning is not what it is today. 

And I have to say from my own perspective of having visited several of the colleges in my time as a J7 [Joint Staff Operational 

Plans and Joint Force Development], there are some pretty innovative approaches and some very interactive means of instruction 

that certainly did not exist, you know, years ago, several years ago. 

And you actually—in one case, I observed a class being conducted 

where students were in a chat room, literally globally, dealing with 

a problem, and frankly in some cases, actually dealing with the 

problem more as if they would be—as if they were actually doing 

it for real, because they weren’t all in the same classroom where 

they could talk and make coordination easy. 

So in terms of learning how to, you know, deal with a very critical problem, a complex problem, deliver rapidly critical thinking, 

that sort of thing, we have come a long way. And, frankly, that is 

really the basis—and I will harp on this one more time—the basis 

of our legislative proposal to allow us to start with looking at the 

art of the possible and in this case the delivery of JPME II in a 

very controlled environment, 10 sites across the combatant commands where you have an automatic joint pool of officers that provides, you know, one of the key points of joint experiences—interaction with other services. And it is done at the combatant commands where they are demanding more officers have the joint edu-
14 

cation opportunity. And from that, we can then learn to—more 

about how we deliver JPME II in a distributed environment and 

see if we can then transfer that to our combatant command—I am 

sorry—our service colleagues who currently are only able to deliver 

JPME I credit from a distributed learning perspective. Thank you. 

General NELLER. I think, Representative Davis, your question— 

and correct me if I am wrong—deals with the kind of inevitable 

tension between deploying and getting to the fight and going to 

school. Again, this is my opinion. I think at the beginning—and I 

think General MacFarland talked about this—there was a tremendous drive that, you know, you had to get to the fight because, you 

know, for all the good reasons. You wanted to participate and test 

yourself and be involved. But as this has gone on longer, I think 

most people have been, and so now they see—take a longer view. 

And so I think there has been a shift and that people understanding that, all right, I have been, I am competitive, I am still 

going to be considered qualified for promotion, I need to get my 

education and I get the other benefit of a year where my family 

and I get some stability. And I can’t prove that, but that is my personal view that I think that is part of the reason that the force has 

been as sustainable as it has, because officers have been able to 

take time off to go to school and not take a break but get educated, 

but at the same time have some sort of normalcy in their personal 

and in their family life. 

So I think at least for the foreseeable future, I think there will 

be more and more people who will see school not as an inconvenience but as both a benefit for them personally and for them professionally. But that tension is always going to be there and, again, 

it is going to depend on where that individual officer, where he or 

she is in their career; are they coming from the operating forces 

and going to school so that they feel competent that they have good 

solid operational background? Are they coming from the supporting 

establishment and there is this desire to get back to the fight, it 

is their turn to go again. And professional military education will 

assist them in either way. So we are seeing a slight shift, at least 

in talking in non—I can’t document this. This is my assessment, 

that more and more people are seeing the benefit and advantage 

of going to resident PME. 

General MACFARLAND. Ma’am, General Neller is exactly right, as 

always. But I just wanted to add on a little. The Army has recognized that perhaps some of our officers need additional incentive to 

get into the schoolhouse, because without that mentoring or coaching to enter resident education, they just simply will stay away and 

continue to rack up additional experience. 

So we are trying to put teeth back into our professional military 

education policies where promotion and selection for command will 

be not available to the officers who do not have the requisite 

schooling. So we have kind of drifted away from that, under the duress of the demands of the operational force. We are coming back 

to that. 

One of the big challenges we had is the Army is unique in that 

we have gone to universal intermediate-level education. All majors 

are required to attend some form of school, either distributed learning, like General Hix mentioned, or resident, or a blended version 
15 

of that with partial resident, partial distributed. And we have 

looked at our capacity for that and have expanded that to meet the 

demand. Now we just need to get the officers into the programs. 

And that is what the policies will do. 

Finally, we have looked at our younger officers, the captains, and 

we are looking at a pilot program for a captain’s career course that 

doesn’t require as much in-residence time, and the rest of the resident time will be determined partially by a learning assessment 

prior to attending school so it is more modular tailored to the officer rather than industrial age—well, this is what year group you 

are in, so you will attend this schooling. It is more learner-centric, 

officer-centric. And that is all part of the Army Learning Concept 

2015. Thank you. 

Mr. LUTTERLOH. Representative Davis, I just would like to comment on three things quickly. I agree wholeheartedly with General 

Hix. Distributed JPME II will go a long way to providing additional 

opportunities for our officers to get the joint qualification, the joint 

education that they need in their careers to adequately man those 

joint combatant commands. So anything that we can do to facilitate 

that is very useful. I understand very well that there is a tradeoff between 10 months, 10 to 12 months in residence, and the ability to spend valuable time in seminars talking and thinking with 

compatriots of other services and even the international and interagency community, but there is also tremendous value in a 10- 

week very focused time frame in which those officers are gaining 

some of the very same concepts in joint warfighting that are the 

items that are needed in theater. 

Secondly, I will be leaving next week to travel to Newport to 

travel to the War College to invest an entire day in investigating 

the art of the possible relative to distributed learning. Not so much 

to supplant JPME I or JPME II, but to look at innovative ways by 

which we can educate our officers over a prolonged period of time, 

perhaps through interactive distributed seminars, perhaps through 

war games over a weekend, perhaps tailored to certain career 

points, career milestones. I will be investigating those aspects with 

the War College to see where we can go maybe on a different vector 

than we have considered so far. 

The third and last thing is an aggressive policy pursuit. So I also 

agree with General MacFarland here. We have rather aggressively 

addressed some of these issues through policy. We combined our 

surface combatant executive officer and commanding officer tours 

into one, to shorten that period of time aboard the ship and provide 

additional opportunity in the career pipeline for advanced education. We have also insisted, policy-wise, on completion of JPME 

I prior to assuming command at the commander command. We 

have thought about it at major command perhaps for JPME II completion. We continue to aggressively pursue policy issues there. 

And in conjunction with our selection process, the review that 

was recommended by the panel, I believe the combination of these 

three things will put us in pretty good position for the future. 

Thank you. 

Mr. SITTERLY. If I could just add from the Air Force perspective, 

we face some of the same challenges. And the complexity of the 

current operations does require us, I think, to look at both the stu-
16 

dents, but also the faculty. And we value both the depth and the 

breadth of experience. So for the faculty, we want to ensure that 

we give our instructors the opportunity not only to establish their 

academic credentials, but also to bring into the classroom a current 

operations perspective. So there is a very short period of time in 

a career to get a lot of things done from command to staff to, you 

know, deployments, faculty, so on and so forth. So as we noted in 

our report, as General Schwartz noted, we would like to continue 

our dialogue with our colleagues on the faculty-to-student ratio in 

the OPMEP. Thank you. 

Mr. HEBERT. Representative Davis, I want to capitalize on the 

comments of my colleagues. I would offer that there is no one ideal 

method of delivering professional military education. It differs by 

officer. It differs in many cases by virtue of where they are in their 

individual careers. By having a broad spectrum of opportunities to 

deliver joint professional military education or professional military 

education in the services case, we create the diversity of the force 

and thinking that you wouldn’t normally have if you had a single 

institution, just as you wouldn’t normally send all of your engineers 

to one institution, because they would all come away with a very 

similar thought pattern in many cases. 

You wouldn’t—we believe professional military education is similarly suited. Having distributed courses at various combatant commands attunes those officers who attain school with that combatant command a certain knowledge that others may not have if they 

went to National War College or elsewhere. So I would just leave 

you with that thought. 

Dr. SNYDER. Maybe I will just direct this question at the two of 

you there. If anyone disagrees—but some of the issues you have 

been talking about, both students and faculties, where does the 

education fit into their career? And early on when we were talking 

with students and even faculty, we would hear reports from the 

combatant commanders that some students were going to a school 

long past the time that they should have, so it didn’t speak much 

to them because they had already learned that; or they are being 

sent to a billet where they should have had the school, and 2 or 

3 months into that billet that combatant commander is having to 

send that person to a school, which he wished he had had before 

they got there. 

And we heard the same thing with faculty, by the way. If somebody is assigned to be a faculty member, they really wanted to be 

a wing commander or something. 

But how much are those kind of things that you deal with out 

of your control because they are really a product of the personnel 

system and moving people around? How much control do you all 

have and influence do you have over having a personnel system 

come up so that it really can, in a very sophisticated manner, look 

at both where they are at in their career, where they are going to 

go, where that particular 10-month break, for example, fits in an 

appropriate way both for the student and the military. 

Mr. HEBERT. If I may lead off. In 2007, when Congress enacted 

legislation which removed the sequencing requirement, it created 

the flexibility for the Department to make sure that we could better time that professional military education in that officer’s career. 
17 

Whether it be exactly adjacent to that Joint Staff tour or perhaps 

it is just prior to sending him off to the desert for a deployment, 

what it allowed for was a much greater flexibility, not less flexibility as we moved forward. 

Now, we have only had a couple of years under this enhanced 

Goldwater-Nichols legislation, but what we are seeing is the services do have greater flexibility in timing it to both attune it to the 

officer’s future potential to serve and additional grades beyond 

that, but to also consider whether that officer is going to be welltimed for a combatant command tour, a Joint Staff tour, a future 

deployment. But the underlying problem is what General Hix identified earlier: Demand far outstrips our ability to provide or develop 

officers, particularly the JPME II level. We believe we have solved 

that at the JPME I level but not at the JPME II level. 

General HIX. Sir, I will only comment briefly on this, as my personal responsibilities are focused on the education aspect and that 

manpower management is not within my purview. 

Dr. SNYDER. But it has great influence over what happens. 

General HIX. It does indeed, sir. And I will touch on one issue, 

particularly regarding faculty. In general, especially with the joint 

officers, you know, education in general flows appropriately in the 

macro sense. You go to staff college, you get a branch qualifying 

job, if you will, within your service, whether it is a departmenthead tour or as a staff officer in a brigade or a division, and then 

you get a joint assignment, say, as an action officer. You have 

JPME I, you have staff experience, you have combat experience 

now obviously in many cases. Where those O–4s may step up or get 

promoted while they are in a joint assignment, the combatant command does have the option, the opportunity to send their officers 

effectively out of cycle to the resident JPME II program down at 

Joint Forces Staff College to kind of add or hone their skills at the 

operational level. That throughput is, admittedly, inadequate. And 

again, that is one of the reasons that we have proposed this expansion of nonresident delivery of that program, so that more officers 

at the combatant command level where the majority of this demand comes from for JPME II-qualified officers, provides that flexibility so the combatant commander doesn’t have to give up 10 

weeks of an officer’s time on his staff but can work this in parallel, 

if you will, with their day job and do so in a way that is consistent. 

And, in fact, we have looked at some of the ways the services deliver this capability. They will actually—you can—regardless of 

where you are in the world, if you walk into some of the distributed 

learning seminars that they have, you may be assigned to Norfolk. 

And if you are in Hawaii and you are attending the distributed 

learning course, you actually walk into almost—you know, the 

course is identical in terms of how it is delivered. So that is the 

kind of approach that we are looking at, so that as officers move, 

as they are—if you are in CENTCOM [Central Command] and you 

are coordinating with EUCOM [European Command] and you happen to be in Germany and not down in Tampa, you can still pick 

up that course on that day and stick with your education opportunities. 

As far as the officers’ piece and their participation as faculty, as 

Mr. Hebert noted, the opportunity for JDAL positions for non-host 
18 

faculty is a great step forward. However, there are team partners 

who are from the host faculty who are teaching joint matters as 

well, and, frankly, it has been my observation that there is a great 

synthesis that is gained in actually teaching these, you know, joint 

operational approaches. And I think expanding that opportunity so 

that those officers who are teaching joint matters, even though 

they are at the Army War College or at the Command and General 

Staff College, would be an opportunity that would expand participation across the board, and, frankly, I think meet some of the concerns of the officers that you interviewed. 

Dr. SNYDER. Do any of you have any comment on that topic? 

General MacFarland, by the way, I think that my guess is that 

will be a bridge too far, at least at this time, for an Army officer, 

at an Army institution teaching joint matters. I think that will 

probably be considered a bridge too far. 

But I might get in my licks here on the defense bill. I think there 

are a couple of items on the Senate side that they have not yet 

done their defense bill, and I still have some optimism that we will 

get a defense bill out of this Congress in the next couple or 3 

weeks. 

But this is complicated stuff, and the sooner you can get up here, 

particularly with a new Congress coming in and new leadership, 

the more likely you-all’s recommendations will be included as part 

of the defense bill next year, although I think a couple of items 

that we have been supportive of on this side didn’t get in the Senate side, so if we get a defense bill, we will work to preserve those 

if we can. 

General MACFARLAND. I appreciate your support on that. 

Dr. SNYDER. Several issues I wanted to ask. General 

MacFarland, I think it was you that brought up the issue of copyright. We had talked about that. In fact, I think maybe it was last 

year I had some thought that we ought to be able to do something 

on the House side in the defense bill. It turns out it is a pretty 

complicated issue. I know Mr. Platts and Mr. Skelton had tried it 

some years ago, I think, unsuccessfully. 

So if this issue is important, and I think it is, and it would seem 

to me that it is solvable, we may need to get a little joint discussion 

group going on with some smart lawyers from the military side, 

and some smart lawyers from here, but also some smart lawyers 

perhaps from the Judiciary Committee and some others to sit down 

and figure out, okay, where are the concerns that you all have and 

the concerns of those who think this isn’t perhaps the way to go, 

and try to sort that out. Because we tried to come to some language 

and met resistance along the way. 

So it is easy for us to recognize the problem. I am not sure it is 

going to be as easy as I think, or originally thought, to solve it. 

That will be something you want to work on. 

General MacFarland, I think, talked in the most detail about getting students from the civilian side. You mentioned the interagency 

swap. Was that your statement? I think it was. 

General MACFARLAND. It is in my written statement. 

Dr. SNYDER. Written statement, yes. 

I would like all of you to comment on that, if you would. Our experience was that when we visited some of the seminar groups at 
19 

the different institutions, that our military personnel, you know, 

would have paid money or had a payroll deduction if they could 

have had some additional State Department, Foreign Service officers in their seminar groups with them. 

How are we doing? And as you are looking ahead, how are we 

doing, do you think, at getting the numbers of civilian government 

personnel from the other agencies of government to be in these 

courses? 

I will start with you, General Neller. 

General NELLER. I think our situation is very good, and I think 

it is directly related just to our geography. The fact that we are 

just south of Washington, it is much easier for the Federal Government agencies to send someone to be a student down at Quantico 

than it is for them to send them to Kansas, or to Alabama, or even 

to Rhode Island. 

So we are doing very well. I mean, 4 of 27 at MCWAR [Marine 

Corps War College], almost 1 per seminar at Command and Staff. 

So we are very content, and we are happy with the quality of person that we get. So I think we are blessed by—hopefully by reputation, but probably more so by geography. 

Mr. SITTERLY. We are doing better as well, and the quality seems 

to be getting better as well as we continue to go through this and 

those students go back and talk about their experiences with their 

particular agency. 

The other thing we are doing is trying to approach it from the 

other end, and that is we are exploring fellowships where we can 

actually take our military officers into their programs. We recently 

did one at the senior level with the State Department. So we are 

approaching it from both ends. But we certainly appreciate what 

those interagency folks bring to the fight. 

Dr. SNYDER. I think the Army has been the most aggressive 

about doing swaps, correct? 

General MACFARLAND. Yes, sir. We have 28 interagency fellows 

right now at the major level, ILE [Intermediate Level Education], 

and I think the number is about 70 at the War College fellowship 

level. But the War College fellows are more in academia, think 

tanks, places like that. Our interagency fellows are plugged right 

into Homeland Security or U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

I just had a meeting with FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] last week, and they are looking at sending two of 

their officers in exchange for two of ours going to work in FEMA 

for a year. And, of course, State Department SCRS [Coordinator for 

Reconstruction and Stabilization] is a big partner of ours, sir. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Lutterloh. 

Mr. LUTTERLOH. Yes, sir. We just recently began expanding our 

fellowships into interagencies, most recently discussions about 

State Department, so it looks like we will be sending a couple fellowships to the State Department this year. 

Our faculty at the War College has been in the process of 

transitioning. Our provost and dean of faculty Ambassador Peters 

comes with a very strong background in interagency support, as 

well as some of the other members of the faculty that she is drawing into the fold. We are trying to increase our student representa-
20 

tion from some of the other agencies to get that vital discussion 

going. I think we are making progress there. 

The last point I will leave you with is we have also been focusing 

over the years on international cooperation, so that that international piece of it is also important to us. 

Dr. SNYDER. Yes, it is. 

I think I will address this question to the two of you again as 

the overseers. One of the detail issues that we talked about 

through the last year was it has been difficult to look at the services and to come up with an apples-to-apples comparison of cost per 

student, which I think would be helpful to everyone. Maybe it is 

impossible. 

I mean, you know, General Neller mentioned geography. Maybe 

it is a lot cheaper getting somebody to come to Quantico than it is 

to Kansas. I don’t know. It seems like it shouldn’t be that difficult. 

Where are we at with that issue of having the different institutions or the different services come up with a cost per student of 

doing the kinds of in-residence PME, or are we nowhere? 

Mr. HEBERT. Sir, we are further than nowhere, but we are not 

where we should be. So it is one of those issues that continues to 

plague us. The trade-off, as you probably well understand, is having the service having a measure that is meaningful for them 

versus a measurement that is not meaningful for them but is universally applied to all at the same time. So we are working with 

the services to work through this issue. 

Dr. SNYDER. It seems like at some point you will come up with 

a number, I guess, and send it up here, but it is not something that 

is necessarily helpful to us. It seems like it would be helpful to you 

on the institutions if you can see, you know, one service has gotten 

dramatically more efficient. I bet that would be helpful in trying 

to figure out how people save money. It is consistent with what 

Secretary Gates is trying to do as far as saving money also. I think 

over the long haul you all are going to try to make the case that 

you are efficient and deserve the money. 

Does anybody else have any comment on that? 

General HIX. Yes, sir, I do. Before I answer that, if I could just 

very briefly on the civilian participation thing. 

Right now we have about, depending on the year, 5 to 10 percent 

of the student body across the board is from our other agencies, 

and we expect about 290 next year. Some of the challenges that 

have been raised to us—we do sensing sessions as part of this 

PAJE process—the feedback we get from the civilian representatives from these other agencies is, one, their agencies are taking a 

hit by sending them to school because they don’t have a float. 

As you know, the uniformed services have the ability to transfer 

an officer into the TTHS [Trainees, Transients, Holdees, and Students] account, and it doesn’t, therefore, take an officer out of a 

staff or out of a brigade or out of a battalion to send them to school. 

There is a replacement available. So that is the first thing. 

The second thing is, in general, the other agencies appear to 

manage the billet, not the man, and so when the person, male or 

female, goes off to school, they may or may not have a job when 

they come back, and that is a challenge for them personally. 
21 

Then some other feedback we have received is there is concern 

about, you know, some of the regulations on housing, and I know 

this is particularly true with civilian faculty, members from other 

agencies or faculty members who could, if they were in the military, live on base, but find it is a challenge for them because of regulatory and other issues. 

And the last piece, again anecdotally, is that frankly some of 

your fellow committees are less interested in this integration than 

others, and that translates into whether there is support on the 

Hill for those agencies to be aggressive in putting their personnel 

into our military schools at the degree that we certainly would like 

to see them. 

Dr. SNYDER. That may be something as time goes along it might 

be helpful to in some informal way figure out who we need to go 

talk to, because I think, I mean, it is clear to me when you talk 

to the students, both the military and the civilian side, they both 

benefit greatly from it. Particularly when you do these swaps, too, 

that is very helpful to both sides. 

General HIX. Absolutely, sir. 

Sir, just very briefly, on the issue of cost comparisons, we are collecting the cost vectors from the services right now. They are varied, as you can imagine, and there are a lot of drivers which, at 

this point, because we haven’t actually gotten all the data, and I 

can’t give you a firm assessment of why the costs vary per student, 

but I am sure there are issues of geography, physical plant. I 

mean, there are a number of issues, transportation of those officers 

to and from the schools and that sort of thing. So we will continue 

to work that issue, because it is of interest to all of us. 

Dr. SNYDER. I think back, General, on your comment about you 

are getting some pushback from, I guess, the congressional side on 

sharing, having civilians participate. I remember on a report that 

we did on PRTs [Provincial Reconstruction Teams] a couple of 

years ago as coincidentally somebody from my district who is a veterinarian with the Department of Agriculture, who served in both 

Iraq and Afghanistan, at some point she sent us an e-mail that we 

included in our report which said—she just volunteered, she said, 

I sometimes feel like there are more barriers between the different 

agencies of our government than there are between us and the 

Iraqis. 

I mean, she really meant it, that she could go out and talk to 

a group of farmers or government Ag [agriculture] people that are 

Iraqi and felt like she made more progress than sometimes trying 

to talk to other agencies of government. So I think that is the motivation. We are trying to break down those barriers, and maybe it 

starts here in Congress. 

I will direct it here and then any comments you all have again. 

As we are talking about these slots and the availability of PME, 

if we had a group of National Guard and Marine Corps Reserve, 

Army Reserve, Navy Reserve, Air Force Reserve people, would they 

all feel like there were adequate slots for their personnel, adequate 

opportunities for Guard and Reserve personnel? 

Mr. HEBERT. I think it would depend largely on which level of 

education we are talking about. 

Dr. SNYDER. At which level do you think? 
22 

Mr. HEBERT. Well, JPME II throughput is admittedly short of demand, both for the Active Component as well as for the Reserve 

Components. 

Dr. SNYDER. Disproportionately for the Reserve Component? 

Mr. HEBERT. Two percent of officers each year, and 1.5 percent 

for the Reserve Component. But I think largely the feedback I have 

gotten from the Reserve Component service members dealt with 

the AJPME [Advanced Joint PME], their equivalent JPME II 

course. And it wasn’t so much about the course per se, it was the 

many demands the reservists face. They have to balance the demands of a full-time position, civilian position, the demands of 

their Reserve Component, the demands of the family, the demands 

in many cases of pursuing advanced education, and the demands 

of pursuing in some cases at the same time professional military 

education. 

So it is trying to find ways that we can better facilitate that 

within those competing demands so it is not so onerous on them, 

so it doesn’t come at a time when all of these issues are brought 

to bear at the exact same time. So from the Reserve Component 

feedback that I have received, that is the largest issue. 

I have also received some feedback on the Capstone course and 

not having enough throughput there in order to accommodate all 

the demand they have. So it is the top two levels of PME for them. 

General HIX. I would just echo that point, that their real focus 

is on JPME II. AJPME provides them with an equivalent accreditation. I think that there is a concern that it is not seen as equal to 

the actual JPME II course. I believe that if we are able to expand 

JPME II into this distributed option, that will be the first step in 

providing a more flexible access for our Reserve Component into 

that curriculum on a larger basis. 

There has, however, been a reasonably significant increase in the 

number of Reserve Component, both Reserve Title 10 and Title 32 

National Guard officers, in both resident JPME II as well as in 

Capstone, so there is a concerted effort to do that. But there is a 

balance, because there is a requirement particularly to look at the 

number of joint billets that are populated by reservists above the 

State level. I know that the National Guard has implemented joint 

headquarters at the State level, but above the State level, those 

National Guard officers who—like General Sherlock, who are—actually, I guess, he is a reservist—who is the Chief of Staff at 

AFRICOM [Africa Command]. I mean, those kinds of Reserve officers clearly need to have access to that level of education. 

But right now, the throughput is a challenge, as your study outlines, across the board. 

Dr. SNYDER. Do any of you have any comments on that issue? 

General NELLER. I think, in the aggregate, that there are issues 

with Reserve-Guard PME. In fact, I have got a meeting next week 

with General Darrell Moore, who is a Reserve general who works 

Reserve Affairs for our manpower, to talk about this. I think as 

mentioned, JPME II is probably the toughest one, but I think it 

goes further down. 

Just as on the officer side you have to have JPME II to be considered for flag rank, on the enlisted side, if you are a gunnery sergeant, you have to have the advanced course. And we recently ran 
23 

a Reserve advanced enlisted PME course, and we had slots for 100, 

and 105 Marines showed up, and we put them all through, because 

we knew if they got there, that we are going to give them the opportunity to go to the course. 

So, I don’t know what the answers are. We have slots at Command and Staff and the other schools for Reserves, and they are 

filled. We have a very aggressive non-res program through the College of Distance Education and Training, where I think most of 

them get their PME for the officer side. 

But just as the Joint Staff and OSD is looking at a regional approach to JPME II, in line with what the Commandant has asked 

us to do, one of our COAs [courses of action] is probably going to 

consider a regional campus, more of a hybrid, a blended-type seminar, where you have a resident and non-resident portion, which I 

think most people would feel is potentially superior to a fully nonres on line, and I think we will see a lot of our Reserves hopefully, 

because they are in the local area, at lower cost, be able to take 

advantage of that, too. 

So it is an issue. JPME II is probably the biggest, but I think 

it filters all the way through the force. 

Mr. LUTTERLOH. Yes, sir. Chairman Snyder, I would just add 

that we have increased our Reserve throughput through Navy War 

College over the past 2 years, marginally so, but increasing nonetheless, and the Reserve force is actively interested in additional 

quotas through the War College. So we will actively pursue that 

movement forward. 

I would also point out that we have about 2,900 officers in the 

war right now, and nearly half of those are Reserve officers. So this 

education is very well needed in that part of the force. How we resource it moving forward, how we address that throughput, and our 

ability to accommodate that throughput is going to be something 

we have to deal with. But we are actively engaged in this issue. 

General MACFARLAND. Sir, I just wanted to add one thing about 

the Total Army School System is really tailored to our Reserve officers and noncommissioned officers and giving them the opportunity 

to get professional military education and JPME I for our majors. 

We have a brigade with six battalions distributed around the 

country, and it is somewhat blended, where you spend a couple 

weeks in residence, places like Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, and then 

you meet in seminar or staff group-type formats instead of your 

drill periods over the course of a year, and then you come back together for another couple of weeks. And we have very good faculty 

out there doing that for our Reserve officers. So they get a good 

JPME educational experience through the Total Army School System, even though they don’t necessarily come to Fort Leavenworth 

or one of our satellite campuses. 

Dr. SNYDER. I think, as you all know, this subcommittee and the 

full committee have taken an interest in foreign language skills in 

our military, and, in fact, Mr. Kruse has got a draft and updated 

report I need to sign off here in the next day or two from the report 

we did a year and a half ago. 

I would just like any general comments you have about where 

you see foreign-language training fitting into this. And then specifi-
24 

cally one of the concerns all along about this is how do you get that 

25th hour in a 24-hour day for further foreign-language training? 

The QDR [Quadrennial Defense Review] Independent Review 

Panel suggested one way to get at that is—for your ROTC [Reserve 

Officers’ Training Corps] students—is just to increase the requirement for what they bring in for increased foreign language proficiency. And I would like any of your comments about foreign language in general, but also that specific comment. 

I am going to start with you again, General Neller. 

General NELLER. This is a very difficult issue, Mr. Chairman. At 

one point in Command and Staff College, they tried to implement 

as part of their curriculum a foreign-language program, and I think 

that the consensus was that the effort just didn’t result in a positive benefit. The Command and Staff still does a key leader engagement exercise where they have to use an interpreter, but there 

is not a specific language requirement. 

Recently the Marine Corps has required commanders, because of 

key leader engagement mission-essential tasks in theater, that 

they have to do 40 hours of language before they deploy. And the 

Marine Corps, again, this is out of my area, but at the basic school, 

lieutenants still are being assigned a general area where they are 

supposed to develop language, but, again, it is on their own time; 

there is not an enforcement function on that. 

Again, you are putting more rocks in the ruck of a ROTC student, but I think many people, as I, depending upon where you 

went to undergrad, there was a requirement for a language where 

I went to school, and somehow we managed to survive that. And 

that would bring at least a basic fundamental knowledge of language to the force. 

There will have to be some forcing function to, I think, get some 

traction on this, but it is going to be difficult. The Marine Corps 

also has a program called Af-Pak [Afghanistan-Pakistan] Hands. 

Actually it has been taken from, I think, when General McChrystal 

was ISAF [International Security Assistance Force], and he had a 

cadre of people, and all the services are participating in the Af-Pak 

Hands program. In fact, we have three of those officers coming to 

work for the university as they prepare to deploy, and part of their 

preparation will be language. 

So there is a great interest in it, but my personal opinion is we 

are struggling to some degree to find the time to meet all the other 

additional requirements in addition to the language, and it is a 

work in progress, and there is still much left to do. 

Dr. SNYDER. You know, there was a—Dr. Fenner and I can’t remember—it was newspaper report, I think, just within the last 

month that was discussing foreign-language skills, and, you know, 

I remember I had 2 years of—it took me 2 years of French to get 

out of high school and 2 years of French to get out of college. You 

know, if that is what you are talking about, you think, okay, what 

does that have to do with Iraq? As the article pointed out, I can’t 

remember who was quoted, it said, well, maybe you don’t have Arabic skills going into Iraq, but the experience of some of our soldiers 

was the ability to talk to the allied soldiers was as important, and 

so the French or Italian or whatever language it was was helpful. 
25 

But ramping up that proficiency level, more than just a 2-year 

jump to get out, may be helpful. 

Mr. Sitterly, did you have something? 

Mr. SITTERLY. Yes, Dr. Snyder. The language regional expertise 

and culture issue is one that Secretary Donnelly has asked us to 

look at very seriously, and we have. In addition to an extremely robust ROTC program, a very robust Air Force Academy language 

program, we also have just held our second Language Enabled Airmen Program, LEAP program we call it, where we identify—for the 

very first board, identify cadets coming out of ROTC and the Air 

Force Academy, and in subsequent boards we intend to look at the 

Total Force; but we identify those folks that have a language, either capacity, or they already have a proficiency that exists, and 

then we will take those folks and identify them across their career 

as LEAP airmen, language enabled airmen, so that we can send 

them to some sort of intermediate, you know, training courses in 

order to maintain that proficiency level. 

So, in other words, if you bring somebody in, and they have no 

aptitude, no proficiency, to send them out to Monterey to the Defense Language School to get them up to a proficiency where we 

could utilize them is a large investment. If they have the capability 

or show the capacity or the proficiency early, then we can send 

them perhaps to an overseas assignment or just an immersion program where they can get that proficiency level up to 2–2. And our 

studies show that if you can get the proficiency on the DLAB [Defense Language Aptitude Battery] score to 2–2, it is a lot easier to 

maintain that. [Inaudible] 

So in our personnel system then, we will have these folks identified. So if we, for instance, have the ability to send a C–130 unit 

or an airman to Germany or Japan, if we can match their ability 

to speak German or Japanese to build sort of a, you know, partnership capacity, then we could make that decision, all things being 

equal. So we put a lot into this program. 

Mr. LUTTERLOH. It is a critical issue for us, Mr. Chairman, and 

it comes with a number of initiatives that we have taken already 

and a delicate balance in the end. 

First off, we have got a strong linguist program for our 

cryptologists that gets to the level of 2–2 that is excellent. We leverage off that, along with some of the postgraduate school education, the masters programs for our foreign area officers that focus 

on language and regional expertise in those masters programs. We 

leverage those two activities to provide targeted just-in-time training and education for deploying strike groups in units going overseas to get them focused on the culture and the region and, to a 

very minimal degree, some of the language idiosyncrasies. 

That said, in general we have increased what we are doing at 

ROTC with some additional scholarships. I think the class of 2010 

out of the Naval Academy had 2 language majors graduate and 10 

or 11 with minors in language areas graduate. So our accession 

mission is also focused on that language education. 

Lastly, I would focus on the increased throughput. Both the foreign area officers and just officers in general, through postgraduate 

school and through our curricula at War College, each class which 
26 

is focused on regional areas has been some of the actions we have 

taken to date. 

The balance that I want to talk about has to do with the balance 

between language education and what we believe is inherent to our 

force in science, technology, engineering, and math. So we have recently tried to increase our percentages of graduates to 65 percent 

out of ROTC and the Naval Academy in science, technology, engineering and math. So that is where the balance is going to come, 

how we balance language against those hard educational curricula. 

General MACFARLAND. Sir, I just wanted to add, one of my additional hats is the Defense Language Institute works for me, and so 

I just wanted to tell you that DLI is doing some really good work 

in developing new instructional techniques for language training. 

The language-training detachments that are now global and spread 

around the world, and the Af-Pak Hands is part of that, is an important way that we are infusing language training into the field, 

giving units that are deploying the language skills that they need 

so that there is somebody who is language enabled in each platoon 

and developing our own language specialists within the force. 

We have an LTD, a language training detachment, at Fort Leavenworth, and we offer electives in language to our officers, and 

every officer is required to study and conduct a regional—have a 

regional elective. So if you have a language skill, that language 

elective is also available so that you can do a culture and language 

study, which is very valuable if you are about to deploy somewhere. 

So the Army is right now in the process of developing what we 

call the Army Cultural and Foreign Language Strategy, and, in 

fact, DLI teaches culture-based language. And you have to link culture with language instruction, and we think that this is really the 

model for the future. 

How we are going to inject that into our PME for enlisted, warrant officers, civilian, and officer is still being studied though. But 

we are looking cradle to grave, pre-commissioning through general 

officer, to ensure that there is a continuum of lifelong learning 

available for those officers with language skills. 

Thank you. 

Dr. SNYDER. I think since the last time this subcommittee had 

a discussion about foreign language, I forget which TV network it 

was had the embedded reporter, that terrible incident where the 

contracted interpreter was just flat out wrong in what they were 

saying and was exasperating for our military officers who thought 

they were being given false information by the local villagers. And 

it turned out, in fact, that they were being given—somebody was 

putting themselves at risk by giving accurate information, but the 

interpreter didn’t pick that up. It just seemed to me that was a 

piece of film that ought to be part of a training exercise for a long, 

long time to illustrate this. 

General MACFARLAND. It is, sir. 

Dr. SNYDER. It is. And then I think it was last week, a couple 

of weeks, before Thanksgiving, Susan Davis was a host of a breakfast, General Neller, for some of the women Marines—what do you 

call those teams that go out? 

General NELLER. Female engagement teams. 
27 

Dr. SNYDER. They were wonderful women, it was great, one of 

the speakers. But one of the young women brought up her frustration with interpreters, the varied skill levels of the interpreters 

they have. 

And the unfortunate part for me was I can remember I think it 

was with Jim Saxton, before the events of 2001, was holding classified hearings in this room talking about how we are going to get 

the language skills we need to keep track of what is going on with 

all the areas around the world, and I am thinking it must have 

been a decade now, and we are still having young Marine officers 

tell us we have got a real problem with having the right language 

skills. It just seems like it is hampering their activity. But I appreciate the work that you all are doing on it. 

I think those are about the things that I wanted to get at. Maybe 

a few closing comments. 

General Neller, you have mentioned enlisted PME, and we did 

hold the one hearing on enlisted PME, and I have to acknowledge 

it since Gunnery Sergeant Hector Soto-Rodriguez is sitting right 

behind you and has been my Marine Fellow for this last year. But 

I appreciate your mention of it. We focus so much on the in-residence officer PME, but the enlisted PME is so very, very important, 

and they have some frustrations, too, as you know. 

A couple of you acknowledged the presence of Dr. Lorry Fenner, 

who will not be with the committee after this year, and the great 

work that she has done, as has the staff. 

I also want to recognize Julie Zelnick on my staff, who—you 

know, you wonder about why do these folks get interested? Ike 

Skelton made a speech a couple of weeks ago about his fear that 

we may be having a separation from the civilian world and the 

military world, and why does a young woman like Julie get involved in this? Well, she has got a brother in the military. His wife 

is in the military. They actually let them serve together in Iraq because they are lawyers. 

Are they both lawyers, Julie? 

One lawyer in the family, but they let them serve together in 

Iraq as a married couple, which is quite unusual. But when you 

have it that close, then these things become important to you. I 

also have to mention Julie, because since I am leaving, she still 

needs a job. 

But I appreciate all the work you have done on this. Mr. Skelton 

will no longer be here, and I will no longer be here. I chose not to 

run for reelection because I have so many babies at home that need 

their education. 

But this topic is one I know Mr. Wittman is very interested in 

it. I ask unanimous consent—since I am the only person here, I 

will give it—that his statement be included as part of record. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the Appendix on page 35.] 

Dr. SNYDER. But this topic is one that is very important to you, 

it is very important to the military, it is very important to the Congress. It is not going to go away. And I appreciate all the work that 

you have done, and it has been an honor to chair the committee. 

We are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 10:37 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

NOVEMBER 30, 2010 

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NOVEMBER 30, 2010 

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