POLITICAL-MILITARY AFFAIRS 

OFFICERS AND THE AIR FORCE: 

CONTINUED TURBULENCE IN A 

VITAL CAREER SPECIALTY 

James E. Kinzer 

and 

Marybeth Peterson Ulrich 

INSS Occasional Paper 13 

April 1997 

USAF Institute for National Security Studies 

US Air Force Academy, Colorado 
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iii

The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not reflect 

the official policy or position of INSS, the Department of the Air Force, the 

Department of Defense, or the US Government. This paper is approved for 

public release by SAF/PAS. 

******** 

Comments pertaining to this paper are invited and should be forwarded to: 

Director, Institute for National Security Studies 

HQ USAFA/DFES 

2354 Fairchild Drive, Suite 5D33 

USAF Academy, CO 80840-6258 

(719) 333-2717 fax: (719) 333-2716 

email: hayspl.dfe@usafa.af.mil 

******** 

Visit the Institute for National Security Studies’ home page at 

http://www.usafa.af.mil/inss 
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Foreword vii 

Executive Summary ix 

Introduction 1 

Requirements 3 

The Gap Between Needs and Reality 9 

 Tracking Problems 10 

 AFPC and the Assignment System 13 

 Unintended Consequences of Goldwater-Nichols 16 

Obstacles to Solutions 18 

 Service Culture Bias Against Pol-Mil Officers 18 

 AFPC as a Hindrance to Resolution 22 

 The Role of the Pentagon Offices and Headquarters 24 

 Summary: Problems and Obstacles to Fixing the System 26 

Previous Criticisms and Solutions 27 

 Training and Employing of Area Specialists in the Military 28 

 Inspection of the AF Foreign Area Studies Program 29 

 Foreign Language Skills Process Action Team 30 

 The Army’s FAO Program 31 

 The Navy’s Political-Military Affairs Career Specialty 33 

DoD Directive on Service Foreign Area Officer Programs 34 

Recommendations 35 

 Developing a Pol-Mil Officer Career Field 36 

 Tracking Relevant Qualifications, Officers, and Jobs 36 

 Improvements in the Assignment Process 37 

 Better Utilization of Qualified Officers 38 

 Summary of Recommendations 38 

Conclusions 40 

Sources Consulted 42 

Endnotes 46 
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FOREWORD 

This paper identifies several problems with how the Air Force 

trains, tracks, and uses political-military affairs officers. This issue is 

critically important for the efficiency and effectiveness of the Air Force in 

the post-Cold War world. Unfortunately, however, ensuring that the best 

trained personnel are in the right billets is often a secondary consideration—

subsumed within larger issue-areas, or escaping notice altogether. As the 

military continues downsizing and taking on an ever more complicated array 

of responsibilities, it is more important than ever that we do things the smart 

way the first time. Political-military affairs officers—when properly trained 

and used—provide one of the best mechanisms to develop or backstop 

today’s increasingly complex policies. 

INSS is pleased to offer for public debate the authors’ insights into 

this problem, as well as their recommended solutions. 

About the Institute 

 INSS is primarily sponsored by the National Security Policy 

Division, Nuclear and Counterproliferation Directorate, Headquarters US 

Air Force (USAF/XONP) and the Dean of the Faculty, US Air Force 

Academy. Our other current sponsors include: the Air Staff’s Directorate 

for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (USAF/XOI); OSD Net 

Assessment; the Defense Special Weapons Agency; the Army 

Environmental Policy Institute; Army Space Command; and the On-Site 

Inspection Agency. The mission of the Institute is to promote national 

security research for the Department of Defense within the military 

academic community, and to support the Air Force national security 

education program. Its primary purpose is to promote research in fields of 

interest to INSS’ sponsors: international security policy (especially arms 
viii

control and nonproliferation/counterproliferation), Air Force planning 

issues, regional security policy, conflict in the information age (including the 

revolution in military affairs and information warfare), environmental 

security, and space policy. 

INSS coordinates and focuses outside thinking in various 

disciplines and across services to develop new ideas for USAF policy 

making. The Institute develops topics, selects researchers from within the 

military academic community, and administers sponsored research. It also 

hosts conferences and workshops which facilitate the dissemination of 

information to a wide range of private and government organizations. INSS 

is in its fifth year of providing valuable, cost-effective research to meet the 

needs of the Air Staff and our other sponsors. We appreciate your continued 

interest in INSS and its research products. 

PETER L. HAYS, Lt Colonel, USAF 

Director, Institute for National Security Studies 
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

 This paper highlights the deficiencies of the Air Force’s system for 

preparing and utilizing political-military affairs officers to help develop and 

implement the military dimensions of US foreign policy. Important policymaking and implementation billets are routinely filled by officers with 

inadequate education and regional expertise to perform their duties 

competently. Meanwhile, officers who have acquired such skills remain 

untapped for sensitive political-military positions due to the personnel 

system’s inability to track them and assign them to billets where their skills 

are needed. 

 This paper first clarifies the need within the post-Cold War 

environment for officers with both general international relations skills and 

specific regional expertise. The authors then argue that a serious gap exists 

between these needs and the ability of the Air Force to meet them with 

qualified officers. In addition, the paper compares Air Force efforts to Army 

and Navy programs. It also evaluates the effectiveness of the Air Force’s 

new foreign area officer program in addressing these problem areas and 

makes recommendations to go beyond the important first steps this new 

initiative represents. 

 The authors make specific recommendations aimed at improving 

the development and use of political-military affairs officers in the Air 

Force. First, a specific career field should be created that is capable of 

providing well-trained officers to fill billets requiring expertise in political 

science, international relations, or a specific region of the world. This career 

path would enhance the promotability of these officers and institutionalize 

tracking them within the personnel system. More importantly, it would 

ensure a ready supply of qualified officers to fill positions requiring 

political-military expertise. Second, specific recommendations for tracking 
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relevant advanced degrees, regional knowledge, and language skills are 

made. The authors also argue that the thousands of staff jobs requiring 

political-military officers should be reevaluated to determine which positions 

require specific advanced degrees and language skills and which positions 

can be manned by officers from purely operational backgrounds. Third, the 

paper recommends that an emphasis on political-military qualifications take 

precedence over “square-filling” for promotion in sensitive political-military 

positions, including joint billets. Finally, the report offers suggestions for 

striking a balance between getting a sufficient payback in follow-on tours 

for the specialized education and training required to develop politicalmilitary officers, and ensuring that these officers remain credible within their 

operational specialties. 
xi

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE ACADEMY 

Lieutenant General Paul E. Stein 

Superintendent 

Brigadier General Ruben A. Cubero 

Dean of the Faculty 

HEADQUARTERS, US AIR FORCE 

PLANS AND OPERATIONS DIRECTORATE 

Major General Thomas H. Neary 

Director, Nuclear and Counterproliferation 

Colonel Todd A. Bodenhamer 

Chief, National Security Policy Division 

USAF INSTITUTE FOR NATIONAL SECURITY 

STUDIES 

Lieutenant Colonel Peter L. Hays 

Director 

Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey A. Larsen 

Editor 

Major Alan R. Van Tassel 

Editor 

Ms Marsha Taylor 

Cover Design 
xii

INSS OCCASIONAL PAPERS

1. Explaining Weapons Proliferation: Going Beyond the Security 

Dilemma. Gregory J. Rattray, July 1994 

2. The Ukrainian Military: Instrument for Defense or Domestic 

Challenge? Oleg Strekal, November 1994 

3. North Korea’s Nuclear Program: The Clinton Administration’s 

Response. William E. Berry, Jr., March 1995 

4. Environmental Assistance as National Security Policy: Helping the 

Former Soviet Union Find Solutions to its Environmental Problems. 

Robert L. Dunaway, November 1995 

5. Economic Power in the Sino-U.S. Relationship. Kevin F. Donovan, 

December 1995 

6. Nuclear Proliferation: Diminishing Threat? William H. Kincade, 

December 1995

7. Nuclear Proliferation: The Diplomatic Role of Non-Weaponized 

Programs. Rosalind R. Reynolds, January 1996

8. Five Minutes Past Midnight: The Clear and Present Danger of Nuclear 

Weapons Grade Fissile Materials. Guy B. Roberts, February 1996 

9. The International Legal Implications of Information Warfare. Richard 

W. Aldrich, April 1996 

10. Weapons Proliferation and Organized Crime: The Russian Military 

and Security Force Dimension. Graham H. Turbiville, Jr., June 1996 

11. Melancholy Reunion: A Report from the Future on the Collapse of 

Civil-Military Relations in the United States. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., 

October 1996 

12. Russia’s Crumbling Tactical Nuclear Weapons Complex: An 

Opportunity for Arms Control. Stephen P. Lambert and David A. Miller, 

April 1997
1

Political-Military Affairs Officers and the Air Force: Continued 

Turbulence in a Vital Career Specialty 

 Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has found itself 

more involved in international, transnational, and foreign intranational 

events than ever before. No longer are all issues colored by Cold War 

certainties of East versus West. Rather, we have become more aware of the 

complicated and uncertain nature of international issues more broadly 

defined. As the country's foreign policy focus has shifted from issues of 

grand strategy, such as strategic arms balances, to more regionally specific 

concerns, such as ethnic conflict, so too has the US military found it 

necessary to emphasize regional and political issues rather than traditional 

bipolar concerns regarding Soviet forces. As a result, the Air Force today is 

far more likely to be called upon to airlift humanitarian supplies than to 

ready a nuclear strike. Indeed, in the past five years the Air Force has been 

called upon to support major nontraditional operations in Northern Iraq, 

Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. 

 Few would contest the observation that the country, the military, 

and the Air Force are heavily involved in difficult missions around the 

globe. Few also would dispute the need for highly qualified officers to 

manage these operations, to deal with countries that are not enemies (yet 

may not be close allies either), and to effectively advance our country's 

foreign policy goals through the nonlethal application of our military 

instrument. The problem this paper addresses is that the Air Force has done 

a less-than-adequate job ensuring that officers with relevant knowledge and 

skills are developed, tracked, assigned, and appropriately utilized in this key 

area known as political-military (pol-mil) affairs. As a result, the Air Force 
2

has had difficulty filling important policy-shaping and implementing 

positions with officers who are both military professionals and experts in 

specific regions or policy areas of political-military affairs. In short, the 

service is not matching the right people to the right jobs. 

 After laying out the problem, the second purpose of this paper is to 

evaluate the potential of two new initiatives, the Air Force and joint foreign 

area officer (FAO) programs, to meet the observed shortcomings of the 

current system. With the full support of former Secretary of Defense 

William Perry and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John 

Shalikashvili, these initiatives call upon the services to provide officers with 

the education and experience necessary to operate in an uncertain policy 

environment. The political-military affairs officer, as currently defined, 

includes more than is encompassed in the FAO initiative, but the two are 

closely related, as will become clearer below. 

 The third and final purpose of this paper is to recommend solutions 

to the problems identified. These recommendations are intended to fulfill 

three closely related goals. The first is to ensure that the Air Force has a 

pool of qualified, educated, and well-prepared officers who can fill politicalmilitary affairs positions. The second is to manage the careers of those 

officers in the political-military affairs field, and those preparing to join it, 

more effectively, so they have a clear understanding of their career 

progression requirements. The third goal is to create a better process for 

matching people to positions by tracking job requirements and personnel 

qualifications. Our recommendations build upon the progress that already 

has been made through other initiatives. 

 In large bureaucracies such as the military services, it is hardly 

shocking to discover inefficiencies. However, two key reasons render the 

Air Force's shortcomings in this field rather more significant than otherwise 

would be the case. First, because of the geopolitical changes over the past 
3

seven years, US military forces are called upon with increasing frequency to 

augment and implement foreign policy, often in unfamiliar corners of the 

world. Second, as a by-product of those same geopolitical changes, the US 

military has shrunk by over a third. Staffs at the Pentagon and the various 

command headquarters face pressures to reduce as the military budget 

shrinks. Fewer people are being called upon to perform more missions, 

many of which are increasing in complexity. As this trend continues, the 

services must ensure that the most-capable and best-prepared officers fill 

policy sensitive billets so our political leaders get the very best advice and 

their policies are competently executed. 

 This paper first addresses the needs of the Air Force for qualified 

political-military affairs officers. It then identifies the gap between needs 

and reality. Next, past and present efforts to address these problems are 

examined. Finally, the paper concludes with recommendations for the Air 

Force which go beyond implementing the new FAO program to include all 

political-military affairs positions. Throughout, comparisons with the Army 

and the Navy are made to illustrate that these problems are neither new nor 

unique to one service. In addition, the inter-service comparisons are 

essential to meeting the objectives of joint operations, which depend on a 

coordinated approach to problem solving.1

Requirements 

 That the world has become more complicated since the end of the 

Cold War needs little defense. Nor is it controversial to state that the US as 

the sole surviving superpower finds itself engaged in a wider variety of 

situations around the globe. These situations frequently involve our military 

forces in missions ranging from drug interdiction and counternarcotics 
4

training of foreign militaries to humanitarian airlift to peacekeeping and 

peace enforcement. It is but a small step, then, to acknowledge that these 

challenging missions in far-flung regions require expert policy advice and 

capable people on the ground to put the policies into effect. Specifically, as 

the military services endeavor to shape and implement US policy, they need 

to be as well informed about the broad political context of their missions as 

they are about military matters. 

 Indeed, these newer missions and contingencies seem to require 

greater sophistication and understanding of political nuance than ever 

before. At the military level, the Cold War put a premium on force 

application and responsiveness, tasks at which our military excels. 

However, the US military is systematically deficient in training and utilizing 

officers to develop and carry out the military dimension of US foreign 

policy. While the US military, especially the Army, has been engaged in 

what we now call “military operations other than war” for many decades, in 

the post-Cold War era these operations have taken on more importance and 

greater centrality to the military. Although the Gulf War demonstrated that 

the blunt application of our military instrument is far from obsolete, it has 

declined in relative importance. Instead, less traditional roles requiring close 

interaction with other nations have become more prevalent. While this shift 

is one of degree, not of kind, these less traditional roles place a greater 

premium on the kind of expert advice and the ability to create and 

implement complex policy that skilled political-military affairs officers can 

provide. 

 Earlier reports clearly state the requirement for political-military 

affairs officers. The 1991 Inspector General report on the Air Force's 

Foreign Area Specialist Program (FASP) found that, “Increasingly, coalition 

and bilateral relationships were replacing unilateral action as the DoD 

strategy. . . . The Functional Management Team found foreign language 
5

ability and regional knowledge increasingly necessary for attachés, military 

advisory groups, security assistance teams, counterintelligence agents, and 

planners.”2

 Similarly, the December 1995 Air Force Foreign Language 

Skills Process Action Team (PAT) report quotes Senator David Boren of the 

Senate Intelligence Committee. 

Just as we were ill-equipped to deal with the technological 

threats of the Cold War era, today we lack the linguistic and 

cultural skills and resources fundamental for competing in the 

new international environment. We can no longer define our 

national security interests in military terms alone. Our 

ignorance of world cultures and world languages represents a 

threat to our ability to remain a world leader.3

 

The report also notes that, “Recruiting, training and equipping military 

forces for a ‘world defined by contingencies,’ as the Secretary of the Air 

Force has written, is obviously more challenging than building and 

sustaining forces to counter known threats.”4

 As the above quotations 

indicate, education is the key. To meet the growing requirements for 

officers knowledgeable about the world outside our borders, the Air Force 

must ensure there is a large pool of individuals trained in political science, 

international relations, regional studies, and language skills. It then must 

match those individuals and their skills to the demands made by today’s 

complex policy environment. 

 Corroborating these earlier reports, interviews with officers filling 

political-military affairs positions confirm these pressing needs. Nearly all 

of those interviewed at the Pentagon routinely worked 12 to 14 hour days 

dealing with a plethora of complex pol-mil issues. Those who had no prior 

background in the pol-mil field spoke of the months required to “get up to 

speed” in their new jobs. However, even the most diligent staff officer will 

find it difficult to compensate for the lack of appropriate education or 

language skills. Indeed, several officers interviewed said they did not feel 
6

adequately prepared for their pol-mil positions. The combination of the 

increased importance of nontraditional roles, a shrinking force structure, and 

higher required levels of regional and functional knowledge leads to a 

greater demand for pol-mil expertise in our armed forces. 

 So who performs the vital jobs of shaping foreign policy initiatives, 

working with allied officers and military officials, and implementing 

complex policy initiatives? While the titles vary, each of the services has a 

designation for officers in this field. The Army has personnel code 48 for its 

FAOs. Suffixes to this code indicate further specialization in areas such as 

psychological operations and civil affairs. The Navy uses codes N31 and 

N52 for its political-military affairs officers.5

 Like the Army, these are 

secondary specialty codes, listed after the officer's primary career field. The 

Marine Corps also has a small FAO program with fewer than 50 officers. 

 Within the Air Force, political-military affairs officers are awarded 

Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC) 16P; air attachés are coded as 16A. 

Neither of these codes is a career field; rather, they are specialties, 

identifying positions being held rather than an officer’s career path. 

Generally, officers must be O-4s or higher to hold a 16P position, though in 

certain circumstances some O-3s do as well. Currently there are 375 officers 

holding 16P positions, and an additional 143 in 16A positions.6

 The 

qualifications for AFSCs are specified in Air Force Manual 36-2105, 

Attachment 5.7

 Its summary of the specialty says a political-military affairs 

officer 

plans, formulates, coordinates and implements Air Force 

aspects of international politico-military policies. Advises and 

briefs commanders and government officials on international 

problems affecting the Air Force, and represents the Air Force 

in international and interdepartmental conferences and 

negotiations.8

 
7

Similarly, air attachés “maintain good relations and effective liaison between 

the US Air Force and the armed forces of the country or countries for which 

responsible.”9

 For both specialties, the manual states that “knowledge is 

mandatory of: geopolitics, international law, international relations, United 

States foreign policy, international power relationships; . . . [and the] 

organization, mission, and capabilities of United States military organization 

and operations.” Yet for both specialties, a master's degree in political 

science, history, or international affairs is merely “desirable.”10

 Thus, US policy determines the need for political-military affairs 

officers, not just in the Air Force, but across all of the services. Events since 

the end of the Cold War show just how vital this need can be. For example, 

shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, 

Russia and the other newly independent states were invited to participate in 

some of NATO's political activities through the North Atlantic Cooperation 

Council. This participation quickly grew and was followed by the 

Partnership for Peace program. Suddenly, there was a great need for experts 

in the region beyond linguists; officers were needed who could converse 

professionally and understand the Russian and East European cultures. 

However, most of the officers assigned to work directly with the postCommunist militaries to facilitate their transition to democratic control had 

no specific training in political science or the regional languages. 

The Joint Contact Team Program is a specific illustration of an 

effort that would benefit greatly if fully qualified personnel were available. 

This program was conceptualized and implemented with neither significant 

contributions from regional experts nor the consideration of the underlying 

theoretical issues which consultations with experts in democratization 

processes could have provided. As a result, the program has been 

ineffective in its mission to facilitate the democratic transitions of 

postcommunist military institutions.11 Without officers trained in Russian 
8

and other regional languages and educated in the politics, history, and 

culture of the region as well as in the basic principles of political science, 

important opportunities may be, and indeed already have been, missed. 

 As one example, in the 1950s a shortage of Asian specialists in the 

defense policy process resulted in faulty analysis, which led to the escalation 

of US involvement in Vietnam. The shortage was a result of the purge of 

Asian experts in the defense policy process due to their perceived failure to 

predict and prevent the “loss” of China to the Communists. Consequently, 

subsequent regional analyses, which depended on political-military expertise 

which no longer existed, were necessarily flawed.12 

 The above examples show the damage that can be done when 

expertise is lacking across the spectrum of national security policy making. 

Until we have a way to ensure that qualified officers fill these vital positions 

implementing US foreign policy initiatives, there clearly is a risk of missed 

opportunities. As the Foreign Language Skills PAT report notes, "USAF 

officers with language proficiency and greater cultural awareness can better 

exploit the engagement strategy at various levels and are valuable resources 

in regional policy formulation and execution and in joint and foreign 

exercises and operations."13

 In addition to in-country positions, pol-mil officers fill vital billets 

in various headquarters, at NATO, and throughout the Pentagon. At the 

Pentagon, Air Force pol-mil officers serve in policy-shaping action officer 

positions on the Air Staff and Joint Staff and in the Office of the Secretary 

of Defense. There, language or cultural skills are not the issue; rather, an 

informed understanding of policy, politics, and process is needed as US 

foreign military policy is constructed. 

The Gap Between Needs and Reality 
9

 If the requirements for political-military expertise are clear, the path 

toward identifying, training, assigning, and tracking such officers is murky 

at best. Various problem areas and obstacles thwart this process. The 

problems start with a lack of institutional knowledge of available personnel 

resources. The Air Force simply does not know the resources it has, nor 

does it fully realize the implications of the new political realities detailed 

above for its political-military affairs force. The second problem area is an 

unresponsive assignment system that hinders rather than helps in matching 

skills with positions. Finally, while the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 

improved many aspects of interservice relations and enhanced the promotion 

opportunities for officers in political-military affairs positions, an unintended 

consequence has been that many key jobs—the “joint” and “joint critical” 

positions—have been set aside for those being groomed to become general 

officers, rather than those best qualified or prepared for these positions. 

 Foremost among the obstacles to a better process is the service 

culture bias, present in similar but distinct forms in each of the three 

services, which does not give political-military knowledge and training 

equal credit in promotions and assignments and treats nonoperational billets 

as inferior. Corresponding to this cultural bias are problems associated with 

the personnel assignment system. Since the Air Force Personnel Center 

(AFPC) is the Air Force agency responsible for matching people with billets, 

it bears the primary burden for the system's deficiencies. Yet, in many ways 

AFPC is merely responding to stimuli—it does what the Air Force directs it 

to do. Finally, the commands and staff agencies bear some responsibility for 

their own woes. The methods they use to fill their positions prolong and 

exacerbate the problems already mentioned. 

 Unfortunately, many of these flaws have been identified before. 

The Air Force has been severely criticized at least five times in the past 
10

seven years for its failures in foreign area education, training, and 

utilization.14 Reference will be made to these previous studies as the 

problem areas and obstacles are catalogued below. 

Tracking Problems 

 In order to assign qualified officers to the challenging pol-mil 

positions that call upon their specialized education, training, and experience, 

the Air Force first must have some idea who these officers are. To the 

detriment of the agencies requiring such people, however, it does not. While 

degree areas are loaded into the personnel system for those who received Air 

Force Institute of Technology sponsorship, the data limitations described 

below prevent the system from being useful in assigning political-military 

affairs officers. Similarly, regional experience is not encoded so that 

assignment officers can identify a pool of specially qualified officers when 

trying to fill a position. Language qualifications also are only partially 

accessible to assignment officers. These limitations inhibit the assignment 

system’s ability to use the Air Force’s vast human resources to meet 

demonstrated needs. 

 A 1991 Inspector General report concluded as one of its six major 

findings that, “Personnel with regional knowledge and/or foreign language 

proficiency were often not identified or effectively utilized.”15. Five years 

later, the situation is largely the same. The AFPC database contains the 

academic degrees of officers, coded to four digits. For example, a degree in 

international relations is coded as 9ECY. However, according to a former 

AFPC data analyst, the database is unwieldy, and it currently is impossible 

to identify all officers who have a certain degree.16 Nor does it include the 

advanced degrees earned by members on their own. Thus, the system has no 

way to capture some of the information directly relevant to assignments 

requiring specialized backgrounds. The situation is even less satisfactory for 
11

regional experience. There is no database that identifies officers who have 

been stationed in a particular region. It is impossible, for example, to find 

all officers who have experience in Japan. As the IG report also pointed out, 

there is no coding or tracking of regional knowledge acquired from 

"educational and professional exchange tours, bilateral liaison positions, 

political advisor positions, Fulbright and Olmsted Scholarships, and human 

intelligence case officer jobs."17 

 The personnel system does keep track of language skills, but only 

for those officers who have taken the Defense Language Proficiency Test 

(DLPT). The personnel system does not track those who self-identify as a 

native speaker. As the Foreign Language PAT report noted, language 

capabilities for those who choose not to take the DLPT are “consequently 

not available to decision makers/ resource managers.”18 The PAT report 

also recommended that the personnel data system be modified to collect and 

enter language data from all accession sources as well as self-reported 

proficiency and that AFPC assignment officers use this information to make 

assignment decisions.19 While language capability is but one of the relevant 

qualifications for political-military affairs officers, and is not required for 

stateside positions, it seems obvious that tracking this information would 

increase the chances of finding qualified officers for hard-to-fill positions, 

especially those specifying less-prevalent languages such as Portuguese or 

Hungarian. 

 The interviews conducted for this report at AFPC and in 

Washington revealed that the assignment system relies on self-reporting of 

qualifications and on volunteers to fill billets. If qualified people are not 

looking for a position, the system cannot find them. 

 Without knowing the capabilities that exist in the Air Force, the 

personnel system cannot even hope to provide the most qualified officers to 

fill positions demanding political-military expertise. Advanced education, 
12

regional experience (whether prior to or during military service), and 

language proficiency all directly relate to an officer’s ability to perform in a 

political-military affairs position. In order to enable assignment officers to 

make informed selections, they must have access to more complete 

information. 

 A further problem faced by the Air Force as it seeks to match 

people to positions is that it “is not sure what its needs are as far as officers 

with special language and area studies training.”20 While language 

designated position (LDP) and advanced academic degree (AAD) 

requirements are supposed to be revalidated annually, the Foreign Language 

PAT report wondered whether the onerous procedures to alter these 

requirements might make the system unresponsive to changing 

circumstances.21 Indeed, our research found that the validation process is 

not accomplished on a regular basis and, as a later section will discuss, the 

updates that are done are made to match a desired applicant’s qualifications. 

 There are only 524 officer LDPs in the entire Air Force, and just 50 of the 

16A positions and 26 of the 16P positions require AADs.22 Clearly, these 

numbers are quite low given the hundreds of officers performing these jobs. 

 At the very least, they provide a reason to reevaluate how these designations 

are arrived at with an eye toward bringing the actual qualifications necessary 

to perform the job in line with the paper requirements. In sum, tracking 

officers with the knowledge and skills relevant to the political-military 

affairs field is an area with plenty of room for improvement. 

AFPC and the Assignment System 

 The purpose of AFPC is to ensure that Air Force needs are met by 

moving people between assignments while also ensuring they obtain the 

education and training required to perform those assignments. AFPC 

attempts to perform this central task smoothly so that positions neither go 
13

unfilled nor are double billeted for any length of time. It also attempts to 

perform this task fairly so that Air Force personnel have an equal 

opportunity to compete for desirable jobs and are treated equitably when it 

becomes necessary to fill undesirable positions. Unfortunately, AFPC is 

plagued with problems that inhibit its performance in all of these areas. In 

the political-military affairs specialty in particular, the assignment process is 

fraught with difficulties, including misplaced priorities, senior officer 

interference, a recent ill-advised reorganization, and a lack of control over 

position requirements. 

 AFPC operates under a set of procedures that emphasizes filling 

slots rather than ensuring the right people are matched to the right jobs. An 

assignment officer's operating guidance is satisfied whenever an officer is 

assigned to a position for which he or she is minimally qualified. There is 

no incentive to search for a better fit. As one pol-mil assignment officer said 

when interviewed, “The best match may not be the best qualified.” He said 

the officer's time on station and move status were more important.23 This 

imperative to put names against openings rather than focusing on job 

requirements creates problems throughout the Air Force, but especially in 

positions that require specialized backgrounds, such as political-military 

affairs. The result of this misplaced emphasis is that instead of getting the 

best people for the job, the system “satisfices”. 

 Related to this first problem is another case of misplaced priorities. 

 AFPC treats political-military affairs positions as merely career broadening 

assignments for officers who belong to other career fields (i.e., operations, 

maintenance, etc.). These jobs are not seen as important in their own right 

because political-military affairs is not itself a career field. Since there are 

no long-term training, currency, or qualification requirements for the 

majority of these positions, assignment officers treat them as “soft 

requirements,” meaning virtually any officer can fill them. This state of 
14

affairs can be attributed to both the lack of a clear understanding of pol-mil 

requirements on the part of assignment officers and the insufficient guidance 

received by them. The Air Force does not treat pol-mil jobs as requiring any 

special preparation; thus, it is willing to accept a less-than-optimal 

assignment process for them. 

 AFPC’s view of the pol-mil affairs specialty is manifested by its 

recent reorganization. Until recently, all career broadening assignments had 

been handled by a central office, with individual assignment officers 

managing rated assignments, non-rated assignments, attaché jobs, joint duty 

jobs, etc. While there were some coordination problems under this system, 

these assignment officers at least had some familiarity with the requesting 

agencies and their requirements. 

 On 1 August 1996, responsibility for joint duty officer assignments 

within the career broadening assignment branch reverted to primary career 

field assignment officers. However, responsibility for handling joint duty 

assignments designated as pol-mil or attache positions remained within the 

career broadening branch. This partial decentralization of responsibility for 

joint duty assignments may make it more difficult to fill these positions with 

officers who have specific pol-mil related skills, officers for whom these 

skills should enhance their ability to serve in these career-enhancing joint 

billets. Only positions specifically designated as pol-mil or attache positions 

will receive this centralized attention. 

 A fourth problem with the assignment process is that senior 

officers, O-6 and above, frequently interfere with it to get their protégés 

assigned to them. The several assignment officers interviewed at AFPC who 

work with pol-mil positions estimate that the frequency of this practice 

ranges from 25-40 percent of the time. Similarly, more than half of the 

Pentagon pol-mil officers interviewed for this paper acknowledged that they 

had used colonel or general officer connections to obtain their current 
15

positions. There is a potential positive outcome to this practice--senior 

officers should have a better feel for the match of skills to requirements than 

a distant personnel officer. However, there is no guarantee that senior 

officers are not merely grooming subordinates regardless of job 

qualifications. Further, by undermining the system, senior officers also 

impair its fairness. The bottom line is that pol-mil assignments have an ad 

hoc quality to them; the assignment system ensures neither quality nor 

fairness. 

 The fifth problem with AFPC's management of political-military 

affairs positions stems from its lack of control over job descriptions and 

requirements.24 Using agencies have near-total discretion over these 

descriptions and requirements; thus, they are subject to easy manipulation. 

The gaining agencies tend to keep the requirements low to give them greater 

hiring flexibility. The small number of jobs requiring AADs and language 

proficiency, as noted above, is a prime example of this. The problem comes 

from the hobbling of any effort to standardize pol-mil qualifications. AFPC 

is stuck with the requirements it is given, and specialized preparation is not 

provided due consideration for pol-mil positions. 

Unintended Consequences of Goldwater-Nichols 

 The 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Defense Department Reorganization 

Act is a milestone in the history of the military services. Frustrated by the 

rivalries made apparent by the inefficiencies of the Granada operation, 

Congress mandated greater interservice cooperation, enhanced the role and 

authority of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and took other steps to 

improve the joint operation of our nation’s military forces. Along with 

major improvements, however, came some unintended consequences that 

adversely affected the political-military affairs field. In particular, 

implementation of the act undermined the goal of making job requirements 
16

and capabilities the primary consideration for many of these positions. 

Instead, joint political-military affairs positions became required stops for 

officers being groomed for flag rank. 

 Prior to the passage of this bill, joint duty assignments were not 

always highly sought after. There was a perceived risk to one's career 

advancement in taking a job outside one's own service or primary career 

field. One purpose of Goldwater-Nichols, then, was to increase “jointness” 

by enhancing the desirability of joint positions. This was done by making 

joint duty assignments a requirement for advancement to general or admiral. 

 Suddenly joint jobs, including many pol-mil positions, became hot tickets. 

 If the intent was to increase the quality of officers filling these jobs, 

the results have been mixed. The military services, recognizing that the only 

path to the top passes through joint duty assignments, filled these positions 

with their rising stars, officers with superb operational records but not 

necessarily the relevant knowledge and skills. Some Pentagon pol-mil 

officers spoke candidly about the drawbacks of “fair-haired boys,” staff 

officers with less-than-adequate backgrounds, filling policy positions as they 

move through the ranks. 

 Intermediate and senior service school graduates in particular are 

channeled directly into joint jobs by AFPC. Assigning these graduates is 

one of AFPC's top priorities—it is required to assign a majority of inresidence service school graduates to joint positions.25 Thus, these officers 

get a leg up in consideration for joint jobs, including pol-mil positions, based 

not on their background or qualifications, but on their desired career 

advancement. 

 A provision of the law called Title IV mandates that joint duty 

officers must be promoted at a rate greater than or equal to the line of the Air 

Force. Even more stringent is the rule for joint specialty officers (JSOs) 

who fill what are called joint critical positions; they must be promoted at a 
17

rate at least equal to the Air Staff average. These requirements have given 

rise to an AFPC “joint duty assessment.” The records of officers being 

considered for JSO assignments are thoroughly screened for promotability 

(although the joint duty assignment officer insisted on calling it a “joint 

suitability check”).26 An examination of the screening checklist revealed 

that job qualifications were not the primary consideration for assignment to 

joint or joint critical positions; probability of career advancement was. 

 Rather than ensuring that joint jobs, including many pol-mil 

positions, are filled by the most qualified officers, the effect of the 

Goldwater-Nichols Act has been that these jobs are reserved for “fastburners”—capable officers to be sure, but not necessarily those best suited 

or prepared for these positions. Given the importance of sound politicalmilitary advice and policy implementation, these jobs should be filled by 

fully qualified officers who may not be on a future generals list. More to the 

point, screening for joint jobs should focus more on qualifications and less 

on promotability checks. 

Obstacles to Solutions 

Service Culture Bias Against Pol-Mil Officers 

 Service culture is a term used to represent the collective attitudes of 

senior leaders in a military service which have come to characterize that 

service’s organizational climate. Since the military’s raison d’être is to fight 

wars, it is not surprising that each service’s culture revolves around its 

primary warfighting mission. The effect of service cultures does have some 

drawbacks, however, especially when they are applied to individual careers. 

While any flag rank officer would be quick to extol the importance of 
18

support forces to the total warfighting effort, that same general or admiral 

might in the next breath allow that more rewards, in the form of promotions, 

ought to go to those who perform the central operational mission of that 

service. Thus, nonoperational missions, including the operational support 

mission of political-military affairs, become disadvantaged in the 

bureaucratic game; those performing these missions are not held in the same 

esteem as pilots, armor or artillery officers, or sea-going officers. In short, 

the system does not fully appreciate or reward the efforts made by those 

involved in political-military affairs. 

 Political-military affairs officers in all of the services face this 

dilemma. The Army's FAO program is only now recovering from the 

decimation it endured during the military drawdown of recent years. As 

promotion opportunities tightened, FAOs were frequently passed over. Two 

of the Army officers interviewed noted the current shortage of FAOexperienced colonels and generals because of the previous rash of 

passovers.27 The problem came from the length of time required to educate 

and train FAOs—time spent away from their primary career branches. It is 

not uncommon for an Army officer to spend over five years preparing to be 

a FAO—one and a half years for graduate education, one year for language 

training, six months for in-country training, and a two to three year followon tour is typical. However, an officer is likely to be passed over for 

promotion to O-4 or O-5 if the board convenes during this five-year process. 

The Army’s service culture insists on combat arms branch experience for 

promotion. 

 In recent years, the director of the FAO program, located at the 

Defense Language Institute (where most FAOs receive training), has 

carefully managed the careers of FAOs and FAOs-in-training to prevent a 

recurrence of this situation. The director, together with the FAO 

Proponency Office in Washington, DC, ensures that officers return to their 
19

combat arms branches prior to promotion boards, even if their follow-on 

tour as FAOs must be delayed. The current director points out that in recent 

promotion boards FAOs have done slightly better than the Army average, 

but he admits that problems remain in getting officers key in-residence 

service school slots.28 As the Air Force launches its own FAO program it 

should note the career management and promotion problems which the 

Army experienced. 

 Because of the unique nature of the Navy's ship-and-shore duty 

rotation, it has had the greatest difficulty of the three services preparing and 

using pol-mil officers. Like the Army, the Navy puts a premium on holding 

the appropriate billet at the right moment in an officer's career. Time spent 

away from an officer's “community”—either surface ships, aviation, or 

subsurface—is viewed as less than fully productive; it is considered more or 

less “R & R” from ship duty according to one source.29 Again, operational 

experience matters most. 

 The Navy's service culture bias is not just a matter of operational 

(ships) vs. non-operational (shore), however. An additional influence is the 

Navy’s place in the country's overall military mission. Whereas the Army is 

frequently required to work in-country with foreign militaries and civilians, 

and therefore appreciates the need for pol-mil knowledge, the Navy's 

mission requires projecting power and showing the flag. Thus, there is no 

perceived need to learn about and appreciate foreign cultures.30 To this day, 

the Navy places less emphasis on graduate education in general, and even 

less emphasis on pol-mil or regional education, than either the Army or the 

Air Force. 

 The Air Force's service culture today revolves around pilots, with a 

special emphasis on fighter pilots. They embody the “fly-and-fight” 

mentality, and they have for at least the past decade been rewarded with 

higher than average promotion rates and those key staff jobs which are seen 
20

as helpful to career advancement. Indeed, several positions on the Air Staff 

that meet the criteria for pol-mil jobs are reserved for fighter pilots, calling 

for an 11F AFSC. Some adjustment to these set asides has been necessary 

of late because of the fighter pilot shortage—some positions are being filled 

by fighter back-seaters, weapon system officer (WSO) navigators—but the 

practice continues. 

 The most obvious example is in the International Affairs Division 

of the Air Staff (SAF/IA). A few years ago, the primary function of 

SAF/IA, a division broken into geographic branches, was foreign military 

sales (FMS) of Air Force planes and equipment. While this security 

assistance mission remains, the International Affairs portfolio now includes 

more political-military interaction with foreign militaries than occurred in 

the Cold War era. A branch chief described his office's function as 

maintaining Air Force military-to-military relations and keeping the offices 

of the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff appraised of 

developments in his region which could affect the Air Force.31 In other 

words, a greater understanding of other countries is called for by the 

changing mission, yet the billets remain coded for fighter pilots. When 

filling these billets, branch and division chiefs seek fighter pilots with 

international experience, but often find it difficult to meet both criteria. One 

(a fighter pilot himself) said, however, that “operators can learn the pol-mil 

stuff” on the job—an attitude unfortunately shared by more than a few 

others.32 

 Another Air Staff agency, Regional Plans and Issues (XOXX), 

manifests the same fighter pilot bias. This office, which is also broken down 

into geographic branches, helps determine how Air Force assets are 

allocated worldwide and how regional plans interface with the air forces of 

foreign countries.33 The FMS rationale does not apply here; yet, up to half 

of the billets are fighter pilot or WSO coded. Two action officers in one 
21

regional branch noted that XOXX does a fair amount of pol-mil work and 

that language skills and regional knowledge are very important to its 

mission.34 Their boss said he would like to have more foreign experience in 

his shop, but it isn't available among the fighter pilot population from which 

he draws his staff.35 

 While many Air Force pol-mil positions are filled by fighter pilots, 

many others clearly are not. Political-military affairs officers come from a 

variety of fields—intelligence, security police, and instructor duty, for 

instance—as well as from operations. However, for any of them to advance, 

regardless of background, they must stay closely connected with their 

primary career field. Just as the Army's FAO experience revealed, officers 

have to maintain career field credibility and currency to advance. They must 

maintain a tricky balance between a primary, preferably operational, career 

field and political-military affairs. Whether this is seen as a cultural bias that 

hurts the level of pol-mil expertise or as a beneficial way to keep pol-mil 

officers in tune with the larger Air Force is debatable. However, what 

cannot be denied is that this need to return to the fold greatly complicates the 

career choices and timing of officers who desire to do pol-mil work, and it 

puts them at a disadvantage during promotion boards because of the time 

they spend away from their primary AFSCs. 

AFPC as a Hindrance to Resolution

 The second obstacle that stands in the way of solutions is AFPC 

itself; its institutional deficiencies inhibit its ability to solve many of these 

problems. One important obstacle is that AFPC has not developed a system 

to keep track of skills, qualifications, and requirements. This leads to a 

process in which AFPC merely responds to impending vacancies by 

requesting volunteers and, if necessary, selecting nonvolunteers to fill 

positions. In addition to this short-sighted approach, the personnel 
22

headquarters also suffers from inappropriate assignment priorities; 

alternatively, it might be said that AFPC is merely responding to a lack of 

guidance, or misguidance, from higher headquarters concerning these 

priorities. In either case, the service suffers because the most qualified 

officers are not assigned to positions that could benefit from their skills. 

 As discussed above, tracking officers with relevant skills, 

education, and experience is essential to matching people to politicalmilitary affairs positions. That AFPC has not developed this capability up to 

this point is a matter of technology and will. The headquarters’ Personnel 

Data System (PDS) does keep track of an amazing amount of information, 

including assignment histories and flying data. Also included is educational 

data and language abilities, if the individual has taken the DLPT.36 There is 

a second database that contains information on billets. According to a 

former AFPC data analyst, one major problem is merging the two databases 

together so, for example, positions that call for a certain degree can be 

matched against all officers who possess that degree.37 The databases also 

are too unwieldy to track the utilization of AADs beyond their initial 

payback tour. A General Accounting Office report several years ago raised 

some of these criticisms, but so far AFPC has not corrected its deficiencies. 

As a result, it still must rely on self-selection to find those officers with the 

qualifications needed for specialized jobs such as those in political-military 

affairs. 

 Last summer’s reorganization removed political-military affairs 

positions from the special duty assignment section and gave that 

responsibility to primary career field assignment officers. This 

decentralization, which resulted in a shift of responsibility from a specialized 

branch to assignment officers with little knowledge of pol-mil requirements, 

occurred despite the simultaneous emphasis placed on FAO skills by DoD 

and the Air Staff. 
23

 However, AFPC alone is not wholly responsible for the 

deficiencies of the system. After all, AFPC does not determine assignment 

priorities; it simply responds to direction from the Air Force Directorate of 

Personnel and other senior Air Force leaders. If the Air Staff tells AFPC to 

make assignment decisions that result in favoring or disadvantaging a 

particular group, that is what will happen. If the priorities are moving 

personnel regularly or taking care of shortages in intelligence or among 

pilots, those considerations will come first. Until higher headquarters makes 

clear its desire for better management of the political-military affairs field 

and follows through with directives compelling AFPC to mend its ways, 

there is little likelihood of positive change. 

The Role of Pentagon Offices and Headquarters 

 If the personnel system gets some blame for not matching the right 

people to the right jobs, then the using agencies must also share in that 

blame; they contribute to these problems by subverting the intent of the 

assignment system. At the Air Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, 

the Joint Staff, and headquarters worldwide, action officers are assigned not 

necessarily because their qualifications are a good match for the job, but 

because of high-level connections. Senior officers frequently intervene in 

the assignment process, job descriptions are altered to fit the desired 

candidate, and sometimes position requirements are just ignored. 

 At both AFPC and the Pentagon, officers noted with near 

consensus the frequent involvement of O-6s and flag officers in picking 

specific individuals for political-military affairs positions. Rather than 

relying on the two names AFPC forwards for selection when hiring (only 

one name for joint positions), senior officers frequently make by-name 

requests. Assignment officers are frustrated by this practice, which they see 

as subverting the intent of the process of seeking volunteers, while also 
24

being unfair to officers without high-level sponsors. Instead of screening 

those volunteers, time is wasted responding to senior officer inquiries. 

There is more to the problem than merely picking favored subordinates; 

another issue is manipulating positions to create jobs in the first place. One 

assignment officer referred to this practice as a “shell game” whereby Air 

Staff directors move officers around to make room for a desired individual 

when there is no position available.38 Pentagon officers also agreed that 

personal contacts were more important than the personnel system in 

obtaining their positions—only two of the more than twenty pol-mil officers 

interviewed said they got their jobs through the system. One said the system 

was “irrelevant” to the hiring of most pol-mil officers; another called AFPC 

a “bit player.”39 The bottom line is that senior officers impede the rational 

operation of the personnel assignment system through their intervention. 

 Another common practice is writing job descriptions to match the 

record of a desired applicant. There is little control through personnel 

regulations of this practice, so using agencies have relatively free rein. 

Although assignment officers complained of gaming out in the field, they 

have no way of knowing the special qualifications needed for a job, so they 

are stuck with the instructions they are given. Altering job descriptions is a 

“backdoor” way of getting a by-name request without appearing to specify a 

particular individual; if the only person matching the job description is also 

one of the applicants, then AFPC must select that person.40 Again, 

manipulation of the system by using agencies skews the assignment process. 

 The final obstacle to be discussed here is the failure to validate 

annually the requirements of positions requiring AADs, language 

proficiency, and other qualifications as stipulated by manpower regulations. 

Validation serves as a check on the integrity of the system by forcing a 

periodic examination of position requirements, which are supposed to be tied 

to actual job needs. What happens in practice is that the validations are 
25

often “pencil whipped”; the response is usually “what did we put down last 

year?” instead of a real evaluation.41 A recent Air Force Times article noted 

that the 9,000 to 10,000 current joint positions have never been validated as 

requiring a joint designation since the passage of Goldwater-Nichols, even 

though the bill mandated that problem is not limited to just the Air Force. 

There is a pervasive reluctance to follow the procedures in pol-mil 

assignments, in part no doubt because of the time and effort required to do 

so, but also perhaps because following procedures could mean a loss of 

control over assignment manipulation by the using agencies. 

Summary: Problems and Obstacles to Fixing the System 

 The result of these problems and the obstacles to their solution is an 

ad hoc personnel system that does not respond to and anticipate Air Force 

needs. Rather, it muddles through. Officers are not systematically 

developed to fill political-military affairs positions; qualified officers are not 

utilized, or are underutilized, in filling these positions; and officers are put 

into these positions as a reward or to punch their tickets rather than because 

they are the best qualified. As a consequence, in the best case scenario, the 

Air Force is forced to rely on officers’ can-do attitudes and ability to learn 

quickly instead of taking advantage of existing talent or developing new 

talent. More dire is the possibility that our policies are poorly considered, 

inexpertly administered, and insensitively applied. The resulting impact on 

the effectiveness of the military component of US foreign policy is 

potentially severe. 

 Thus, the problems in managing the political-military affairs field 

are systemic. From identifying qualified officers to tracking their skills to 

defining jobs requiring those skills to matching the right people to the right 

positions, the system is broken. This makes these problems all the more 

intractable and requires a system-wide approach to correct them. There is a 
26

chicken and egg dilemma. Agencies that utilize pol-mil officers and their 

senior leaders circumvent the system because it does not fulfill their needs, 

but the real story may be that the system does not work because so many 

people try to game it or avoid it altogether. In either case, tinkering around 

the edges will not eradicate the long-standing problems and the practices that 

reinforce them. A thorough revamping of this process is in order. 

Previous Criticisms and Solutions 

 As mentioned above, the criticisms detailed in this report have been 

made numerous times before. In talking to senior and retired officers, it 

became apparent that some of the problems discussed here go back decades. 

 While this does not bode well for the short-term prospects of improving the 

management of the political-military affairs career field, there are some 

reasons for optimism. 

 First, the critiques and recommendations contained in the current 

and previous reports reinforce each other. It seems reasonable to believe 

that truths, even difficult ones, repeated often enough and loudly enough can 

bring about action. Indeed, some of the provisions previously recommended 

are on the verge of being implemented. Second, the previous critiques, some 

of which are catalogued below, offer workable solutions to seemingly 

intractable problems. While some proposals may require that money be 

spent, most involve bureaucratic reorganization or instituting better control 

procedures. The technology exists to capture personnel data, for example, if 

only the directives are issued to do so. Finally, the latest round of critiques 

seems to be hitting its mark. The highest levels of Air Force and DoD 

leadership not only support improvements in political-military affairs, in 

some cases they are the instigating force. Former Vice Chairman of the 
27

Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William Owens, former Air Education and 

Training Commander (now head of Air Force Materiel Command) General 

Henry Viccellio, Jr., and Air Force Chief of Staff General Ronald Fogleman 

all strongly support the idea of improving the knowledge and experience 

base in regional and international affairs, including language training. 

 This section briefly reviews the major findings and solutions 

offered by three recent reports, all of which already have been referenced 

above. These reports are a thesis done by Captain Randy Burkett for the 

Naval Postgraduate School in 1989, the 1991 Inspector General report on 

FASP, and the Foreign Language Skills PAT report, which was completed 

in December 1995. These three studies emphasize FAO-type programs and 

skills, not the overall political-military affairs field. Hence, they focus on 

language and cultural education, not more general political knowledge and 

skills. However, there is significant overlap between these fields and great 

value in reviewing their conclusions. After examining these reports, Army 

and Navy experiences in this field will be reviewed to glean the advantages 

and avoid the problems of these programs. This section concludes by 

examining the new DoD directive instituting the joint FAO program and 

gauging its prospects for alleviating some of the problems discussed in the 

previous section. 

The Training and Employment of Area Specialists in the Military 

 Captain Burkett's 1989 master's thesis is based on 483 surveys of 

NPGS graduates representing all three services. The surveys asked officers 

about the preparation they received and the relevance of their NPGS 

education to the jobs they were performing. His thesis made an explicit 

comparison of the three services’ area specialist programs to try to capture 

the best features of each. He emphasized the propriety of conducting 

education and training early in an officer’s career and made a series of 
28

recommendations, many of which address the current situation in the Air 

Force. 

 He suggested an Air Force parallel to the Army’s FAO Proponency 

Office, a recommendation that the Secretary of the Air Force’s Office of 

International Affairs now plans to implement.42 He suggested instantly 

certifying as FAOs those officers who already have the requisite education 

and language skills, no matter their career field or pattern, a recommendation 

echoed by the Foreign Language Skills PAT report discussed below. Other 

suggestions run counter to current plans. Contrary to the PAT report, 

Burkett wanted language training to be administered only to those who were 

going to a job that directly required it. He also suggested separating full 

FAOs from area or country specialists, the distinction being that the latter 

would not have language proficiency but would have an AAD in regional 

studies only. The advantage is that area specialists could form a ready pool 

of officers who could quickly be brought up to full FAO status if needed. 

He saw this as especially useful for pilots so they would not have to spend as 

much time out of the cockpit but would be available for attaché duty later in 

their careers. Finally, Burkett’s thesis stressed the need to make FAO-type 

careers more attractive to bright young officers, and he emphasized jointness 

as the way to achieve solutions to our common problems. 

Functional Management Inspection of the Air Force Foreign Area Studies 

Program 

 

 A 1991 IG report provided an in-depth study of the FASP, the Air 

Force's equivalent of the FAO program, which was instituted in 1969. This 

report recognized the increasing need for area specialists based on global 

conditions and noted that FASP was an inexpensive way to educate these 

specialists. The report is highly critical of the program’s management, 

pointing out that the Air Force did not adequately track or utilize trained 
29

officers after their initial payback tour. In all, the report had six major 

findings and made 44 recommendations; to date, none of the findings have 

been corrected. Included here are some of the recommendations that have 

broader application to the political-military affairs field. 

 The first of these recommendations sought to establish a career path 

that would encourage repeated use of trained officers. Another focused on 

the long-term benefit on developing field grade officers who could serve as 

area specialists and attachés. A criticism of FASP was that it was too 

closely identified with and managed by Air Force Intelligence; the report 

recommended that SAF/IA run the program. The NPGS was seen as 

valuable, but the report stressed the need to also use civilian institutions to 

avoid developing only one perspective among area specialists. Like Burkett, 

the IG suggested including some pilots in FASP to meet the Air Force’s 

needs for rated specialists. The IG report made tracking and oversight 

recommendations for AFPC similar to those presented below. Specifically, 

it recommended establishing a FASP position at AFPC to manage 

assignments and careers, implementing personnel codes to identify and track 

specialists, and further specifying AAD codes to capture more information. 

The bottom line is that “FASP did not meet Air Force requirements for 

Foreign Area Specialists.”43 

Foreign Language Skills Process Action Team 

 This study was chartered by the Commander of Air Education and 

Training Command and the Air Force Chief of Personnel to evaluate the 

current system for developing and using foreign language skills, and to 

recommend improvements. It echoes DoD IG report 1993-INS-10, which 

examined the overall Defense Foreign Language Program. The major 

findings of this report confirmed previously identified concerns, including 

the shortcomings of the existing system in responding to changing 
30

requirements and the need for the assignment system to “recognize and 

value language skills.”44 It also found that “one shot” language training is 

ineffective in learning to communicate with foreign counterparts, and 

learning a language early in an officer’s career is beneficial to long-term 

retention. 

 The Foreign Language Skills Process Action Team report 

recommended revalidating all language designated positions and filling them 

with 16P political-military affairs officers, establishing political-military 

affairs as a career field, creating a language proponency office in SAF/IA, 

and amending the Personnel Data System to capture all language data on all 

officers. One recommendation we disagree with is to make language, not 

regional or political education, the basis for entry into the pol-mil field. 

Such an approach emphasizes language proficiency to the exclusion of 

academic expertise about a given region. While the recommendation to 

work toward a goal of 10 percent of all officers having a limited working 

ability in a foreign language is not likely to be met, this report noted the 

mission-enhancing value of language skills in interacting with foreign 

militaries. Language skills combined with an understanding of regional 

issues can be “influence multipliers by promoting feelings of partnership, 

cooperation, and mutual respect and understanding.”45 These are the same 

arguments for increased reliance on educated and trained pol-mil officers. 

The Army’s FAO Program 

 The Army’s FAO program, the only true area specialist program, 

has been in existence since 1947. What separates it from the other services’ 

programs is the incorporation of graduate education, language study, and incountry field experience into its initial training. Furthermore, as a secondary 

career path, FAO allows an officer to carry an experience identifier 

throughout his or her career rather than only holding the title when 
31

occupying a FAO billet. The career field is highly selective, but the burden 

is on the officer to ensure combat arms credibility. Promotion and service 

school selection are still based on holding appropriate command positions in 

the officer’s primary branch. 

 As a model for the Air Force, the FAO program offers many 

positive and a few negative lessons. Properly managed, the Air Force’s 

equivalent program should be able to avoid the worst of the promotion 

purges suffered by the Army. A pol-mil proponency office must be tasked 

with ensuring that officers meet relevant career markers in their primary 

fields. As the Army learned, pol-mil education and training might have to fit 

in around tours in an officer’s primary field to avoid promotion problems. 

The FAO program also recognizes the value of in-country training to gain an 

understanding of regional perspectives that differ from our own. The 

balance between formal education and practical experience serves both the 

FAOs’ and our country’s interests. While some FAOs believe that the worst 

of the management problems plaguing the career field is over, others do not 

share that positive outlook. These FAOs feel that the Army still has not 

fulfilled its career promises to them, and that senior officers do not have a 

full appreciation of what FAOs do. While most FAOs now recognize the 

need for officers to pay primary allegiance to their combat arms branches, 

career balance is very difficult to manage in practice, and it is still hard to 

compete with line officers for rewards. A separate branch, not just a 

separate secondary career field, might go some way to alleviating these 

sentiments. Finally, the FAO field is not the same as political-military 

affairs. Other Army staff positions that relate to pol-mil affairs are not 

necessarily FAO positions, meaning that the requisite knowledge and skills 

vary considerably. There is no pol-mil career identifier for this type of 

position that is distinguishable from FAOs. 
32

The Navy’s Political-Military Affairs Career Specialty 

 As noted earlier, due to the unique nature of the Navy’s mission and its 

requirement for officers to serve alternating tours at sea, the Navy lags 

behind the other two services in its development of a political-military 

affairs officer program. There is little emphasis on developing regional or 

political-military experts. Education in political science and international 

affairs in general is not valued as highly by the Navy, and only about twenty 

officers a year are allowed to attend the National Security Affairs program at 

the NPGS. Unlike the other services, the Navy does not send officers to 

civilian graduate schools.46 However, the Navy does do a good job of 

tracking and identifying its pol-mil educated officers. It also does a better 

job than the Air Force at requiring justification for positions requiring polmil expertise.47 Like the Army, pol-mil affairs can be a secondary career 

path for naval officers. This can have a beneficial effect on later careers. As 

one Navy officer said, attaining the rank of O-5 and gaining a command 

billet depends on sea performance; what happens beyond that depends on 

shore duty performance.48

 On a positive note, the Navy has recently agreed on the details of a 

Navy FAO program in accordance with the DoD directive discussed 

immediately below. The Navy’s approach envisions a hybrid career that 

blends the ship and shore aspects, much as the current system does for polmil officers.49 While other details of the program are not yet available, it is 

clear that the careers of Navy officers still will be managed by the three 

operational communities—surface, aviation, and subsurface. Operational 

considerations, therefore, will continue to take precedence. As a possible 

model for the Air Force, the Navy’s plan to establish balance enforced by 

alternating tours shows that career credibility considerations need not be 

crippling to the development of political-military affairs officers. 
33

The Department of Defense Directive on Service Foreign Area Officer 

Programs 

 A new Department of Defense policy directs the services to develop 

FAO programs and includes provisions for joint FAOs. This initiative, after 

years in development, recognizes that close interaction with foreign 

governments is needed to further US interests and that this requires officers 

who are educated in the politics, culture, economics, geography, and 

language of foreign countries or who have duty experience abroad. It 

mandates that the services develop programs to train, retain, and promote 

FAOs “commensurate with meeting DoD requirements for qualified officers 

in the program.”50 The existence of this directive itself is a testament to the 

leadership of people such as Admiral Owens and General Viccellio, as well 

as to the dedicated staff work of international affairs offices in all three 

services. It is a great start to resolving some of the problems identified in 

this paper and elsewhere, but it does not go far enough. 

 The main shortcoming of the DoD FAO directive is that it does not 

adequately address other political-military affairs officers. Instead, the 

directive focuses on overseas postings, such as embassy duty and other 

diplomatic posts. It does, of course, consider the need for officers with 

“similar capabilities” to serve on DoD component staffs and “officers who 

possess the experience and skills necessary” to serve on political-military 

staffs, but it does not specify positions or requirements for any of them.51 

The idea that foreign duty experience is a substitute for education instead of 

a supplement to it also is problematic. Finally, implementation, with all the 

thorny issues that entails, is left to the services; no guidance is offered on 

how to put the directive into practice. For these reasons, we feel the 

following recommendations take the necessary steps beyond the DoD 

directive by providing particulars to the Air Force. They also go further by 

including all political-military affairs positions. 
34

Recommendations 

 As the services’ experiences indicate, and the previous reports and 

inspections confirm, there are serious, long-standing flaws in the way the 

military services, and the Air Force in particular, provide political-military 

affairs officers to fill the vital needs that exist. The good news, however, is 

that solutions are not only possible but are eminently feasible, given the will 

to correct these shortcomings. Some of the proposals below have been made 

by other reports, while others are unique to this paper. Implementing the full 

combination of recommendations made here will, in the opinion of the 

authors, best correct the litany of problems detailed above. 

 Referring back to the introduction to this paper, the 

recommendations below are intended to fulfill the following goals: 

1. To provide a pool of qualified, educated, and prepared 

officers to meet the needs of the Air Force for sophisticated 

advice on formulating and implementing complex 

international pol-mil policies. 

2. To better manage the careers of officers engaged in 

political-military affairs. This includes providing paths to 

career development, giving clear expectations about career 

progression, and providing transparency in the assignment 

process. 

3. To better match the right people to the right jobs by 

keeping better track of job requirements and available 

officers. 

Developing a Political-Military Affairs Officer Career Field 

 Many of this report’s findings point to the lack of a specific career 

field—as opposed to a career specialty—capable of providing well-trained 

officers to fill billets requiring expertise in political science, international 
35

relations, or a specific region of the world. The Air Force’s response to the 

DoD initiative mandating that each service create its own FAO program 

makes great strides in addressing this deficiency; however, it will not affect 

many of the non-region-specific assignments at the Pentagon and elsewhere. 

 The FAO program recognizes that the development of expert officers 

capable of shaping and implementing the military dimension of foreign 

policy requires career-long education and training. Such an approach should 

be extended to the system at large so officers expert in political science and 

international relations also are developed and tracked throughout the course 

of their careers. For instance, the Air Force has recently created a 

procurement officer track in recognition of the need for specialists trained in 

the acquisition arena. 

 To implement the idea of extending the FAO approach to the entire 

pol-mil field, it will be necessary to treat political-military affairs as a career 

path rather than a temporary job. This means establishing a career manager 

like the Army’s FAO Proponency Officer. The Air Force will need to think 

of political-military affairs as a viable secondary career path when it comes 

time for promotions and selection boards. It also will be necessary to create 

a new AFSC so both FAOs and other pol-mil officers can be recognized by 

the personnel system. 

Tracking Relevant Qualifications, Officers, and Jobs 

 Creating a career field that will ensure the development of officers 

competent in political-military affairs is a solution that will take some time 

to realize. Improving the tracking of officers who have acquired these skills 

through the course of their careers, however, is a first, immediate step that 

will at least enable the assignment system to better match qualified officers 

with jobs requiring their specific skills. All advanced degrees relevant to 

political-military affairs positions should be tracked along with regional 
36

expertise and language qualifications. Ideally, the implementation of such a 

tracking process would allow assignment officers and commanders to access 

pools of officers with the qualifications to perform specific jobs. The 

computer systems at AFPC are capable of handling this proposed 

improvement; what is lacking are the instructions to make it happen. 

 It will be necessary to muster the political will to evaluate 

thousands of staff jobs at the various headquarters and the Pentagon to 

decide which require pol-mil expertise and which require operational 

experience, then to write job descriptions that match actual requirements. 

Too many jobs are reserved for the wrong reasons. If fighter pilot 

experience actually is required for a foreign military sales position, include it 

in the description. But, if the job really requires education in a regional 

specialty, or language capability, or political expertise, write those 

requirements in as well. Such a reclassification may help to enhance the 

prestige of officers who have made diversions in their careers from a purely 

operational track to acquire the language skills and advanced degrees 

relevant to political-military positions, and will better serve true Air Force 

needs. 

Improvements in the Assignment Process 

 Without implementing the tracking procedures described above, it 

will be difficult for the assignment process to do much better than it is doing 

now. However, more emphasis can be placed on ensuring that politicalmilitary qualifications take precedence over “square-filling” for the 

promotion of officers who may have top-notch operational backgrounds but 

little or no educational preparation for sensitive political-military positions. 

Furthermore, assignment officers need to become better acquainted with the 
37

political-military affairs career field so they can better match people and 

positions instead of treating these jobs as fillable by anyone. 

Better Utilization of Qualified Officers 

 In concert with the other recommendations, once officers have been 

educated, trained, and tracked, the Air Force needs to ensure that these 

valuable resources are effectively and repeatedly used. The Air Force has 

done better than the Navy and almost as well as the Army in ensuring that 

officers follow their specialized education with a payback tour. However, 

the Air Force needs to go beyond the idea of a one-time payback to thinking 

about developing and using the skills of these officers throughout their 

careers. Operational credibility still must be retained, so officers should 

think about returning to the political-military affairs career field every other 

tour. Assignment officers should also look for opportunities for officers to 

do an operational tour in the same region as his or her pol-mil specialization. 

 But whatever their primary career path, officers who have pol-mil 

qualifications should alternate between the policy arena and their specialty, 

allowing the Air Force to take full advantage of the investment it has made 

in them. 

Summary of Recommendations

 Even if it were possible to mandate the immediate implementation 

of all of these proposals, some obstacles to the effective and efficient 

management of political-military affairs officers would remain. Chief 

among these is the service culture bias discussed above. While operational 

considerations will always come first in all three services, more 

consideration must be given to the need for fully qualified political-military 

affairs officers spread throughout the ranks from captain to colonel and 

across the spectrum of primary career fields. Attitudes will have to change, 
38

particularly among senior officers and those who make decisions about 

promotions and other forms of recognition, to realize the full benefit of 

changes to the system. Further, it is necessary to change the habits of 

agencies that employ pol-mil officers to ensure they use the system to obtain 

the most qualified officers available rather than manipulating it to benefit 

favorite sons and daughters. 

 Additionally, some of the recommendations made here will take 

years to reach full effect. While the tracking, assignment, and utilization 

proposals can have an immediate impact, the development of a viable career 

field, the education and training of a new generation of political-military 

affairs officers, and their rise through the ranks to positions of responsibility 

constitute a process that will take years. Along the way, care must be taken 

not to lose sight of the goal. A one-time push from far-sighted leaders is not 

enough to ensure success. Entrenched interests can derail the best 

intentions. Changes made must be institutionalized to minimize that danger. 

 Finally, junior and middle-ranking officers need to be made aware 

of changes to the management of this specialty as it becomes a career field. 

To attract and retain intelligent, motivated officers, the career field needs to 

be actively promoted to potential candidates, and they must believe they 

have a reasonable chance to advance in their military careers. The country’s 

interests depend on attracting such people to this field and assuring them that 

they have a future in political-military affairs. 

Conclusion 

 In terms of numbers alone, political-military affairs is not a very 

significant field. Fewer than a thousand officers out of over 76,000 in the 

Air Force currently hold the relevant AFSCs.52 Yet, the influence of these 
39

officers is great. They are not commanding squadrons or managing 

acquisition programs, but they are shaping and implementing US foreign 

military policy. In the post-Cold War era, that means assisting Central and 

South American militaries as they combat insurgents and drug lords. It 

means helping Bosnia implement its peace plan. It means working with 

Central and East Europeans as they adapt their military structures to 

democratic principles. It means helping our former Soviet enemies become 

global partners. Political-military affairs officers perform all of these tasks 

and also accomplish more mundane day-to-day jobs such as maintaining 

good relationships with militaries and governments around the world and 

developing plans and programs to further US security interests. 

 Because pol-mil officers are used in so many ways, there is no one 

right way to prepare them. However, in today’s Air Force their preparation 

is not well-managed. Instead, we rely on an ad hoc system that combines 

officers from intelligence, instructor duty, and an assortment of interested 

operational career fields to fulfill the needs of our service for politicalmilitary advice and policy implementation. The Air Force, in other words, 

continues to muddle through in this area. It assumes that what worked 

during the Cold War will suffice today. However, there are too many 

differences between the Cold War world and today’s international 

environment. 

 The demands made on our foreign military policy are only likely to 

increase in the next decades. As the sole superpower, US leadership is in 

high demand. As we seek to influence world events, it is essential that we 

develop and maintain close relations with other countries. At the same time, 

our military forces continue to shrink. We do not have the luxury of 

assuming that sufficient numbers of appropriately trained and educated 

experts will be available to fill our needs. Thus, it is imperative that the Air 
40

Force become more efficient at managing this career specialty and the 

relatively small group of officers who staff it. 

 We hope that the recommendations made here will be taken 

seriously by Air Force decision makers. They are directed primarily at the 

Air Staff’s Directorate of Personnel and AFPC, but other elements of the 

central leadership also need to make commitments to change the way we do 

business. The tone which Air Force leaders set can provide the needed 

impetus to reform the service’s approach to the field of political-military 

affairs. 

 We have argued that there are serious deficiencies in the way the 

Air Force matches its need for well-trained and educated political-military 

affairs officers with personnel qualified to perform these roles. As the postCold War era continues, the international environment is likely to be 

unforgiving in the face of further neglect of these problems. We must 

identify and develop officers with specialized training, education, and 

experience in political science, international relations, and specific regions 

of the world without further delay. 
41

SOURCES CONSULTED 

Interviews 

Abenheim, Donald, Associate Professor of Civil-Military Affairs, Naval 

Postgraduate School. 26 July 1996. Stanford University, Stanford, 

California. 

Beran, Lieutenant Colonel Ernest, Air Force Liaison Officer, Naval 

Postgraduate School. 29 July 1996. Naval Postgraduate School. 

Berry, Colonel William, Deputy Head, Department of Political Science, US 

Air Force Academy, CO, March 1997. 

Blythe, Colonel Michael, Canada, Australia and United Kingdom Action 

Officer, International Security Affairs, Office of the Secretary of 

Defense. 3 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Brown, Mitchell, Professional Military Education Coordinator, Naval 

Postgraduate School. 29 July 1996. Naval Postgraduate School. 

Bruneau, Thomas, Professor of National Security Affairs, Naval 

Postgraduate School. 28 July 1996. Naval Postgraduate School. 

Brundage, Lieutenant Colonel William, Action Officer for Peacekeeping, 

Africa, International Security Affairs, Office of the Secretary of 

Defense. 3 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Bunch, Major Lewis A., Plans Officer, National Guard Bureau. (formerly in 

Air Force Strategic Plans.) 6 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Casey, Major John, Rated Career Broadening Assignments Officer. 20 May 

1996, Air Force Personnel Center. 

Constantine, Lieutenant Colonel Maria, Director of Operations, Plans and 

Programs, Defense Language Institute. 30 July 1996. Presidio of 

Monterey, Monterey, California. 

Daley, Lieutenant Colonel David, International Affairs Division, National 

Guard Bureau. 11 June 1996. Washington, DC. 

Daubach, Lieutenant Colonel Carl, Director of International Programs, 

United States Air Force Academy. 27 June 1996. US Air Force 

Academy, Colorado. 

Dziedzic, Colonel Michael, Professor, Institute for National Strategic 

Studies. 7 June 1996. National Defense University. 

Gomez, Lieutenant Colonel Al, Action Officer for Peacekeeping, 

International Security Affairs, Office of the Secretary of Defense. 3 

June 1996. Pentagon. 

Harris, Major Michael, Asian Action Officer, Air Force Plans and Programs. 

 10 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Heitcamp, Stephen, Data Analyst, Force Analysis Branch. 21 May 1996. 

Air Force Personnel Center. 
42

Hill, Lieutenant Colonel Scott, European Division Chief, Air Force 

International Affairs. 10 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Jones, Lieutenant Colonel Gregg, Strategy and Requirements Officer, 

Peacekeeping, Office of the Secretary of Defense. 4 June 1996. 

Pentagon. 

Keagle, Lieutenant Colonel James, Cuba Desk Officer, International 

Security Affairs, Office of the Secretary of Defense. 3 June 1996. 

Pentagon. 

Krutsinger, Major Raymond, Foreign Clearances, Air Force International 

Affairs. 4 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Kuehn, Colonel Robert, Branch Chief, Plans, Air Force International 

Affairs. 4 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Laurance, Edward, Professor of International Relations, Monterey Institute 

of International Studies. 29 July 1996. Monterey, California. 

Lemkin, Captain Bruce, Chief, Strategy and Policy, N51, Chief of Naval 

Operations. 13 June 1996. Washington, DC. 

Lohoski, Commander Edward, Professor, Institute for National Strategic 

Studies. 5 June 1996. National Defense University. 

Lovdahl, Lieutenant Commander Randy, Peacekeeping Action Officer, 

Office of the Secretary of Defense. 3 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Machin, Commander Mark, Curricular Officer, National Security Affairs 

Department, Naval Postgraduate School. 29 July 1996. Naval 

Postgraduate School. 

Marquez, Lieutenant Colonel Hector, Strategic Planner, Plans Branch, Air 

Force International Affairs. 4, 6 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Mayulianos, Lieutenant Colonel Jan, Chief of Special Assignments Division. 

15 August 1996. Air Force Personnel Center. 

McBride, Lieutenant Colonel James, Deputy Division Chief, Air Force Plans 

and Programs. 10 June 1996. Pentagon. 

McCloskey, Lieutenant Commander Michael, International Programs 

Officer, N52, Chief of Naval Operations. 17 June 1996. Telephone 

interview. 

McCollam, Major Pamela, Education Requirements Officer. 20 May 1996, 

Air Force Personnel Center. 

McLane, Colonel Bruce P., NATO Policy Branch Chief, J-5, Joint Staff. 4 

June 1996. Pentagon. 

McPherson, Lieutenant Colonel Sidney, Strategic Planner, Plans Branch, Air 

Force International Affairs. 4 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Nolta, Captain Michael, Joint Intelligence Assignments Officer. 21 May 

1996. Air Force Personnel Center. 

O’Neill, Bard, Professor, National War College. 5 June 1996. National 

Defense University. 
43

Penner, Ambassador Vernon, Special Advisor, Institute for National 

Strategic Studies. 5 June 1996. National Defense University. 

Rokke, Lieutenant General Ervin, President, National Defense University. 7 

June 1996. National Defense University. 

Santo, Captain Esther, Inquiries Branch, Air Force Legislative Liaison. 

(formerly in the European and NATO Branch, International Security 

Affairs, Office of the Secretary of Defense.) 6 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Santoni, Captain Matthew, Instructor of Economics, US Air Force Academy. 

 (formerly in the Force Analysis Branch at AFPC.) 20 August 1996. 

US Air Force Academy, Colorado. 

Shackelford, Lieutenant Colonel Collins, Strategic Planning, Air Force 

Strategic Plans Division. 3 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Shotwell, Lieutenant Colonel Charles, Planner, European Division, J-5, Joint 

Staff. 3 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Smith, Major Kenneth, Joint Assignments Branch Chief. 21 May 1996. Air 

Force Personnel Center. 

Snyder, Jed, Professor, Institute for National Strategic Studies. 5 June 1996. 

 National Defense University. 

Stafford, Roy, Professor, National War College. 5 June 1996. National 

Defense University. 

Stockton, Paul, Associate Professor of Civil-Military Relations, Naval 

Postgraduate School. 29 July 1996. Naval Postgraduate School. 

Stokes, Major Mark, Asian Action Officer, Air Force Plans and Programs. 

10 June 1996. Pentagon. 

Tsypkin, Misha, Academic Associate for Area Studies, Naval Postgraduate 

School. 29 July 1996. Naval Postgraduate School. 

Walker, Lieutenant Colonel Gary, Chief of Army Foreign Area Officer 

Proponency. 30 July 1996. Defense Language Institute, Presidio of 

Monterey, Monterey, California. 

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Beran, Lieutenant Colonel Ernest. “The US Air Force at the Naval 

Postgraduate School.” Unpublished manuscript. January 1996. 

Bruneau, Thomas. “The NSA Department and Civilian Programs: A 

Comparison.” Unpublished manuscript. March 1994. 

Burkett, Captain Randy P. “The Training and Employment of Area 

Specialists in the Air Force.” Master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate 

School. March 1989. 

Compart, Andrew. “Pentagon Reviews Joint Billets.” Air Force Times, 21 

October 1996, 11. 
44

Naval Postgraduate School. “Department of National Security Affairs, 

1996/1997.” Catalog of courses and programs. 1996. 

Naval Postgraduate School. Department of National Security Affairs 

Matrices of Area Studies Programs. Unpublished. January 1995. 

Naval Postgraduate School. “Faculty Handbook.” Unpublished. July 1994. 

Naval Postgraduate School. Naval Postgraduate School Catalog—

Academic Year 1996. 

Ulrich, Major Marybeth. “Democratization and the Post-Communist 

Militaries: US Support for Democratization in the Czech and Russian 

Militaries” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois, 1996. 

US Air Force. Air Force Manual 36-2105, Attachment 5, “Air Attaché and 

International Politico-Military Affairs.” 31 October 1995. 129-131. 

US Air Force. Air Force Personnel Center Analyst Page. “Fill Rates by 

AFSC.” Http://www.afpc.af.mil/analysis. Internet; accessed 15 

October 1996. 

US Air Force. “Foreign Language Skills Process Action Team: Report and 

Recommendations.” Colonel Gunther A. Mueller, Chairman. US Air 

Force Academy, Colorado: 1 December 1995. 

US Air Force. “Functional Management Inspection of the Air Force Foreign 

Area Studies Program.” PN 89-623. Report of the Inspector General. 

3 April 1991. 

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Programs.” Draft DoD Directive. Office of John P. White, Deputy 

Secretary of Defense. 21 June 1996. 
45

ENDNOTES

1

 This paper is based on nearly 50 interviews conducted by the lead author between 

May and July of 1996 at the Air Force Personnel Center (AFPC), various Pentagon 

agencies, the National Defense University, and the Naval Postgraduate School 

(NPGS). Research materials also included AFPC-supplied personnel information, 

reports conducted by DoD and the Air Force, and DoD and Air Force directives and 

manuals. This research was made possible by a grant from the USAF Institute for 

National Security Studies. The conclusions reached are those of the authors, and do 

not reflect the official policy or position of the US Air Force, the Department of 

Defense, or US government. 

2

 US Air Force, “Functional Management Inspection of the Air Force Foreign Area 

Studies Program,” PN 89-623, Report of the Inspector General, 3 April 1991, p. 2. 3

 US Air Force, Foreign Language Skills Process Action Team: Report and 

Recommendations (Colorado Springs: US Air Force Academy, 1 December 1995), 

p. 3. 

4 Ibid, p. 34. 5

 N31 is for strategic planners; N52 is for regional affairs. Both fall under the 

Director of Political-Military Affairs on the Navy Staff. 

6

 US Air Force, “Fill Rates by AFSC,” Air Force Personnel Center Analyst Page, 

http://www.afpc.af.mil/analysis, 15 October 1996. 7

 There are other officers performing related staff jobs who hold an AFSC other than 

16P. However, there is no way to count or track them. 8

 US Air Force, “Air Attaché and International Politico-Military Affairs,” Air Force 

Manual 36-2105, Attachment 5, 31 October 1995, p. 129-131. 9

 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Marybeth Ulrich, Democratization and the Post-Communist Militaries: US 

Support for Democratization in the Czech and Russian Militaries, Ph.D. Dissertation, 

University of Illinois, 1996. 

12 Interview with former Air Attache to Southeast Asia, March 1997. 13 US Air Force, Foreign Language Skills Process Action Team, p. 4. 14 Randy P. Burkett, Major, The Training and Employment of Area Specialists in the 

Military, Master’s Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 1989; US Air Force, Foreign 

Language Skills Process Action Team; US Air Force, “Functional Management 

Inspection of the Air Force Foreign Area Studies Program,” US Department of 

Defense, “The Defense Foreign Language Program,” DoD IG Report 1993-INS-10, 

1993; and Government Accounting Office, “DoD Training of Linguists,” 

GAO/NSLAD-94-191, 1994. 15 US Air Force, “Functional Management Inspection of the Air Force Foreign Area 

Studies Program,” p. 3. 

16 Pentagon interview. 

17 US Air Force, “Functional Management Inspection of the Air Force Foreign Area 

Studies Program,” p. 14. 
46

18 US Air Force, Foreign Language Skills Process Action Team, p. 63. 19 Ibid., p. 64. 20 Burkett, p. 74. 

21 US Air Force, Foreign Language Skills Process Action Team, p. 34. 22 Ibid., p. 6. 23 AFPC interview. 

24 This is not to deny the existence of an Air Force Manual (AFM 36-2105) which 

outlines the International Politico-Military Affairs career field, to include duties and 

responsibilities and specialty qualifications. 

25 AFPC interview. 26 Ibid.

27 Pentagon and Defense Language Institute (DLI) interviews. 28 DLI interview. 

29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Pentagon interview. 

32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 The Air Force conducted a survey of self-reported language skills in the fall of 

1996, at least partly due to Foreign Language PAT’s recommendations. This data 

will be included in the PDS in the future. 

37 AFPC interview. 

38 Ibid. 39 Pentagon interview. 

40 AFPC interview. 

41 Ibid. 42 Randy P. Burkett, “The Training and Employment of Area Specialists in 

the Air Force,” Master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, March 1989, 

and Pentagon interview. 

43 US Air Force, “Functional Management Inspection of the Air Force Foreign Area 

Studies Program,” p. 3. 

44 US Air Force, Foreign Language Skills Process Action Team, p. 1. 45 Ibid., p. 5. 46 Pentagon interview. 

47 National Defense University interview. 

48 Pentagon interview. 

49 Naval Postgraduate School interview. 

50 US Department of Defense, “Service Foreign Area Officer Programs,” Draft DoD 

Directive, Office of John P. White, Deputy Secretary of Defense, 21 Jun 96, p. 2. 51 Ibid. 
47

52 Of course, many others have held pol-mil AFSCs previously; since this is not a 

career field, however, the designation only obtains when the pol-mil position is 

actually held.