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i 

45–596 2010

[H.A.S.C. No. 110–171] 

TRANSFORMING THE U.S. MILITARY’S 

FOREIGN LANGUAGE, CULTURAL 

AWARENESS, AND REGIONAL EXPERTISE 

CAPABILITIES 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008 
(II) 

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman 

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania 

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri 

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

JEFF MILLER, Florida 

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky 

SUZANNE MCKENNA, Professional Staff Member 

THOMAS HAWLEY, Professional Staff Member 

SASHA ROGERS, Research Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2008 

Page 

HEARING: 

Wednesday, September 10, 2008, Transforming the U.S. Military’s Foreign 

Language, Cultural Awareness, and Regional Expertise Capabilities ............ 1 

APPENDIX: 

Wednesday, September 10, 2008 ............................................................................ 31 

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2008 

TRANSFORMING THE U.S. MILITARY’S FOREIGN LANGUAGE, 

CULTURAL AWARENESS, AND REGIONAL EXPERTISE CAPABILITIES 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Akin, Hon. W. Todd, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ............................................................. 3 

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

and Investigations Subcommittee ....................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

Longo, Brig. Gen. Richard C., USA, Director of Training, Office of the Deputy 

Chief of Staff, G–3/5/7, U.S. Army; Joseph M. McDade, Jr., Director of 

Force Development, Deputy Chief of Staff for Manpower and Personnel, 

U.S. Air Force; Rear Adm. Daniel P. Holloway, USN, Director, Military 

Personnel Plans and Policy Division (OPNAV N13), U.S. Navy; Brig. Gen. 

Richard M. Lake, USMC, Director of Intelligence, U.S. Marine Corps; Brig. 

Gen. Gary S. Patton, USA, Senior Language Authority, Office of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff/J–1; Gail H. McGinn, Deputy Under Secretary 

of Defense for Plans, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel 

and Readiness, beginning on page ...................................................................... 4 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Akin, Hon. W. Todd .......................................................................................... 38 

Holloway, Rear Adm. Daniel P. ....................................................................... 63 

Lake, Brig. Gen. Richard M. ............................................................................ 75 

Longo, Brig. Gen. Richard C. ........................................................................... 40 

McDade, Joseph M., Jr. .................................................................................... 51 

McGinn, Gail H. ................................................................................................ 99 

Patton, Brig. Gen. Gary S. ............................................................................... 93 

Snyder, Hon. Vic ............................................................................................... 35 
Page

IV 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Dr. Snyder ......................................................................................................... 127 
(1) 

TRANSFORMING THE U.S. MILITARY’S FOREIGN LANGUAGE, CULTURAL AWARENESS, AND REGIONAL EXPERTISE CAPABILITIES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, DC, Wednesday, September 10, 2008. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:30 p.m., in room 

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

of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

Dr. SNYDER. Good afternoon. And welcome to the Subcommittee 

on Oversight and Investigations hearing on ‘‘Transforming the 

United States Military’s Foreign Language Skills and Cultural 

Awareness.’’ And we are also throwing in the phrase ‘‘Regional Expertise Capabilities,’’ although our initial interest in this was language skills and cultural awareness. 

To address today’s strategic and operational environments, the 

Department is training and equipping our military force not only 

in conventional combat skills but also in the skills needed to conduct missions across the full spectrum of operations. Those missions include fighting terror, conducting counterinsurgency, building partnership capacity in foreign countries, carrying out stability 

operations and humanitarian relief, and building coalitions. All 

these missions highlight the need for greater foreign language proficiency, cultural awareness and regional expertise. 

A year ago, Deputy Secretary England identified strengthening 

cultural awareness and language skills as one of the Department’s 

top 25 transformation priorities to be completed or substantially 

advanced before the end of the current administration. The Department reports that it has made significant improvements and has 

completed a substantial portion of the Defense Language Transformation Roadmap, but there is still more to do. 

The subcommittee met in a private session with Dr. David Chu, 

the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, earlier this summer to discuss the progress that has been made and 

the challenges that remain, and he was very helpful. Dr. Chu articulated the Department’s goal is developing a culturally sensitive 

force that can communicate worldwide at the strategic and tactical 

levels. He said, in his view, the Department also needed to create 

a system that produces senior officers who can communicate U.S. 

policies and aims to non-English-speaking populations in their own 
2 

language and that those senior officers should be able to directly 

communicate with the local media and interact with their foreign 

policy establishment. 

Among the challenges that remain, Dr. Chu said that more work 

needs to be done to better identify what are our specific language, 

culture and regional expertise requirements. We can all agree that 

some level of foreign language skills, cultural awareness and regional expertise is important for today’s military, but figuring out 

the optimal levels of proficiency and how we distribute those capabilities throughout the force is challenging. 

I hope our witnesses today will help us address: one, what our 

overarching vision and goals are, particularly with respect to the 

general purpose forces; and two, how we can take that abstract vision and translate it into operational requirements expressed in 

terms of proficiency levels and the right mixture of foreign language and cultural and regional capabilities for individual personnel and units depending on their mission and echelon; three, 

what we risk giving up in terms of other readiness training in 

order to attain those capabilities; and four, conversely, what we 

risk if we don’t develop these capabilities. 

We have witnesses from each of the services whose job it is to 

organize, train and equip this transformed force. They are joined 

by witnesses from the Joint Staff and from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, who also have a central role in these efforts. Our 

witnesses serve as the Senior Language Authorities in their organizations and are charged with overseeing the implementation of the 

Defense Language Transformation Roadmap and understanding 

the totality of the language needs of their organizations. The perhaps surprising complexity of this issue is reflected in the differences among the services in whom they have appointed as their 

senior language authority. 

Now, we are joined today by Mrs. Gail McGinn, Deputy Under 

Secretary of Defense in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense of Personnel and Readiness; Brigadier General Gary Patton, 

the senior language authority for the Office of the Chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff/J–1; Brigadier General Richard Longo, Office 

of the Deputy Chief of Staff; Mr. Joseph McDade, Jr., Director of 

Force Development, Deputy Chief of Staff for Manpower and Personnel, U.S. Air Force; Rear Admiral Daniel Holloway, Director of 

Military Personnel Plans and Policy Division, U.S. Navy; Brigadier 

General Dick Lake, Director of Intelligence, U.S. Marine Corps. 

We appreciate you all being here. 

I am curious, do you all sit down like this on a regular basis, 

without cameras and microphones? Do you all meet together? 

General LAKE. Yes, sir. 

Dr. SNYDER. Good. 

We are going to ask—oh, the four service members, you were 

going to do opening statements, and then the other two will be 

available for questions. 

We have been joined by Mr. Akin, ranking member, for any comments he would like to make. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the Appendix on page 35.] 
3 

STATEMENT OF HON. W. TODD AKIN, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Dr. Snyder. 

Thank you all for joining us here today. Obviously an interesting 

topic and one of a series of hearings on the whole subject of language and cultural awareness. 

As we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan today, 

the skills such as language and cultural awareness are key in reducing violence and establishing the rule of law. For example, the 

troop surge in Iraq would not have been successful without our 

troops’ effectiveness in implementing counterinsurgency tactics 

which, at their heart, require the force to understand and respond 

to the local populace’s concerns. As any Member of Congress 

knows, an understanding of local issues, a certain level of cultural 

awareness, is absolutely necessary to winning the support of the 

populace. 

I think as we have talked about in some previous hearings, one 

of the big questions that we run into is, in a perfect world, we can 

think of all kinds of things we would like to have people crosstrained in so there are experts in everything. Obviously some kind 

of balance in language skills are not something that you can take 

a pill to do. If you had, I would have bought some of those pills. 

It doesn’t come easily to me. But that is the question, balancing 

your priorities in so many different ways. 

And also I would say that, at least personally, as I think of language skills, it is more than just language really, it is a whole cultural awareness. I had a friend that was a Green Beret trained up 

at Fort Devens years and years ago, and he talked about how they 

were trained. And, you know, when you are in Czechoslovakia, you 

don’t count ‘‘one, two, three.’’ If you do that, they immediately 

know you are a foreigner. They start with their thumb, I think, or 

maybe their little finger or something. But you have to know those 

little nuances of culture, so that is an important thing. 

So I would be interested in your understanding of the balance, 

how do you do all the other warfighting requirements and still 

build some capabilities, particularly with the rotations and all that 

we have to deal with. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I appreciate your pulling the 

hearing together. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Akin can be found in the Appendix on page 38.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Akin. 

We will begin with General Longo. We have that very attractive 

clock there sitting in front of you. The green light will come on 

here. And when the red light comes on, that means five minutes 

has gone by. If you need to go longer than that, go ahead and do 

that if you need to, but we will try to stay as close as we can. 

So we begin with you, General Longo. 
4 

STATEMENTS OF BRIG. GEN. RICHARD C. LONGO, USA, DIRECTOR OF TRAINING, OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY CHIEF OF 

STAFF, G–3/5/7, U.S. ARMY; JOSEPH M. MCDADE, JR., DIRECTOR OF FORCE DEVELOPMENT, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF 

FOR MANPOWER AND PERSONNEL, U.S. AIR FORCE; REAR 

ADM. DANIEL P. HOLLOWAY, USN, DIRECTOR, MILITARY 

PERSONNEL PLANS AND POLICY DIVISION (OPNAV N13), U.S. 

NAVY; BRIG. GEN. RICHARD M. LAKE, USMC, DIRECTOR OF 

INTELLIGENCE, U.S. MARINE CORPS; BRIG. GEN. GARY S. 

PATTON, USA, SENIOR LANGUAGE AUTHORITY, OFFICE OF 

THE CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF/J–1; GAIL H. 

MCGINN, DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR 

PLANS, OFFICE OF THE UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE 

FOR PERSONNEL AND READINESS 

STATEMENT OF BRIG. GEN. RICHARD C. LONGO 

General LONGO. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Akin and other 

distinguished members of the committee, I appreciate this opportunity to speak on this important subject. 

I am the Army’s senior language authority, though I am not a 

linguist. But I am committed to the importance of cultural awareness and language training in the Army. 

During my 15 months in Iraq, I participated in monthly council 

meetings with local sheiks, governors and imams, as well as toonumerous-to-count one-on-one engagements with Iraqi civil and 

military leaders. These experiences gave me a firsthand impression 

of how important it is to be good at cultural and language training. 

In today’s environment, along with the need for expert capability, 

there is a need for foreign language and cultural awareness capability across the force. Our soldiers must conduct operations in 

multinational coalitions, as well as amongst the people in cultures 

that are quite different than our own. 

A problem that we face in the area of foreign languages is that 

the languages required are the most difficult to learn right now: 

Arabic, Pashto, Dari, Urdu, or the African languages of Yoruba and 

Hausa. Not only are they not generally taught in our high schools 

and in our universities, but textbooks aren’t generally available in 

these languages. 

However, the Army has made significant progress over the last 

three years transforming our force, and I would like to highlight 

a couple of those. 

The heritage speaker program recruits native speakers of critical 

foreign languages into our Army. And since this program began, we 

have mobilized more than 600 native speakers, and they serve as 

interpreters in uniform. We are currently exploring expanding this 

capability beyond the Central Command area of responsibility and 

into the Pacific Command and the Africa Command. 

Human Terrain Teams, comprised of civilian anthropologists and 

soldiers, are currently deployed in support of brigade combat teams 

in Afghanistan and Iraq. These teams advise commanders and soldiers on key cultural aspects related to tribal structures, economic 

development opportunities, and formal and informal political structures, providing on-the-ground expert input. 
5 

In August, the Army implemented a program that awards incentive pay to Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) cadets should 

they choose to take and study one of our critical foreign languages. 

Additionally, we have expanded educational opportunities by investing in commercial, off-the-shelf software, such as Rosetta 

Stone. And we have distributed more than 1 million products to the 

field, such as language survival kits, familiarization CDs, and 

head-start programs. 

We are also institutionalizing education for our soldiers and leaders in the Army. For the officer corps, it starts precommissioning, 

at the United States Military Academy and at the ROTC colleges 

and universities, but continues through their Senior Service College. For the enlisted force, it is similar. It starts at initial entry 

training and continues throughout their professional military education. 

Even with these successes though, I recognize that there is a lot 

of work to be done. This important business, creating a strategy 

that combines cultural and language expertise in a limited part of 

our force with a more general awareness and capability throughout 

the remainder of the force, that is our end-state. The Army takes 

the challenge of improving this very seriously. These capabilities 

are required to be effective in the operational environment, the 

world as we know it now, and the world as we project it to be in 

the future. 

We have more work to do, and I realize our ambitious end-state, 

but we are confident we are on the right path. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today, and, frankly, I look forward to 

your questions. Thank you. 

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

Appendix on page 40.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, General. 

Mr. McDade. 

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH M. MCDADE, JR. 

Mr. MCDADE. Well, Chairman Snyder, Congressman Akin and 

distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Air Force culture and language program. 

As you know, the United States Air Force has been at war for 

17 continuous years. And during those 17 years, we have learned 

that language and culture is a force multiplier and must be a priority for our Air Force. Our culture, region and language program 

is therefore tailored to meet unique Air Force mission needs, along 

with producing airmen with key joint warfighting capabilities. By 

that I mean airmen who are capable of influencing the outcomes 

of U.S., allied and coalition operations and maximizing the outcomes by building partnership capacity. As you know, these specific 

capabilities are currently highlighted in the 2008 National Defense 

Strategy. 

Now, having described the effect we seek to achieve, the next obvious questions are how much and what type of culture and language development is needed. In order to answer these questions, 

we commissioned a RAND study that surveyed over 6,000 airmen 

returning from deployments. The point of the study was to pull together the ground truth regarding airmen’s assessment of what 
6 

they needed downrange. The conclusions are clear: The majority indicated the cross-cultural competencies and more training in that 

area would have been more beneficial. A minority indicated that 

additional language skills training would have been beneficial. We 

gave this study great weight and believe it is the largest of its type 

yet undertaken in the Department of Defense. 

Now, based on the data we collected and the RAND study, as 

well as scholarly studies by our Air Force culture and language 

program down at Air University, we determined that cross-cultural 

competency, or what we call 3C, was a capability that all airmen 

in the United States Air Force needed to possess. We also determined that we needed to redouble our efforts to provide language 

and regional skills to some airmen based on their specific jobs. 

Our rationale is this: 3C will prepare airmen to better understand and influence operations, activities or actors, to include joint, 

interagency, allied, coalition, noncombatant, and adversarial alike. 

Equally important, Secretary Donnelly recently issued a policy directive that hardwired cross-cultural competencies into our leadership development programs. 

Our long-term goal is nothing less than a transformation of the 

way airmen think about their mission. This involves changing the 

way airmen think. This is why our primary effort will focus on professional military education. Our rationale: We will be educating 

all airmen on how to think about these subjects with increasing 

levels of sophistication during their careers. 

Language capability is a key component of our 3C strategy and 

embedded in the Air Force program, which is designed to build 

both language professionals and language-enabled airmen. As for 

the language professionals, the Air Force has 3,000 cryptolinguists 

supporting global missions. Additionally, we provide targeted language training in support of 237 regional affairs specialists. And 

we are tripling the number of military members participating in 

military exchange programs in non-English-speaking countries. 

Finally, if we are going to build partnership capacity, we must 

also invite international partners to the United States to train with 

us. In that capacity, we believe the Defense Language Institute 

English Learning Center is a premier capability for helping the 

United States build partnership capacity. 

In fact, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Akin and members of this 

committee, I think you will agree with me after you have a chance 

to come visit this school, and so here today I would like to make 

this invitation to you. Please join me, or have your staffs join me, 

in making a visit to this institution to visit its students and its faculties, and draw your own conclusions about whether or not you 

agree with my statement that this is an absolute gem in the Department of Defense for building partnership capacity. 

So, in closing, the Air Force viewpoint is that culture and language is and remains a priority to ensure we provide COCOM and 

joint force commanders with the culturally skilled, language-capable airmen they need to accomplish their missions. We appreciate 

your unfailing support to the men and women of our Air Force, and 

I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. McDade can be found in the Appendix on page 51.] 
7 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. McDade, I don’t know where the DLI English 

Language Center is. Is that in Texas? 

Mr. MCDADE. Yes, it is. Lackland Air Force Base. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. 

Admiral Holloway. 

STATEMENT OF REAR ADM. DANIEL P. HOLLOWAY 

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Chairman Snyder, Congressman Akin and 

distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to present an overview of the Navy’s language, regional 

expertise and culture transformation and for your interest and support in these vital programs. 

Navy leadership used language, regional expertise and culture, 

or LREC, as a force multiplier in the international maritime environment of the 21st century. Catalyzed by the attack on USS Cole 

in October 2000, the Navy has made a concerted effort to enhance 

LREC capacity across the total force. We have taken stock of our 

capabilities and compared them to the known and projected requirements of the force, especially general purpose forces, and invested prudently in identified gaps. 

Moreover, to guide the transformation, we have implemented a 

strategy that allows us to shape and employ LREC attributes sensibly, intelligently and with optimum effect. This is an enormous 

challenge given our 24/7 global presence mission in the world, comprised of over 6,000 distinct languages. It is compounded by the 

balance we must strike between sustaining enduring technologycentric missions and emerging roles necessitating self-discipline, 

such as language and culture familiarity. 

Our maritime strategy states that trust and cooperation cannot 

be surged, and it directs us to develop sufficient cultural, historical 

and linguistic expertise among our sailors to nurture effective 

interactions with diverse international partners. 

To that end, we have set a course that requires a total force that 

appreciates and respects cultural differences and recognizes the 

risks of inappropriate behavior in foreign interactions, even if unintended; a cadre of career language professionals whose primary 

functions demand expert-level skills and knowledge; also, other 

language-enabled sailors and civilians with sufficient proficiency to 

interact at the working level as well; a reserve capacity of organic 

foreign language skill and cultural understanding that can be 

called upon for contingencies. 

To meet these requirements, our strategy, which is closely 

aligned to the Defense Language Transformation Roadmap, defines 

our priorities, the objectives and specific tasks. It concentrates program management, screens all sailors for a language skill, and it 

tracks their location. It generously incentivizes language proficiency as well, and facilities training for both the expert and the 

beginner. It reconstitutes our foreign area officer corps, establishes 

a center for LREC in the Navy, and delivers free mid-deployment 

training for the force, especially the general purpose force. 

The tradeoffs are not insignificant, however, but manageable 

with planning. Sustaining and enhancing the skills of our career 

linguists and regional expertise requirements, resources and time 

dedicated for this training. In the case of cultural awareness in-
8 

struction for the general purpose forces (GPF), finding the time, 

even a few hours, on an already overburdened training cycle is 

challenging given the range of qualifications required for our fleet 

operations today, but we have taken a deep look. When a heritage 

sailor is augmented from his or her normal duties or contingency, 

a gap is created, and we have responded. 

Our maritime strategy places great emphasis on developing cooperative relationships before the crisis occurs, building foreign partnerships, and fostering trust—all preventives to conflict. Considering the ability of LREC to facilitate and, in some cases, enable 

foreign access, any risks assumed with this tradeoff is a 

diminishability to execute regional engagement in the future. 

Finding the right plan of capability and capacity relative to global demand is essential. We still have work to do. We understand 

the problem. But we are confident our approach is right for our 

Navy operation. 

On behalf of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Chief of 

Naval Personnel, thank you for your interest and support in the 

Navy’s LREC program. And I would be pleased to respond to your 

questions, as well. Thank you, sir. 

[The prepared statement of Admiral Holloway can be found in 

the Appendix on page 63.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. 

General Lake. 

STATEMENT OF BRIG. GEN. RICHARD M. LAKE 

General LAKE. Chairman Snyder, Congressman Akin, distinguished members of the subcommittee, thanks for inviting the Marine Corps to come here today and share with you how your Marines are transforming language and cultural issues within the Marine Corps. 

As a foreign area officer myself, as someone who was an undergraduate major in modern languages, and as the Marine Corps’s 

senior language authority, I have a deep, both professional and personal interest in this subject. 

In part due to our heritage and our expeditionary nature, the 

Marine Corps has always been very interested in languages and 

cultural competence so that we can operate in every time and 

place. But our experience since 9/11, as well as our assessments of 

the future operational environments we are likely to be employed 

in in the future, has only sharpened that interest and made us recognize that we need to do more, because we need to have Marines 

that are capable of navigating the human and cultural terrain just 

as well as they are able to navigate the physical terrain on the battlefield. 

In order to accomplish this, starting in 2003 the Marine Corps 

instituted a plan for implementing operational cultural and language skills for every Marine. As you requested, Mr. Chairman, I 

am going to focus today on the general purpose forces and not our 

career linguists, although we have made some very significant improvements for our career linguists as well. 

When the Defense Language Transformation Roadmap was 

issued in 2005, it provided additional guidance and, as we would 

say, reinforcing fires to some of the efforts that we had already on-
9 

going. And based on lessons learned from ongoing combat operations around the world, we continually try to fine-tune and improve our plan. 

Basically I would break our overall plan down into five basic 

parts. 

The first part I would call entry-level operational cultural awareness training and language assessment. Every man or woman coming into the Marine Corps, when they stand on the yellow footprints at San Diego, Parris Island or at Quantico, shortly thereafter they will receive formal classroom instruction on operational 

cultural awareness. We will also assess them for any language 

skills they bring with them, so we have an idea of what our capabilities are. 

Now, the second area I would focus on is our predeployment cultural awareness and language training. This is generally specifically tailored to each unit, each mission, each area to which they 

are going. We focus on this. The initial phases of the training occur 

at their home station, but the final phase of the training, the final 

predeployment exercise is at another location, oftentimes 29 Palms, 

California. But that is where they have a full-scale, live force on 

force to include native-speaking role-players, in which they are 

evaluated on their ability to carry out their mission profiles, which 

also requires them to use language skills and appropriate cultural 

awareness and sensitivities. 

The third area we have is our Career Marine Regional Studies 

Program. And for our career force, which we define as all Marines 

who are past their first enlistment and all officers, even on their 

first tour, are assigned a geographic region and have an expectation to complete a variety of cultural, regional and language 

courses in that area as they progress through their career. 

Now, the fourth area I would call our operational cultural and 

language enablers. And that includes, for example, in 2005 we 

stood up our Center for Advanced Operational and Cultural Learning at Quantico, and they are the ones who do most of this training 

for the Marine Corps. We have established additional language resource centers, language labs, at eight major Marine Corps bases 

in addition to the six other language labs we already had out there 

for our career linguists. 

We have purchased computer culture and language simulation 

programs, a video game if you will, where you have to use language 

and culture. We have these in Iraqi, Dari, Pashto and sub-Saharan 

African, French, and they are developing more. Next year we are 

going to be taking delivery of a modified version of Rosetta Stone, 

the popular commercial language software that has been modified 

for military terms and military missions. The Marine Corps intel 

activity remains one of the leaders within DOD and the intel community on developing cultural intelligence products. 

The last area I would mention is our incentives to support this. 

We have increased, thanks to the support of Congress and others, 

access to Marines who speak foreign languages, whether they learn 

it on their own, they have it as a heritage skill or they have been 

trained in it. And we particularly do that for Marines who speak 

languages of interest in the global war on terrorism. We pay re-enlistment bonuses to Marines with certain language skill sets. And 
10 

we offer the ability for Marines of any specialty to study global war 

on terrorism-related languages as a re-enlistment incentive, in addition to any others. 

In conclusion, over the past five years, we have made a lot of 

progress in the area of cultural awareness and language skills, but 

we are going to continue to make progress on it. And with the support of Congress, I think we will be even better five years from now 

than we are today. 

Thank you, sir. I welcome your questions. 

[The prepared statement of General Lake can be found in the Appendix on page 75.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, General Lake. I think, when you met 

with the staff some time weeks ago or days ago, you brought a couple of those smart cards, I don’t know if the members have seen 

those, that we will run down here and back the other way. 

I want you to know, General Patton and Mrs. McGinn, you are 

not off the hook. In fact, my first questions are going to be directed 

to you two. 

But we are going to begin our questioning with Ms. Sanchez, who 

has probably got more language skills than most Members of Congress. Then we will go to Mr. Akin and then back to me. So, Ms. 

Sanchez for five minutes. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you giving 

your time to me. 

And thank you all for being before us. Obviously, I think this is 

one of the most critical things that we need to get done correctly 

in the military. 

Now, I will just say that I was recently at 29 Palms with Federal 

Judge Dave Carter, and we actually went in to swear in some new 

American citizens, Marines and Navy, who were there, because 

they were leaving to Iraq in the next few days and we wanted to 

get them sworn in. And I was really amazed, of the 28 that we 

swore in, there was a guy from Kazakhstan and somebody from 

Ukraine and several people from South America and some Indonesians. So I do think that we see more and more reflection of the 

fact that we need to get native speakers in if we are going to do 

the military role, so I applaud you on there. 

And I guess my first question goes to the whole issue of myself 

having been brought up in a bilingual home and having had the 

chance, actually, to live in many places around the world and learn 

the language as a native—among those languages, Spanish, Arabic 

and some others. There is a big difference between knowing the 

culture and knowing the language and being very adept at it and 

catching the very subtle things that are going on, versus something 

that I see happen often when people try to learn a language later 

in their years and maybe their first one and then maybe they are 

using Rosetta Stone or something of the sort and it doesn’t quite 

just click well. 

So my question is, what is the process that we are using with 

respect to just getting enough information to—enough knowledge to 

our troops to do stops and goes, et cetera, these little cards, but 

what are we really doing to get some real native type of speakers 

if they don’t happen to be native? Because we have the other problem that maybe we don’t have enough native speakers that are 
11 

going to be joining the military. What is it that we are doing in the 

long term to get some real culturation of that grouping? 

Because the nuances are really fine. I remember when I worked 

for Booz Allen and I was in the Mexico City office and there were 

all these guys from the Mexican Federal Government who had been 

trained at Harvard, et cetera, et cetera, and we were all speaking 

in English, and we were making a presentation. And it dawned on 

me that the people from America, the Booz Allen people, were saying something and everybody was nodding their head thinking they 

were following along the discussion, but they were completely missing the point. And it wasn’t until I came back in Spanish and explained to them what was really going on that they realized they 

had been completely wrong about what we were trying to tell them. 

So how are we finding those types of people, the people that really understand the culture? 

General LONGO. Well, if I could take that on just to start, and 

then I would defer to anyone else. 

There is a couple tacks. What you are saying is exactly right. 

And I have been in environments where a subtle misunderstanding 

or subtle missing of a nuance could have catastrophic effects. So I 

am with you. And we kind of attack this in three different ways 

with our expert part of the force, with our foreign area officers, 

with our civil affairs officers, with our psychological operations 

(PSYOPs) guys, with some of the military intelligence specialties 

where we focus their training, that is their career field. 

And then the second thing is, as you alluded to with the Marines 

and as we have with our heritage speaker program, you know, 

going out into the United States and finding this talent and bringing them into the military. And we have robust enlistment recruiting bonuses to encourage them to do so. Often it is a very good deal 

for them. We started just 3 years ago, I think, with 25, and we are 

now up to 600. So I don’t even think we have begun to tap into 

this American resource that we can use to get after this. 

And then, third, when required, you know, we may have to just 

contract that capability. And that is not the best solution. The best 

solution is to have a soldier, airmen, sailor or Marine standing next 

to you, but sometimes that is the best we can do. 

And I defer to my colleagues. 

General LAKE. One other point, and I think you made that, 

ma’am, as did General Longo, but my take on the census data in 

the United States for at least the past two censuses, censi—I am 

not sure what is appropriate—but we have an increasing amount 

of Americans or legal residents in this country who speak a language other than English at home. And the good news is there is 

generally a fair correlation with those percentages in the American 

population and those percentages represented in the military. 

So we are trying to recruit soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines 

to come into the Armed Forces. But also, once they have made that 

decision, we are also trying to incentivize and recognize and encourage them. And I know one of my standard things whenever I 

travel about, I am always identifying folks that speak a language 

and saying, ‘‘Hey, do you know we can give you some money if you 

get tested?’’ And most people are very grateful when they are told 

they can earn some money. 
12 

Mrs. MCGINN. Can I add one thing or, actually, two things? 

We are doing more and more immersion studies now, sending our 

students from the Defense Language Institute and the military 

academies overseas to live with the population for a while. 

I met some cadets from the United States Military Academy. One 

of them went over at a level zero language proficiency to Russia 

and she came back at a level two, which is really quite a huge 

jump. And she lived with a Russian family. So we are doing those 

kinds of things more and more. 

The other thing that we have been doing in DOD is really trying 

to prompt the United States as a whole in its educational system 

to start teaching languages at young ages, because that is when 

you really develop the facility, I think, for learning the language. 

And if the U.S., as a populace, as a whole, is teaching these languages, then when we recruit people and we need to get them new 

languages or to higher proficiency, we have a better shot at doing 

that. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. I would agree with that. In fact, I have a general 

bill for kindergarten through 12. That is a whole global language 

bill that I think we dropped or about to drop. So I am very interested in that whole issue. 

Mr. Chairman, I know there are others, but I have some other 

questions, and I am sure if we do a second round I would be interested in that. 

Dr. SNYDER. Sure. We will. 

Mr. Akin for five minutes. 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I guess one of the things particularly is—you all look like young 

men to me at this point, but as you are working up to becoming 

a general and all, there are a bunch of different steps, career-wise, 

that are traditional that you take. And to the degree that that career path includes some type of language background or awareness 

of it is going to determine, kind of, where we are. 

Has there been any discussion as to how to build that into the 

equation, in terms of the career path? Because, in a way, that is 

the incentive to have some involvement that way. 

Or, at least, I know from my son’s being in the Marine Corps, 

they have all kinds of different parameters for a given unit. In 

other words, my son had to take the advanced lifesaving because 

they didn’t have anybody else and he was some poor sucker that 

they stuck in this school, which was very hard. But they have all 

these different requirements in a unit, that we need to have somebody that can do this, somebody that can do that. 

Is that being built into any of our parameters at this time, either 

Army or Marines or Air Force or whoever? 

General LAKE. Well, sir, that is where we are trying to go with 

our Career Marine Regional Studies Program. What we are doing 

in the shorter term is in the predeployment training. And, as I 

said, we try to have a broad menu that people can choose from, the 

commander can choose from, based upon their mission and what 

have you. But one of the consistent things that I hear back from 

commanders is, with everything else they have on their plate, they 

still would like to try to squeeze in more language training. 
13 

And so, in many units, some units, what they will do is they will 

take a designated level of personnel. Surprisingly, many Marine 

units will take their squad leaders or perhaps their fire team leader, the key small unit leaders, and say we have—and if they have 

30 days, we will set up a course for them for 30 days. If they have 

22.5 days, we will give them 22.5. But we are trying to tailor it so 

that they get as much predeployment language training as they 

can fit into the schedule, sir. 

Admiral HOLLOWAY. If I could, sir, on the officer side, as an example for the Navy, we have integrated our regional content and 

cultural awareness into our Navy Professional Military Education 

(PME) at the apprentice, journeyman, and master levels. 

Also, as an example, in our session program, sort of taking this 

from the street to the fleet, as we look at Chinese and Arabic majors now online at the Naval Academy, an expanded study abroad 

with full semester exchanges, which gets back to your comments, 

ma’am, about immersion programs. 

Also, up to 25 ROTC scholarships reserved for language and regional majors. And at the Naval Academy, for nontechnical majors, 

four semesters of language now is a requirement, strongly supported by our superintendent commandant. 

We have up to an increase of 18 to 26 exchanges, as well, for officers in our exchange Personnel Exchange Programs (PEP) programs, and certainly realign to a 10-year look at where we think 

our future partnerships are. That is a snapshot of the Navy today 

on the officer perspective of that growth. 

Mr. MCDADE. And, Congressman, if I could add to that, again, 

I agree with what has been said by both Marine Corps and the 

Navy on this topic. But the Military Personnel Exchange Program 

that I mentioned in my oral comments is really designed to take 

operators in non-English-speaking localities, so they develop not 

only that foreign language skill but relationships with those countries. So, again, that is why we think that is a sweet spot for us 

to try and develop officers who will have those skills. 

The only other thing I would mention to you, again, to footstomp, when Secretary Donnelly put out this new policy directive 

on forced developments, said we are going to have cross-culturally 

competent airmen, that is now turning all of our force development 

machinery, to include PME and other career development programs, to say this is now a requirement for the United States Air 

Force. So that is hot off the press; 27 August is when it was published. 

General LONGO. In the Army, we have many of the same programs, so I will not repeat them, but I would like to get at the professional advancement aspect. 

Very informally, on the officer evaluation report, there is a part 

that says, ‘‘Tell me about any significant skills and attributes that 

this officer might have, completely independent of his current job 

position or his future potential.’’ And that is a place where more 

and more senior leaders are starting to look for that bullet that 

says that this guy is fluent in Arabic, and that becomes beneficial 

to him. 
14 

Additionally, we are looking at using language capability in our 

officer courses as a parameter when we are developing the Order 

of Merit List, which ends up having career-enhancing capabilities. 

So we are looking at that. We are not where I think both you 

and I know we need to go, but we are walking on that path, sir. 

General PATTON. And, Congressman, I would just like to add, 

from the joint force perspective, the foreign area officer is the officer of choice, really as the soldier statesman out there around the 

world. We are doing some things to grow the inventory of foreign 

area officers. We have an inventory of about 1,600 now. A large 

majority of those are Army officers and Marines, which have had 

a fairly mature foreign area officer program. That is a career path. 

When I was growing up as a major and a lieutenant colonel, it 

was not an option. You actually called it dual-tracking, where you 

did part-time foreign area officer and then you returned to the infantry, and back and forth. And we learned that that wasn’t as productive as developing a single track, whereas a foreign area officer 

would be able to stay dedicated in concerted effort, education, assignments and so forth, along that career path of foreign area officer. 

The Navy and the Air Force have picked up those programs here 

in the year 2005. We have increased our throughput, I believe, by 

over 100. I think our throughput is now about 170 per year. And 

we will be able to increase our inventory by 2013 by a thousand 

more foreign area officers. So our stable of foreign area officers 

across all four services will be deeper in years to come. 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you very much. 

I think we are out of time. So thank you, Dr. Snyder. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Akin. 

I will take my five minutes now. And I want to begin with you, 

Mrs. McGinn and General Patton. And each of you take most of my 

time if you want, and we will let the others comment if they want. 

But I would like you to discuss the issue of determining the requirements, and then how you link that with building the capabilities for meeting those requirements. 

It seems like, for the last seven or eight years, as General Lake 

just said, he runs into somebody that has a language skill, he 

knows he needs that language skill. Will we ever reach a point 

when we think, ‘‘I think we have too many Arabic speakers’’? Most 

of us don’t think so. 

But would you talk about the practicalities of the issue of determining requirements and building the capabilities to meet those requirements? 

Mrs. MCGINN. I have been around that requirements issue 

longer than General Patton, so I will start for you. 

One of the things we realized when we built the Transformation 

Roadmap was that we needed to try to get our arms around what 

these requirements were. General Patton’s predecessor built a tool, 

with our help, to send to the combatant commands so that they 

could try to articulate what their requirements were against certain of their operating plans so that we would be able to plan for 

the future. 

We have been collecting that corporately for a couple of years, I 

think, and what we have now is what I would describe as a raw 
15 

set of requirements. We have about 141,000 identified, most at low 

levels of proficiency, which is good news for us because it is easier 

to train with that. They are in some very difficult languages, as 

you could imagine. But they do call out the proficiency, what the 

individual would need to do, et cetera. 

The problem was that, even though we had put guidance out 

there for all of the combatant commands, they all did it a little bit 

different. And so we had a conference to, kind of, go through and 

rationalize ‘‘how did you send the number that you sent?’’ What I 

think we discovered was, even though they did it differently, they 

all did it with a little bit of science, so we didn’t get anything spurious in there, but we still need to reconcile that. 

One of the next steps for us is we have created a language readiness index into which we can put what the operational requirements are and we can compare those operational requirements to 

our language capability inventory on hand. You probably saw that 

we have screened the whole force or we are in the process of 

screening the whole force for language capability. So we have a 

database that can tell us how many Farsi speakers we have, how 

many Arabic speakers we have at what level. 

This just started to be operational last month, but it will give the 

leadership the opportunity to look at capability versus need and 

just be indicative of where we need to focus our efforts in terms of 

going forward on the requirements issue. So we look forward to 

that being fully populated, so that we could do that. 

Dr. SNYDER. General Patton. 

General PATTON. Yes, sir, it really comes down to what is the demand signal that we provide from the joint force to the services so 

they can train, recruit and so forth. And I would break it down into 

a couple of areas. 

We have day-to-day requirements, and I think we send a good 

demand signal to the services on day-to-day requirements through 

the billets, the positions on the unit manning documents that exist 

at the combatant command headquarters and their joint support 

and activities and so forth. And those are well-documented. And 

the language readiness index, as Mrs. McGinn mentioned, will be 

able to pull as a kind of a search engine from those unit manning 

documents and give us a little bit better. But, generally speaking, 

I think we have a fairly accurate demand signal for the day-to-day 

requirement. 

Where it gets more abstract—and I am borrowing your term 

from your opening statement, Dr. Snyder—but we have a set of requirements that exist in combatant commanders’ war plans. And 

we know those requirements have been broken down in some degree of detail. But the direction we need to go in the future here 

with the Defense Language Steering Committee—and we do sit 

down together. And we comprise the Defense Language Steering 

Committee, us six, and other members. But we have agreed that 

our next step is to gain better fidelity on defining and refining 

those requirements that exist in the war plans and translating that 

to a capability that is needed in the services and demand a signal 

that then the services can train and recruit towards, and recognizing that not all those requirements in the war plans equal a Marine that needs to speak a language or a sailor or what have you. 
16 

In some cases, it might be a piece of technology. In some cases, it 

could be contracted. 

But it is very important, I think, that we give more attention to 

defining and refining that requirement resident in the current 

plans in a little better definition, some help from the combatant 

commanders, and then translate that into something more useable 

than we have today as a demand signal for the services. And that 

is going to be a primary agenda item for our Defense Language 

Steering Committee in the near term. 

Dr. SNYDER. Yes. Mrs. Davis for five minutes. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. 

Thanks for being here. 

Perhaps just along the lines of what you just said, I mean, I 

think that what we are all looking for—and you spoke to this in 

terms of you all getting together and taking a look at this—it is 

much more than numbers, in terms of capability and capacity and 

a good bench that we have, in terms of this language development, 

but we still need that. 

And you mentioned 1,600, I think. And I was just looking for a 

little bit of numbers. I mean, what has really changed as a result 

of the work that is being done with the Transformation Roadmap 

and others, in terms of being able to say, okay, we don’t have the 

capability right there, but it is going to take us three years to get 

there; therefore, we have these number of individuals, how can we 

get there? And what is the best use, efficacious use of dollars? You 

know, who should we be training in the way that we get those officers when they are needed? 

Or is the effort with ROTC, because you can do that to a greater 

capacity, is that better? And are we really going after those programs? I know that we are doing some of them. I have seen them 

in San Diego, and I am proud of the effort that is being done there 

and with some immersion programs with the Marines. But it is 

kind of a drop in the bucket, really. And do we have the ability to— 

you know, is that something that we really need to triple, quadruple our efforts and do it tomorrow, as opposed to we don’t? I am 

guessing—do we have that information, do we really know where 

that effort should be? And what, in actuality, numbers, has 

changed? 

Mrs. MCGINN. I don’t know if I can address the numbers right 

now. But the issue of the ROTC, the Department decided in the 

last Quadrennial Defense Review—I think going back to the question about how you get generals with this capacity—was to go for 

pre-accession language training for our officer corps because it is 

so difficult to take time out to learn these languages as you are 

progressing through an officer career. So, therefore, we received 

funding for the military academies. All of them have plussed up 

their programs, their immersion programs. They have added languages like Arabic and Chinese. And the cadets are doing it. 

ROTC was more difficult. Most ROTC programs don’t teach the 

languages that we want. But we have instituted a series of grants, 

also funded through the Quadrennial Defense Review. We are providing grants to ROTC programs and universities, competitively 

awarded, to develop model programs that will incentivize the 

ROTC cadets to study these difficult languages. Some of them are 
17 

building curriculum, some of them are immersion. I think we have 

awarded 12 of those grants. We will be awarding a total of 50 sequentially, adding some every year as we go along. 

Mr. MCDADE. Congresswoman Davis, I have some numbers for 

you from some of the testimony, having had a chance to read some 

of it. Are you interested in some of those numbers to show you 

what has changed? 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Yes. 

Mr. MCDADE. They are significant. Just for example, in 2001, the 

Defense Foreign Language Center had 1,400 students enrolled in 

Arabic, Chinese and Persian. By 2008, that number had doubled. 

Since 2001, the DLI has dispatched more than 380 mobile training teams, training more than 66,000 people, and handed out more 

than a million of those language survival kits, some of which the 

committee has seen. 

In fiscal year 2001, there were about a thousand Army FAOs and 

149 Marine Foreign Area Officers (FAOs). In 2008, those numbers 

were 1,600 in the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Can I just ask you, where are those 

individuals serving then? Are they able to move forward and to 

really be out in the field? 

Because every time we ask questions about how are we doing out 

there in terms of having individuals who have these skills, we are 

always hearing, well, you know, we are not there, we are not even 

half there. So I am just wondering where—— 

General LAKE. Yes, ma’am. Two points, one on your numbers. 

In 2005, we were paying 363 officers and 1,530 Marines foreign 

language proficiency pay. So these were folks who demonstrated a 

proficiency to one standard or another. As of June of this year, we 

have almost doubled that, in terms of numbers, over 600 officers 

and over 2,100 Marines. 

But to your question, do we have enough of them out there, no, 

ma’am. We have them out there; they are working very hard. But 

a point I would like to make, particularly of those folks who have 

a language capability and a cultural awareness capability, while 

ideally if you are in Iraq you would desperately want to have Arabic foreign area officers, every one you could get your hands on. 

But we have also found that people who have these language and 

cultural skills are incredibly valuable just by the fact that they 

have the—and it may be a totally different language but they may 

have an aptitude, and also they have the cultural skills. 

And so one of our most effective foreign area officers we have had 

recently in Iraq was a Latin American foreign area officer. He 

picked up Arabic very quickly. I won’t say he is proficient in it, but 

he had enough there, but he also had the cultural skills. Kind of, 

it was like teaching him not necessarily the techniques, but he had 

the education, the foundation. And so he was able to develop an 

amazing rapport with his counterparts. 

So we don’t have enough, but we are getting better. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. And be thinking about what else do 

you need from us. Because I know that all my education folks 

would tell me, ‘‘The Department of Defense has all the money. You 

know, if they would incentivize our programs, we will be happy to 
18 

support them. But we can’t do it now.’’ And you can look at the 

budgets across this country in education. 

Dr. SNYDER. They just called one vote. And I think we have 

enough time to get five minutes from Mr. Bartlett and then five 

minutes from Ms. Sanchez and then we will have a temporary recess and go vote. 

Mr. Bartlett for five minutes. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much. 

I want to apologize. I couldn’t be here for your testimony, but I 

really wanted to be here, because I think what you are doing is 

enormously important. I have a feeling that we might have had 

fewer wars and lost fewer people, our young people, in the past if 

we had been focused on this more in the past. 

You talk about language skills. Seventy percent of all communication is nonverbal. And there are a lot of nuances in language. 

And if all you are doing is reading what somebody wrote, you have 

missed at least 70 percent of their message. So I think that language skills are enormously important in understanding the other 

person. Cultural awareness, gee, this really does influence how you 

react to things, doesn’t it, and what we say and how we say them. 

And something that is not meant at all to be provocative may very 

well be because we don’t understand the cultural awareness. 

And regional expertise capabilities are also very important. I 

asked at a former hearing a State Department person why these 

people hated us enough to blow themselves up to kill us. And they 

looked at me like, gee, that is really a dumb question, isn’t it? You 

know, why are they doing this? And I think that if we had focused 

more earlier on really understanding their language and their body 

language—this has to be different with different languages, doesn’t 

it? And with cultural awareness and regional expertise capabilities, 

that we might have fewer conflicts today. 

Just going in, I want to know why they hate us. And I haven’t 

been given a satisfactory answer to that. Can you tell me why they 

hate us? And don’t tell me it is because we are rich and free. I don’t 

know anybody in the world who wouldn’t like to be rich and free, 

by the way. Is there another answer? 

General PATTON. Sir, I have 27 months in Iraq, so maybe I can 

try and answer that question, maybe not from a language standpoint but just from a U.S. forces standpoint. 

I mean, I have stood face-to-face with people and negotiated with 

them through linguists, and I knew that they hated me. They disliked me being in al-Anbar province in the year 2004. They disliked 

the fact we were placing an election process; it was something that 

they were not used to. They disliked that we were from another religion, them being predominantly Sunni and us, the coalition, being 

not Sunni. 

And although, given all of that dislike and differences, cultural 

language and so forth, when I asked these folks who were my adversaries some days and my allies others, when I asked them 

would you prefer that we would leave your province and so forth, 

their answer was always no, because we know what the American 

military represents, you represent discipline, you represent what is 

right. And right now we are counting on you to bring some degree 

of security to our province, our very troubled province. And that 
19 

was in al-Anbar province back in 2004, 2005. Today they are running 5K races, parades, and generally a violent-free province there. 

But it wasn’t that way several years ago when there was a great 

degree of dislike, as you put it. 

But we recognize those differences, and we have learned over the 

years to deal with that as a common interest, the common interest 

being that they wanted us to leave and we, as servicemen on foreign soil, we wanted to leave too. But we had a mission to accomplish before we were able to do that. 

So that is just the best answer I can give you on that from my 

personal experience. 

Mr. BARTLETT. This is your experience after you got there, after 

we were there. I am concerned about our ability to understand and 

communicate before it came to shooting each other. 

General LAKE. Sir, if I might, and I don’t want to paint everything with too broad a brush, but if you read—Osama bin Laden 

has spoken and written extensively on what he is after, and he is 

quite clear why he and his movement do not like Americans. And 

it gets down to some very fundamental things, whether it is the 

United States position on Israel, whether it is what they perceive 

is our too liberal, too irreligious society. And he, in his writings 

that preceded 9/11, has pretty much identified what we would have 

to do to get al Qaeda to cease its efforts against us. And pretty 

much we would have to change life as we know it. We would have 

to veil our women. We would have to all convert to Islam. We 

would have to abandon Israel and other allies. 

And it is just a list—it is a very clear list, but it is a list that 

virtually everything on it is something that—my colleagues and I 

here, we joined up and have sworn to support and defend the Constitution. And our interpretation and the will of our elected leaders 

in both Congress and the White House have said the United States 

doesn’t stand for these values. We value religious freedom. We 

value equal rights. We value support to our allies. Unfortunately, 

many of these things are things that just are totally antithetical to 

them. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Chairman, the General has made my point. 

That is, what you see depends on where you sit. They see us as 

exploiting women. We certainly see them as exploiting women. 

Women are treated very differently in our two cultures. If we were 

able to sit down and talk, maybe we would come to a common understanding. They think because our women run around frequently 

scantily clothed, as sex objects, that we are exploiting women. They 

think that they are protecting their women because you can see no 

sexual aspect of the women. Two eyes is about all you see there. 

So it is very true that what you see depends on where you sit, 

and I think that is why what you are doing is very, very important. 

And I hope we do a whole lot more of that and a whole lot less 

shooting in the future. 

Thank you all very much. 

Dr. SNYDER. We need to go vote. We will be back—I think there 

is only one vote. Hopefully we will be back fairly quickly, and Ms. 

Sanchez will be up. 

[Recess.] 
20 

Dr. SNYDER. We will come back to order, and Ms. Sanchez is recognized for five minutes. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I just wanted to make a comment to Mrs. McGinn that indeed, 

at least in California, we are beginning to see different languages 

taught as part of the regular curriculum in middle and high school. 

So I think that is going to allow us to have sort of this pipeline. 

I know we have been able to put in Vietnamese and Mandarin in 

the area where I live because we have high Asian populations in 

particular of those two cultures. 

I have a question for General Longo. I sent you a letter recently, 

and it was with—and I haven’t received a response, by the way, 

but it was just August 19. And it is a discussion about your new 

request for a proposal (RFP) that I believe that you are developing 

for language learning. And my question is with respect to the particular RFP, what is the status of it? When do you expect the RFP 

will be released? And more importantly, I am somewhat concerned 

about, how do we ensure that soldiers that are put in the theater 

may be in a theater different than the language that they have actually decided or have selected to work on can continue to use language training tools even if they don’t have Internet access? 

General LONGO. Ma’am, those are all great questions. And I will 

tell you that I have responded to your letter and mailed it quite 

some time ago. And in anticipation that the mail here is no better 

than in the Pentagon, I brought a copy. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Oh, good. Well, you know, they have to irradiate 

it even when it is from a general because who knows what you are 

sending to me. 

General LONGO. Yes, ma’am. We will leave it with you, number 

one. 

The particular program that you are referring to is an online 

interactive capability for soldiers. Currently, the vendor is Rosetta 

Stone, and their contract was set to expire on the first of October, 

and we are in the process of recompeting that contract. It is a robust five-year contract. 

What we did, because we are not—we are not moving along as 

quickly through the contracting part as we wish, all for very good 

reasons, because of the size of the contract, we want to make sure 

we do it right, we have extended the contract with Rosetta Stone 

for six months to allow us to get through that process. So we are 

going through the contracting process. We expect to have numerous 

competitors, and we will make a good decision when their request 

for proposals come in. 

Now, reference soldiers who are deployed who may not have access to the Internet, it is a great question. The current vendor, Rosetta Stone, has given us the authority to—and given us the capability to give them each the CD that doesn’t require Internet capabilities. So the same CD you see in the airports as you are driving 

through—as you are walking through and you see the Rosetta 

Stone vendor there, they are allowing us under the same contract 

to provide the CDs to the soldiers downrange so that they won’t be 

dependent on the Internet. And it works well. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Great. Okay. 
21 

I think I have got some other questions, but I think I will defer 

to you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. 

I wanted to ask—I will start with you, General Longo. Well, I am 

always having trouble. When you have six witnesses, I can’t keep 

up with all the written statements. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. When you all turn them in. 

Dr. SNYDER. That is right. It was great to have them. When you 

refer to the conflict of, which we have talked about, too, and I mentioned it in a different way, which was, we would all like to have 

intense language skills, but you referred to the core warfighting 

skills, that it can’t be replaced, the core warfighting skills. I think 

was on page 10 of your written statement; I was struck by—where 

is that quote from that report here, the fellow that said, if we had 

all had good Arab language, that we would have been in Iraq for 

two years. Yeah, it is on page nine. Find that for me. I want to 

read exactly what it said. 

Oh, here it is. Oh, yes. This is from, ‘‘On Point II: Transition To 

the New Campaign: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi 

Freedom, May 2003 to January 2005,’’ and quoting Major Kenneth—— 

He says, quote—this is the fellow who had had Iraq experience— 

quote, ‘‘if all our soldiers spoke Arabic, we could have resolved Iraq 

in two years. My point is that language is obviously an obstacle to 

our success, much more so than cultural. Even a fundamental understanding of the language would have had a significant impact 

on our ability to operate.’’ That is his quote from the Army’s report. 

And so it creates this issue of the division between what is considered a core warfighting skill and somehow language skills are 

superfluous to that is probably not a very firm line anymore. At 

our first hearing we had on this topic, I played a brief interview 

with a Guy Gabaldon. He is now deceased, World War II veteran, 

who learned Japanese language as a teenager in California before 

he was recruited by the Marines, I think, wasn’t he? He was on a 

Japanese island and was able to convince over 1,500 Japanese soldiers to surrender, come out of caves and surrender, by himself. 

And I think his greatest one is he ran into a regimental commander, and they brought in 800 at one time. 

Well, I would say, maybe that should be a core warfighting skill. 

We would all like it, wouldn’t we? We would all like it if all our 

soldiers and Marines on the ground had reasonably good Arabic 

language skills. And I have talked to some that do, and it has been 

very, very helpful. But the issue is what we all have been talking 

about, at what risk and what training, the time it takes to train. 

But part of the reason I was interested in this topic over the last 

several years is, what is a core warfighting skill when the nature 

of war is changing? 

So any response to that you might want to add, General. 

General LONGO. I think my first response is, you are spot on. I 

think you have it exactly right. And if there was something in my 

statement that diminished the importance, then that wasn’t intentional. I think with our Army today—and we use the term ‘‘full 

spectrum operations’’—we don’t know whether we will be doing stability operations or offense or defense, and we have to be prepared 
22 

to do them all. And being able to speak a language at a native capability is definitely worth it. 

The question is, what is the cost? And I am not talking about 

money. I am talking about time mostly. How much do we have to 

invest to get native capability throughout our force? Now what do 

we do right now? We embed mostly culture and some language 

training in all of our professional military education programs. 

Now, does a person leave with expertise? No. What else do we do? 

Before they deploy, we send out a mobile training team in that language to give them the basics of, you know, ‘‘stop,’’ ‘‘how you 

doing,’’ ‘‘what do you need?’’ 

But I think—I mean, when we send an Arabic, a potential Arabic 

linguist to the Defense Language Institute, I am not sure how long 

that takes. But it is over a year. So can we afford—and then they 

come out, and they are not native. Even though we have invested 

that year, we are trying very hard; they are much better than they 

were when they went in. So the question is, how much can we afford in time to invest in the force as a whole? And what if we get 

the language wrong? We are in—we are in an Arabic area now, but 

what if the next thing is a part of Africa that speaks French or 

Hausa, or we are in the Philippines and we want to speak it is Tagalog? 

Dr. SNYDER. Mrs. Davis for five minutes. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you. 

Earlier today we talked a little bit about the needs of having a 

good communications strategy, because the enemy obviously has 

one. It may not be the truth necessarily, but they do have one. And 

they are able to converse in any languages that are basically needed. What effort do you think is putting—are we having in those 

who are, you know, working with us in terms of their linguistic 

ability to really craft those messages? Are they being utilized as 

well as they should be? And do you think that, you know, are we 

falling short in that area? And would there be some way that we 

could get that more right than wrong sometimes in trying to really 

frame those messages? Because everybody agrees that we are not— 

I mean, we are really falling behind in that area. 

General LONGO. Part of my duties when I was in Iraq was, my 

description was the effects coordinator for a division in the north 

central part. We were headquartered out of Tikrit. And one of the 

things that came out of my purview was exactly what you are talking about. How do we get the message out? And there are a lot of 

different populations that you are trying to get the message out to. 

And we would use our foreign area officers. We would use our civil 

affairs officers. We would use Iraqi citizens who would raise their 

hand and say, we want a better country. And they would help us 

get messages out in radio stations, getting messages out in Iraqi 

newspapers and magazines. And how well we did you could argue, 

but we certainly recognized how important it is what you are saying. And we really went after trying to get the message out in their 

language in the way that they are used to hearing it said and seeing it read. 

Admiral HOLLOWAY. If I could, ma’am, I have just recently deployed as the Enterprise strike group commander. We detached one 

of our ships, 325 men and women, average age of about 24, to cir-
23 

cumnavigate Africa. They did 17 port visits in Africa prior to the 

Africa partnership that European Command (EUCOM) has underway today. And the proactive public affairs program tied through 

the theater engagement from EUCOM on down gave them an opportunity, a liaison with the Naval Postgraduate School, prior to 

deployment, and as we sailed from Norfolk over for the 12-day journey for their 6-month deployment and these 17 port visits, we embedded the Naval Postgraduate School experts from the region, and 

we developed a proactive public affairs program. We found out that 

they didn’t want the Enterprise there. They just wanted the destroyer. They needed some small engine repairmen. They needed 

some buoys reset. They needed some security operations training. 

And we didn’t want to smother them. And this program fed back 

from EUCOM’s theater engagement through the ships delivering in 

the 17 ports very effectively. So that is an example of how we were 

able to utilize a proactive public affairs in advance and leverage 

the education embedded and transiting over. 

General PATTON. Ma’am, if I could also just very briefly, having 

just returned from my second tour in Iraq where I was in the north 

my second time, but we found very positive effects from shaping 

messages to inform and persuade the public and various audiences, 

could be, frankly, military or the citizenry or what have you. But 

we used—and we were in the north, so we had Shia, Sunni, Kurdish and other mixes of Iraqis that were our audience. And so we 

found that one group of—one team wasn’t sufficient. So we contracted for native speakers from those various sects that comprised 

independent cells that lived—that resided within those provinces. 

And then they helped our information operations and psychological 

operations professionals to understand the audience and then help 

craft those messages in the right words, the right symbology. 

You know, if we used a certain symbology in Tikrit, it was misinterpreted in a Kurdish area of Ninawa Province, for example. So 

it was very important that we had those specifically tailored cells, 

native-speaking contracted folks that would help us. But teamed 

them with the psychological operations (PSYOP) information ops 

professionals to combine on creating those messages. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. And do we have examples where that 

made a critical difference in people’s understandings? I just think 

it is important that we talk about that in a way that—— 

General LONGO. Ma’am, we do. I will give you a quick example 

because I know the time. 

We would send these targeted messages. And the way we measured it was, how many tips were turned into the provincial control 

centers, and how many tips were turned into the police stations? 

And we could certainly measure that. And when we targeted appropriately, the number of tips from the average Iraqi citizen went up 

dramatically. 

General PATTON. Same thing as we formed the local citizens now 

known as the Sons of Iraq, but formerly various forms of citizens 

who took arms and opposed the al Qaeda in Iraq is we targeted 

them with messaging so as to gain their support, their volunteerism. And messaging and money were combined I think to 

create some of that. 
24 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. If I could just have a real quick follow-up. Have we provided the protection and the ability of some of 

those linguists and assistants to be able to get out of Iraq if necessary? And have we just given their families what they need? Because I think that, obviously, if we are using—if we are enabling 

people to be part of this effort, then we need to have the appropriate resources to back them up. And this is probably another 

whole issue. But I just wanted to throw that out there because it 

is one thing to ask them. It is another thing to take care of them. 

General LONGO. A particular linguist that worked with me is in 

the United States now on a special immigrant visa, and we have 

taken care of his family as well. 

Dr. SNYDER. Ms. Sanchez for five minutes. 

Ms. SANCHEZ. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to put on the 

record that I believe that it is just not those languages that are 

somewhat new to Americans like Arabic or Mandarin or what have 

you that are important for our forces to know, but I think, you 

know, almost any language is an important language to know. And 

I will just—as you know, Mr. Chairman, the work that I have been 

doing with the base enlargement out there with the 173rd in northern Italy and the fact that we had some real big problems with the 

local population there, enough so that the Prodi government had a 

vote of no confidence coming out of that, which leads to Berlusconi 

now being, to some effect, in as the new Prime Minister there in 

the last year. 

But the fact that we had military there who weren’t that capable 

in the language or-slash I would say more importantly to understand the culture and what was going on with the local residents 

and the politicians there, really led to that effort and made the situation much more difficult than it had to be. So even a language 

that we would think as one that is not on the forefront like Arabic, 

you know, something like Italian, is still important for those in the 

forces to know. I think we should not lose sight that Spanish and 

Italian and French and German and these other languages that we 

take for granted as being more ally-type languages are still important for us to have. 

Dr. SNYDER. I wanted to ask, and I think Admiral Holloway and 

General Lake, you said a similar kind of thought just in a slightly 

different way which I think illustrates the challenge that we have 

today. 

You said, Admiral Holloway, that the kind of skills we are talking about, I think your phrase was, can’t be surged, if I heard you 

correctly. And that makes sense. You can’t just say, okay, in 3 

weeks, we are going to go from 100 speakers of this language to 

1,000. Language skills don’t work that way. 

On the other hand, General Lake, you made the point that—talking about the general purpose forces—that because of the ops 

tempo, of the stress on just how busy your force is, this is not a 

great time to do the kind of language training that you would like 

to do; that you would like to have more redundancy, more troops 

who are all working to expand the Marine Corps. But that really 

illustrates the problem, doesn’t it? These are skills that can’t be 

surged, and yet we need them right now. And there is just not a 

good way to get out of that. 
25 

General LAKE. Yes, sir. 

Dr. SNYDER. Other than the national agenda that Mrs. McGinn 

talks about. 

General LAKE. But at the same time, we have to focus on the, 

to use Marine terms, we have to focus on the close fight. 

Dr. SNYDER. That is right. 

General LAKE. But we cannot forget about the next fight or the 

future fight. And so trying to find that is a delicate balancing act. 

So that is why we—sure, we are sending many more people to 

learn how to speak Arabic. Or now Dari and Pashto. And that is 

where our focus of our predeployment training is. 

But recognizing that we can’t lose sight of the next fight, wherever that may be, that is why we are trying to do some of our other 

initiatives so that my son, Second Lieutenant Lake, at the basic 

school has now been assigned his career Marine regional specialty 

Sub-Saharan Africa. And he is coming to me saying, dad, you are 

a French speaker; I need some French instructional material. That 

is not the current fight though, sir. 

Dr. SNYDER. We always use the phrase ‘‘the next fight,’’ but it 

could be the next humanitarian relief. It could be the next peacekeeping mission. It could be the next development mission or participation in a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). 

General LAKE. That is right. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. McDade, you had talked about—I think your 

phrase was ‘‘change the way airmen think,’’ and I think that is an 

important concept. On the other hand, I guess I go back to—I relate a lot of things to babies now, since I have a pregnant wife and 

a two-year-old. But it is a whole lot easier we all or any parent 

knows to have a kid start out in a car seat rather than have to 

take him at age eight, and say, no, you really do have to have on 

this car seat. And it seems like we want to get to the point where 

we don’t have to change the way airmen think or young Marines 

think or young soldiers think, young sailors, but that from the getgo, from day one standing on yellow footprints at Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD), there is a sense impressed on them, this is 

part of the job, that this is just part of it. If you don’t like it, maybe 

you shouldn’t have signed that enlistment contract, that having 

some kind of skill, awareness, at least an awareness that, at some 

point in your career, you are going to need these skills, it seems 

like that would be part of the way to go, not just changing the way 

airmen think after they come in. And I am probably over-reading 

what you said. But go ahead and comment if you would. 

Mr. MCDADE. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify because 

really when we take a look at this development opportunity, we do 

it over the continuum of an airmen’s life cycle. So for officers, for 

example, the United States Air Force Academy has a very robust 

culture and regional expertise area which starts right at the beginning. We are doing the same sorts of things but don’t have quite 

as much control over some of the curriculum in Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC). So, on the officer’s side, it is very, 

very clear. Enlisted force, it is a little bit different issue, depending 

on how we use them, as well you know. So really the main focus 

right now is on the officer’s side. 
26 

Dr. SNYDER. I wanted to—and some of you—you haven’t heard 

me because none of you I think have testified here before. But I 

have thrown out somewhat cavalierly through the years, but I am 

actually thinking more and more it is not a bad idea, this idea of 

using boot camps, as somebody who went through a Marine Corps 

boot camp. And I was talking with a young officer who has Iraq 

war experience. And we were talking about, what is the nature of 

the job for a lot of the fighting troops? Which is, they can be driving through a very tense area in terms of what is going on sniper 

alleys, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and then arrive at a 

tea party, a social event, and then you have to pull out—disregard 

all the fear in your belly and enjoy being around there, say hello 

to everyone, and then that goes by, and you get back in the vehicle, 

and you are a fighter again. And the reason I mention that, I have 

often thought that, again, starting from the beginning, and you 

know, there is not much free time in boot camp was my recollection 

except at meals time. And that maybe that if you had native speakers there and you are expected to come off from marching and you 

know all those kind of things and being castigated in a variety of 

different ways by your Drill Instructor (DI), but then you arrived 

at lunch and were expected to greet politely and respond, and it 

could actually be a very pleasant experience with whoever it is, 

whatever languages we decide, and each platoon could be different. 

And then lunch is over, whatever length of time that is, 20 minutes 

or 40 minutes, and boom, you are back to being trained for a 

warfighter. That is not unlike the experience of our troops in both 

Iraq and Afghanistan today who have those moments of fighting 

interspersed with those moments of needing social and cultural 

skills. Do any of you have any comment on that? I don’t expect you 

to. Okay. That is fine. 

Mrs. Davis, any other questions? 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Just a few questions. In terms of the 

officers, do you believe that there are any incentives that we are 

not offering right now that we could be offering, particularly for 

flag officers, that we should be considering? 

Mr. MCDADE. Well, one of the things that I think is important, 

when we talk about the officer promotion system, in the Air Force, 

our charge to the board is to make sure that we are promoting culturally competent airmen, as I mentioned to you before. That perhaps is the most important incentive you can possibly give to a 

military officer, to know that is something that the promotion 

boards are considering. So I think that is a very powerful incentive 

now. The only thing that I would say on the language side is, we 

in the Air Force are finding very much the organizing principle for 

our thinking is the willing and the able. What we are finding is 

when an officer, given all the other things they are being asked to 

do, is told to learn a language on their own time after a 12-hour 

workday, it is only a very small number that are both willing and 

capable of doing that, that will see it through to fruition. So there 

we are creating incentives but only to a targeted few officers that 

are both willing and able to do so. 

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Ma’am, I think as we begin to value and 

have valued this LREC, LREC in the Navy, this process, that that 

will incentivize the individuals when the board precepts put that 
27 

language in as he mentioned and inspire those early in the careers. 

As they look upward to their career paths, they will see the milestones that must be met. We have joint requirements, warfighting 

capability requirements. We have our masters degrees, which is to 

try to get an overseas tour. So you are fitting all this in a career. 

But until you really see people that begin to show up in those positions with those skills that have been awarded with those, it 

doesn’t gain a lot of traction. And so just like women in the Navy, 

we want them to have mentors and people to look up to, people 

that have had families and successful careers. So we have got to 

put our money where our mouth is. We have got to show it in our 

precepts, in the precept language and give guidance to the board 

members; that is a value-added skill and consider that in your 

vote. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. I think that is consistent across the 

board. I mean, people, for example, in California, know that you 

can’t get a job in many areas unless you are bilingual. You just 

don’t bother to apply. And I think that there may be at some point 

that kind of emphasis put on it. So I think we are looking to you 

for any guidance, any assistance that we can write into some of the 

next proposals that come forth. 

And one of the issues that I remember mentioned before, is there 

were no new authorities that were needed, but there are additional 

fundings. So, as we look to 2010, you mention, even the high school 

programs, increased number of grants, well, you know, there probably are a lot more programs out there that would be very excited 

about being part of this, but perhaps, you know, there won’t be 

enough funding. I mean, if that is a high priority, I think if it is 

a national security priority, then maybe you know we need to 

incentivize many more school districts to get involved, and they can 

be large, small. But you know, California, for example, is not in 

that program at all. And my goodness, we certainly have plenty of 

bilingual, trilingual speakers in California who might be interested. 

Maybe they are not interested in serving in the service. Maybe that 

is not their first interest. But if they see there is some additional 

ways that they can use their talents and perhaps go into the service, but at least to get engage in that way, I think that makes a 

huge difference in what we can do. 

I mean, this has to be monumental, and we know that. You 

know, in order to make these kinds of changes, it has just got to 

be a whole different mindset, not just for the soldiers, as you are 

mentioning, for the airmen but the country, us to have a different 

mindset about this. And we are not going to get there by counting 

on school districts with their limited budgets, where they are cutting out everybody, you know, all their support staff and nurses 

and everybody else. I know. I was a board member. You know, I 

tried to do that. And in the end, you know, it always fell off the 

list. 

Mrs. MCGINN. May I make a plea for help? 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Sure. I was looking for that. 

Mrs. MCGINN. Well, it is not a plea for help for DOD. We have 

been engaged in the National Security Language Initiative that the 

President launched in January 2000, I think, with the Department 

of State, Education, Director of National Intelligence, us. The De-
28 

partment of Education has not received the funding that it has requested in order to implement some elements of the program that 

they were looking to implement to include, I believe, some of the 

K-through-16 programs, the teacher corps, because one of the problems we have is that there aren’t enough foreign language teachers. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Instructors, exactly. 

Mrs. MCGINN. And so if there is any way you could help with 

that, because State and DOD and Director of National Intelligence 

(DNI) fully funded the National Security Language Initiative, so if 

you could help with that, that would be important to us. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Okay. Thank you. 

Dr. SNYDER. The next hearing that we are doing on this topic is 

on September 23, and it is to have the people from the civilian side 

of our country that are funded by DOD money. And George Miller, 

who is the chairman of our Education and Workforce Committee, 

is planning to participate in that hearing with us. He and I have 

been talking about this topic for some time. So your folks may have 

an opportunity to make that plea also. 

I wanted to ask you, Mrs. McGinn, you mentioned something 

about ROTC and the languages. Tell me again what you said. I 

heard you said that they are not teaching the languages that you 

really need. Is that what you said? Tell me what you said and amplify on it, please. 

Mrs. MCGINN. Yes. That is correct. I can’t remember the numbers right now. It is in my testimony. But there are maybe, I think, 

1,400 ROTC locations where they teach languages. But only a very 

few of them teach the languages that are the ones important for 

national security. I do take Congresswoman Sanchez’s point that 

we need all languages. But, of course, we are interested in Arabic 

and Mandarin Chinese and some of those. So what we have done 

is we have put together a grant program for ROTC programs where 

we award money to ROTC, to universities—pardon me—with 

ROTC to develop programs in these difficult languages. We are not 

really telling them how to do it. What we are doing is letting them 

come forward with ideas so that we can pick up best practices. We 

have awarded 12 grants. We will eventually, at the end of our program in a couple of years, have awarded 50 grants to universities 

for the development of language programs in ROTC. 

Dr. SNYDER. Let me see if I got this right. So you have a ROTC 

program at a fairly major university, and you could go to your 

ROTC guys and say, we really need to you make Mandarin, but it 

is not an offer to the college? 

Mrs. MCGINN. Right. So part of the grant would be for the college to be able to develop the Mandarin program, and then we 

would like to see how that program works and how interested the 

ROTC cadets are in studying Mandarin. 

Dr. SNYDER. Which is another issue. And that would not be a 

program that the college would obviously just develop just for the 

ROTC students. They would just have to have a Mandarin program 

that would have credibility. And it goes back to this whole national 

agenda that you were talking about. 

Ms. Sanchez has gone. But I am going to quote her. I am going 

to talk about her anyway, General Longo, because she and I were 
29 

talking during the break. And she may have mentioned that she 

did some studying for a year, living in Egypt and did some Arabic 

language studies early on. You mentioned early, I think in one of 

your statements, that one of the problems is the languages we need 

are the hard languages, and you mention Arabic. She considers Arabic not to be a hard language. It may be a scary language for 

Americans. But she says it is a very phonetic language. The alphabet works when Americans get in and try it. It isn’t that difficult. 

I think that is some of our experiences. 

But that is part of our bias that Mrs. McGinn is talking about. 

We get afraid of some of these languages. And the grade schools 

get afraid of them, and the high schools get afraid of them, and the 

colleges are afraid of them. 

Go ahead, General Lake. 

General LAKE. No, sir. I think the Congresswoman is probably an 

example—I don’t think anybody has tested her—but I think she is 

probably a good case in point of someone who probably has a strong 

aptitude for languages. 

Dr. SNYDER. I will tell her you are going to recruit her. 

General LAKE. More than happy to, sir. 

Dr. SNYDER. Sign her up. 

General LAKE. She has an aptitude. And that is what we try to 

do with our—as we categorize the languages in terms of level of 

difficulty, what we try to do is send people who have a greater aptitude for languages. We try to focus them on the harder languages 

because they have a greater likelihood of success. And so we have 

a test that measures aptitude, and it is not perfect, but at least it 

is a good indicator. But it is also an indicator, and Congresswoman 

Sanchez kind of meets that criteria; she speaks another language. 

I have found that if you speak one foreign language, it doesn’t matter what it is, it is usually easier for you to learn another language, 

and particularly if you learn that foreign language as an adult because you have sort of gone through the process. Okay. This is 

what I have to do, and you can kind of template that even if the 

language is significantly different. 

Dr. SNYDER. Is there anything else that any of you wanted to 

bring out here that you were hoping we would ask about or it occurs to you, you wanted to share with us that might be helpful as 

we are sorting through this? No? Any final comments? 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Mr. Chairman, may I just add two 

things to the ROTC? Because having met with the program in San 

Diego State, I think the two things that were really important to 

the student, number one was having the time. The difference was 

that all they were asked to do was study the language. They 

weren’t asked to study math and science and everything else. That 

made a difference. I know it does generally for kids who complete 

summer school programs; they usually do better because they don’t 

have so many things going on. And the promise of an immersion 

program in an overseas location. I think if we can get those two 

together, we are going to see students do fairly well. 

General LONGO. If I might make a short comment. In many more 

years ago than I am willing to admit, I was an ROTC scholarship 

in a university in North Carolina. And it was not an option to me 

to do an overseas exchange, to go to a university in Germany, 
30 

France, pick a country, because my ROTC scholarship would not 

pay for it, and I could not pay for it myself. That has changed. 

ROTC is now underwriting those programs with their scholarships, 

and I think that is a move in the right direction now. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Sorry. I just wanted to be sure I got 

that in. 

General PATTON. Dr. Snyder, to add one thing, you asked earlier 

about developing a surge capacity. Surely it is not the end all and 

be all. But one thing that is under development is a creation of an 

expeditionary workforce within the Department of Defense. The 

purpose of that workforce is to broaden the capabilities we have, 

not only in uniform but out of uniform, within our DOD civilian 

force to surge to meet certain work requirements. Specifically, I am 

very interested in developing acquisition civilian professionals that 

are expeditionary and in intelligence because those are two surge 

capabilities that currently the Joint Warfighting Force wants and 

is in short supply. Language would certainly be another one. So I 

am going to take that back and add that to the mix as we work 

with our Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) counterparts to 

add some refinement to that expeditionary workforce, because I 

think language would certainly be an area where we could leverage 

our professional civilians in the Department of Defense for that. 

Dr. SNYDER. If we were to have a similar kind of a hearing at 

this time next year or if Mrs. Davis were to do it as the chairwoman of the Military Personal Subcommittee, Mrs. McGinn, General Patton, do you think we will have seen dramatic improvement? 

Will that be an appropriate time for us to revisit this topic? 

Mrs. MCGINN. I would hope that you would see dramatic improvement. I think the improvements that we have seen in the last 

three years—— 

Dr. SNYDER. Progress may be a better word. 

Mrs. MCGINN. They have been extremely dramatic. I don’t know 

if you will see as dramatic an improvement. I would hope that we 

would have a better sense of corporately what we need to do in 

terms of the general purpose forces and how we would handle the 

issues of requirements and the number of people in the force who 

have language capability. I would hope that you would see that. 

Dr. SNYDER. Well, I want to thank you all for being here. And 

as a formal question for the record, if you—and if you have anything that you would like to add that comes to mind or you have 

forgotten about or you think would be helpful to us, feel free to 

send it to us, and it will be made part of the record and distributed 

to the other Members. And we appreciate your service. And we appreciate the work you are doing. And as Mrs. McGinn pointed out, 

you really are having to work on something that we—all of us, 

whether military or civilian, have a responsibility for, whether it 

starts in kindergarten, and because we haven’t met those responsibilities, then you all having the jobs that you have. We appreciate 

your service. And thank you for your time today. 

The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:28 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 
A P P E N D I X 

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008 

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008 

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER 

Dr. SNYDER. The Chairman’s Language and Regional Expertise Planning Instruction, CJCSI 3126.01, states that ‘‘[l]anguage skills and regional expertise are critical 

‘warfighting skills’ that are integral to joint operations.’’ Similarly, DOD Directive 

3126.01 states: ‘‘[i]t is DOD policy that: . . . Foreign language and regional expertise 

be considered critical competencies essential to the DoD mission and shall be managed to maximize the accession, development, maintenance, enhancement, and employment of these critical skills appropriate to the Department of Defense’s mission 

needs.’’ What is the significance of identifying these skills as critical warfighting 

skills or competencies in terms of organizing, training, and equipping the force? 

Please identify the other critical warfighting skills or competencies. Are language 

skills and regional expertise now considered to be on par with those other skills and 

competencies? 

General LONGO. Identifying culture and foreign language skills as critical 

warfighting skills is an acknowledgement of the importance we place upon them. 

Today’s Army Planners understand the necessity to include cultural and foreign language skills in all our contingency plans and operations. Operations in today’s environment require our forces to operate with coalition partners and the local nationals 

in a variety of diverse languages and cultures as an expeditionary force. 

In terms of organizing, training, and equipping the force, the Army has recognized 

the importance culture and language skills play in several of our title 10 U.S. Code 

responsibilities. As an example, we have organized and placed 09L (Interpreter/ 

Translator) units in the force structure and plan to expand these skilled linguists 

from CENTCOM to PACOM and AFRICOM areas of responsibility. The Army has 

also identified and coded language positions in our general purpose forces outside 

of the intelligence and FAO communities (e.g., truck drivers, aircraft crew chiefs, 

and flight medics attached to Headquarters, U.S. Army South have a Spanish language requirement). In terms of training, we have significantly improved: our training capability at the Combat Training Centers with role players/evaluators; the 

availability of online foreign language training software and materials from DLIFLC 

and Rosetta Stone®; increased the Mobile Training Team education to units before 

deployment; and established the TRADOC Culture Center at Fort Huachuca, AZ. Finally, the Army has equipped our forces with translator/interpreter equipment (Sequoia) and various graphical training aids. 

The Army views culture and foreign language competence in the general force as 

an important enabler for the execution of core individual and unit warfighting tasks 

as well as any other competencies. The Army needs different levels of capability in 

foreign language and culture in the general force versus the specialists in the force 

(e.g., Foreign Area Officer, Civil Affairs, Special Forces, Psychological Operations, 

Information Operations, linguists). The competence required for our specialists is 

critical to the planning and execution of operations. The competence required in 

both groups will primarily drive our education and training. The primary competency for the U.S. Army is the application of combat power. In order to execute 

our doctrine of full spectrum operations, we believe that culture and foreign language competence must become a core competence. 

Dr. SNYDER. Since we are planning to employ general purpose forces to carry out 

irregular warfare missions like building partner capacity, conducting 

counterinsurgencies and stability operations—missions that have been traditionally 

conducted by special operations forces—should we be looking at the way special operations forces acquire and maintain their language, regional, and cultural skills as 

a model for doing the same with the general purpose forces? 

General LONGO. During the development of the Army’s Culture and Foreign Language Strategy, we looked at the special operations forces model in order to leverage 

ideas or approaches that could be applied to the general purpose forces. This included the special operations community’s involvement in the initial development of 

the strategy to take advantage of their culture and foreign language expertise and 

to account for special operations in the strategy as culture professionals. 

Both the Army Culture and Foreign Language Strategy and the special operations 

forces model are designed to serve current and future operations. However, the 
128 

strategy for the general purpose forces requires a much broader set of culture and 

language capabilities than that of the regionally focused special operations organizations. 

Dr. SNYDER. Has the Language Roadmap or your Service’s strategy for foreign 

language, cultural awareness and regional expertise changed the way you are recruiting, aside from the heritage speakers program? Would someone with foreign 

language skills be considered preferable to someone without them, all other things 

being equal? Are individuals with language skills placed on career paths or do they 

receive assignments that use those skills? 

General LONGO. The Army has changed our strategy for recruiting foreign language, cultural awareness, and regional expertise. This change began with the 09L 

Heritage Speaker Interpreter/Translator in 2006, which is now been converted to a 

permanent military occupational specialty. The success of 09L program has led us 

to expand its focus beyond the CENTCOM languages into PACOM and AFRICOM. 

In addition to the 09L expansion, we are initiating several other programs that will 

enable the Army to access more language and culturally enabled Officers and Soldiers. 

The Language Roadmap has changed the way we track language capability in the 

Army. As a direct result of the Roadmap, the Army is currently conducting a Language Self Assessment which to date has had over 83,000 responses of with roughly 

53% self-identifying that they speak a foreign language; however, what we do not 

know is the level of their proficiency. We are trying new incentives to complete this 

task for the whole force such completing the survey a part of Initial Military Training and having the Human Resources Commander contact redeploying Commanders 

during the Rest Phase of Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN) to encourage completion. 

On August 8, 2008, the Army implemented an ROTC recruiting pilot program 

that awards Critical Language Incentive Pay (CLIP) for cadets that study Arabic, 

Chinese-Mandarin, Hausa, Indonesian, Korean, Pashto, Persian-Dari, Persian-Farsi, 

Swahili, or Urdu. To date, approximately 130 students have expressed their intent 

to participate. This pilot program will allow the Army to evaluate whether the incentive will yield more junior officers with more foreign language capability in strategic languages. 

Twelve universities are currently participating under the National Security Education Program (NSEP) grant to develop and teach strategic language courses for 

ROTC cadets. During Spring-Summer 2008, four universities of interest (San Diego 

State University, Indiana University, University of Mississippi, and University of 

Texas at Austin) taught courses to 58 cadets in either Arabic, Persian, Russian, Chinese, Pashto, or Korean. 

A similar emphasis has also occurred at the United States Military Academy 

where currently 100% of all West Point cadets must take a foreign language. These 

requirements have recently doubled from two to four semesters of mandatory instruction. 

All things being equal, someone with foreign language skills would be preferred 

to someone without—it is easier to turn a linguist a Soldier than to turn a Soldier 

into a linguist. Commanders understand the importance of language and cultural 

knowledge for the general purpose force and view cultural knowledge as the more 

valuable, sustainable, and transferrable of the two. 

Individuals serving in language-coded billets have established career paths and 

receive assignments that use those skills. These language-coded billets include Interpreter/Translator, Cryptolinguists, Human Intelligence, Area Intelligence, 

Counter Intelligence, Signals Intelligence, Foreign Area Officers, Special Forces, 

Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operations military occupational specialties/functional career fields. 

Dr. SNYDER. We know that there are established means for assessing levels of foreign language proficiency. How will you measure and assess cultural awareness proficiency? Please provide examples. 

General LONGO. The Army’s goal is to develop cultural capability in our leaders 

over the course of their career. The primary emphasis is on developing the knowledge and application of a general framework for understanding any culture, then 

reinforcing the ability to apply this culture general competence through the study 

of the culture of a particular region or country. In the later stages of career development, the individual will develop a deeper understanding about the culture of a particular region or country. 

In order to measure and assess cultural proficiency, the Army is exploring utilization of three proficiency levels: cultural awareness, cultural understanding, and cultural expertise. They describe a level of performance that culture education and 
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training are designed to achieve in both cross-cultural competence (culture general 

competence) and regional competence (culture specific competence). 

The first level of proficiency, cultural awareness, describes Soldiers who have 

foundational cross-cultural competence and a minimal level of regional competence. 

The second level of proficiency, cultural understanding, describes Soldiers and leaders with well developed cross-cultural competence and a comprehensive level of regional competence. These first two proficiency levels will apply predominantly to the 

general purpose force. The third level of proficiency, cultural expertise, describes 

culture professionals and leaders who possess an advanced level of cross-cultural 

competence and an advanced and sophisticated level of regional competence. While 

cultural expertise is mainly the realm of specialists, this proficiency level may also 

be attained by Soldiers who devote a significant amount of time to the study of a 

region and country, and language over the course of their career. 

The Army envisions developing a means to measure these proficiency levels that 

is tied to the performance of individual and collective warfighting tasks for which 

culture capability is an enabler. The best minds of practitioners and theoreticians 

in the U.S. Government and academia are currently wrestling with how to measure 

and assess cultural awareness proficiency. I recently participated in a Cross-Cultural Communication Roundtable at the University of Maryland Conference Center, 

to discuss what constitutes cross-cultural communication, why it is important in today’s world, and how to lay the foundation for building, sustaining, training, and 

measuring cross-cultural competency. 

Dr. SNYDER. Lower level language capabilities are being more fully incorporated 

into the general force, yet the current testing is designed for language professionals, 

who have higher level language capabilities. How do you plan to evaluate language 

training provided to the general purpose forces? What measures or tests will be 

used? What challenges are associated with evaluating language capabilities for the 

general purpose force? 

General LONGO. The Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) is the current vehicle for measuring foreign language proficiency used by the Department of Defense. 

However, proficiency is only required of our language professionals who must have 

a broad-based knowledge that allow them to assimilate into a society, totally immersed in its language. The Army recognizes the DLPT is inappropriate for the general purpose force and is currently staffing development of performance-based testing that will provide a more accurate measurement of lower-level language capabilities. In the end, we want to be able to evaluate a soldier’s ability to do his job or 

task in the target language (e.g., evaluated on his ability to man a check-point, not 

listen to and understand a local news broadcast). 

The Army continues to develop language capability in the general purpose force 

for the following purposes: 

1. Providing survival level skills prior to deployment. 

2. Providing basic level foreign language instruction for an individual soldier to 

communicate in a foreign language, in order to effectively interact with people 

who speak that language. 

3. Developing leaders who are able to adapt to functioning in a different foreign 

language by virtue of having learned another foreign language. 

4 Providing the capability to understand and use language tools (e.g., automatic 

translation devices, interpreters). 

The Army uses the above language capabilities as tools to prepare for, execute, 

and evaluate training scenarios at Combat Training Centers (CTCs) and to a limited 

extent, at home station and mobilization sites. Every deploying Brigade Combat 

Team receives a CTC rotation. During CTC rotations, heritage/native speaking role 

players provide evaluations on individual and unit language and cultural skills 

while performing warfighting tasks. Role players provide valuable feedback and insight into the effectiveness of unit interactions with local populations while accomplishing their tasks. The evaluation assesses whether a Soldier uses basic language 

skills and exercises cultural sensitivity to effectively perform their tasks. 

The challenge associated with evaluating language capabilities for the general 

force will be in developing and tailoring the tests that will apply to the diverse set 

of tasks that our Soldiers must perform to support mission accomplishment for full 

spectrum operations in the desired languages. This will be no small task. For example, DLIFLC has developed language survival kits in 44 languages that are designed 

to familiarize the general purpose force with situations covering Civil Affairs, Medical, Air Crews, Cordon & Search, Force Protection, Military Police, and Public Affairs. Each one of these situations would require several tests to evaluate performance. 
130 

Dr. SNYDER. Will a unit’s readiness reporting include indicators reflecting its foreign language skills readiness and cultural awareness readiness? 

General LONGO. The Army’s readiness reporting of a unit is based upon the organization’s Modified Table of Organization and Equipment (MTOE). The MTOE includes, as part of position skill requirements, the Military Occupational Specialty 

(MOS) and Additional Skill Identifier (ASI) required by pay grade. In addition, a 

Language Identification Code (LIC) requirement is annotated for each position that 

requires a language skill. LIC is measured as a data point in the Army’s readiness 

reporting system, but does not factor into the calculation of the unit’s Personnel 

Readiness Level. 

The Unit Status Report (USR) does not specifically address cultural awareness; 

however, commanders may provide comments about an assessment of cultural 

awareness training as part of the unit’s training assessments and Mission Essential 

Tasks. Furthermore, many language and cultural skills are embedded in other tasks 

that are specifically addressed (e.g., a commander who rates Force Protection as a 

‘‘T’’ (for Trained) has effectively also assessed language and cultural skills required 

for interaction with the local population as a ‘‘T’’ since they are embedded tasks). 

Since cultural awareness training is specific to the particular geographic region to 

which the unit is deploying, measuring cultural awareness in the USR as a generic 

metric is not applicable. However, units undergo specific training prior to deployment to a specific geographic region. This pre-deployment training is assessed as an 

integral part of the training plan for each unit. 

Dr. SNYDER. Is foreign language proficiency a consideration for promotion outside 

of the linguist or foreign area officer career paths? Wouldn’t making some set level 

of foreign language ability a criterion for advancement to general or flag officer and 

senior non-commissioned officer create a pipeline for the future? 

General LONGO. Officers are promoted based upon their performance and demonstrated potential for future service. Foreign language proficiency is an important 

and valued skill for any Officer, and the Army clearly recognizes the applicability 

of the knowledge, skills, and abilities that language proficiency offers. The Officer 

Record Brief (ORB) is the first document in an Officer’s record that is reviewed by 

a promotion or selection board panel. Language training and proficiency are among 

the most prominent entries on the ORB. However, they represent only part of the 

criteria that board members consider for officers in career fields that do not require 

foreign language proficiency. 

While language training and proficiency are important, the Army does not use foreign language ability as a primary determinant when evaluating commissioned and 

noncommissioned officers’ fitness for greater responsibility. The Army is, however, 

committed to improving this valuable skill and has implemented a number of incentives and funded language programs to improve the language capability. 

Dr. SNYDER. How are you focusing assignments for the new FAOs, RAOs, RAS, 

PAS, and other regional experts to gain return on the investment and continue to 

develop their skills—will they get lost in the personnel system? 

General LONGO. The Army is currently conducting a Chief of Staff of the Army 

(CSA) directed review of its Foreign Area Officer (FAO) program to ensure that it 

remains the program to emulate within DoD and reaffirm that FAOs are of critical 

importance during this era of persistent conflict. The Army also wants to make certain that those officers who have worked hard to become FAOs are being recognized 

for their efforts. The Army has a single track/singularly focused FAO program with 

a FAO Proponent Division on the Army Staff and dedicated Human Resources Command assignment officers who ensure Army FAOs are assigned to positions which 

will maximize the use of their language skills and unique training. Foreign Area 

Officers rarely serve in positions outside of the FAO career field. The Army assesses 

that 98% of Army FAOs currently serve in FAO billets or positions that require 

their unique language and cultural expertise and continue to be in high demand 

within the Army and Joint Community. FAO assignments are closely monitored and 

the Army’s FAOs are not at risk of being ‘‘lost in the personnel system.’’ 

Dr. SNYDER. The Chairman’s Language and Regional Expertise Planning Instruction, CJCSI 3126.01, states that ‘‘[l]anguage skills and regional expertise are critical 

‘warfighting skills’ that are integral to joint operations.’’ Similarly, DOD Directive 

3126.01 states: ‘‘[i]t is DOD policy that: . . . Foreign language and regional expertise 

be considered critical competencies essential to the DoD mission and shall be managed to maximize the accession, development, maintenance, enhancement, and employment of these critical skills appropriate to the Department of Defense’s mission 

needs.’’ What is the significance of identifying these skills as critical warfighting 

skills or competencies in terms of organizing, training, and equipping the force? 

Please identify the other critical warfighting skills or competencies. Are language 
131 

skills and regional expertise now considered to be on par with those other skills and 

competencies? 

Mr. MCDADE. The Air Force views cross-cultural competence (3C) as both a critical force enabler and warfighting skill. It is a cornerstone to the Air Force Culture, 

Region and Language Program and embedded throughout the Air Force Institutional Competency List (ICL). The ICL includes Employing Military Capabilities, 

Fostering Collaborative Relationships, Communicating, Global, Regional and Cultural Awareness, Strategic Communication, Building Teams and Coalitions and Negotiating. 

There are many Air Force warfighting skills which enable the Air Force’s mission 

to fly, fight and win in air, space and cyberspace. Through Global Vigilance, Global 

Reach and Global Power the Air Force provides the Joint Force Commander a range 

of capabilities for success. Cross-cultural skills, which include language and regional 

skills are an integral capability required for success as a force enabler and as a 

warfighter skill. But, just like every Airman is not a pilot, every Airman is not a 

linguist. Therefore, it will be dependent on the requirement and mission to determine which warfighting skills are the most critical. 

Dr. SNYDER. Since we are planning to employ general purpose forces to carry out 

irregular warfare missions like building partner capacity, conducting 

counterinsurgencies and stability operations—missions that have been traditionally 

conducted by special operations forces—should we be looking at the way special operations forces acquire and maintain their language, regional, and cultural skills as 

a model for doing the same with the general purpose forces? 

Mr. MCDADE. The Air Force Culture, Region and Language (CRL) Program takes 

a deliberate approach to inculcating general purpose forces (GPF) based on Air 

Force-unique mission requirements with cross cultural competence (3C), which include language, regional and culture ability. Specifically, the Air Force’s goal in this 

respect is have: 

Airmen Developed and Sustained with Sufficient Cross-Cultural Capacity: Airmen with appropriate levels of cross-cultural knowledge, skills and attitudes 

who are able to meet Air Force mission needs and are able to surge for emergent 

requirements. 

This approach allows for specific targeted development of GPF who will be engaged in irregular warfare missions, similar to targeted 3C development of Airmen. 

Additionally this program is based on the data and analysis gleaned from a RAND 

study and the scholarly work conducted by the Air Force Culture and Language 

Center at Air University. The Air Force determined that cross-cultural competency 

was a capability all Airmen required and that we needed to refocus our efforts to 

provide language and regional skills to targeted Airmen. The approach is based on 

the Air Force’s planned model for Expeditionary Skills Training. This model (figure 

1) provides targeted education and training to Airmen based on mission set and expeditionary requirements. Airmen will be targeted, beginning at accessions points 

and throughout their career. 

Figure 1: AF Expeditionary Skill Training (Notional) 

Dr. SNYDER. Has the Language Roadmap or your Service’s strategy for foreign 

language, cultural awareness and regional expertise changed the way you are recruiting, aside from the heritage speakers program? Would someone with foreign 

language skills be considered preferable to someone without them, all other things 

being equal? Are individuals with language skills placed on career paths or do they 

receive assignments that use those skills? 

Mr. MCDADE. The Air Force Recruiting Service makes every effort to match heritage speakers to linguist positions. If an individual is a heritage speaker, they’re offered an opportunity to take the Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) to de-
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termine their proficiency level. If they score a minimum of 3/3, we seek to match 

them to language duty, if available. 

Airmen in language inherent billets, to include cryptolinguist and regional affairs 

strategists, are placed on career paths that utilize their skills. In accordance with 

the AF Culture, Region and Language Program, language enabled Airmen will be 

provided language sustainment opportunities and utilized in language assignments 

based on mission requirements. 

Dr. SNYDER. We know that there are established means for assessing levels of foreign language proficiency. How will you measure and assess cultural awareness proficiency? Please provide examples. 

Mr. MCDADE. The Air Force’s Culture, Region and Language Strategy will guide 

the development and measurement of four elements of Airmen’s cross-cultural competence (3C): knowledge, skills, attitudes and learning approaches. Knowledge will 

be assessed using standard cognitive measures integrated into accessions programs 

and expeditionary training. These will be delivered to and measured in all Airmen 

through in-residence and on-line classes. Skills, particularly communicating, negotiating and relating across cultural differences, will be assessed primarily through exercises in role playing scenarios and simulations. Attitudes will be measured using 

scientifically valid psychometric instruments. Learning approaches will be assessed 

through capstone exercises, simulations, individual and leader surveys. Note that 

the 3C approach is broadly applicable to a variety of cultures and regions, rather 

than just one specific group or place, and is therefore well suited to Air Force requirements. 

Dr. SNYDER. Lower level language capabilities are being more fully incorporated 

into the general force, yet the current testing is designed for language professionals, 

who have higher level language capabilities. How do you plan to evaluate language 

training provided to the general purpose forces? What measures or tests will be 

used? What challenges are associated with evaluating language capabilities for the 

general purpose force? 

Mr. MCDADE. The Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) System is the only 

DoD validated measure of language proficiency, based on the interagency language 

roundtable scale. Airmen must attain a valid score in order to qualify for foreign 

language proficiency pay. Therefore all Airmen will be evaluated for language ability using the DLPT. 

As the Air Force progresses with developing Airmen-Statesmen, according to our 

Air Force Culture, Region and Language Program, there will be challenges to ensure the DoD has sufficient capability to assess speaking proficiency as well as proficiency at the sub 2/2 (reading/speaking) level. With the expansion of the GPF into 

irregular warfare, speaking ability, tested through an Oral Proficiency Interview, 

will be more in demand. The Air Force will continue to work with the Defense Language Steering Committee and the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language 

Center to articulate requirements and ensure availability of interviewers, especially 

in low density languages. 

Dr. SNYDER. Will a unit’s readiness reporting include indicators reflecting its foreign language skills readiness and cultural awareness readiness? 

Mr. MCDADE. The DoD has developed, for use by the Services and Combatant 

Commands, the Language Readiness Index. The index will analyze service language 

proficiency and capability against Combatant Command requirements. 

Dr. SNYDER. Is foreign language proficiency a consideration for promotion outside 

of the linguist or foreign area officer career paths? Wouldn’t making some set level 

of foreign language ability a criterion for advancement to general or flag officer and 

senior non-commissioned officer create a pipeline for the future? 

Mr. MCDADE. Foreign language proficiency is implicitly a consideration for promotion in all career paths within the Air Force. Air Force guidance to promotion 

board members, in-line with Deputy Secretary of Defense policy includes the following phrase: ‘‘Experience and education that contribute to broader cultural awareness and enable better communication in a global operating environment are crucial 

underpinnings to support strategic national interests.’’ 

The Air Force promotion system is designed to develop a diverse and capable Air 

Force leadership. There is no ‘‘single’’ trait that is a criterion. At the same time, 

the Air Force recognizes the need for Senior Leaders who are Airmen-Statesmen, 

with the capability to influence the outcomes of US, allied and coalition operations 

and to maximize operational capabilities by Building Partnership Capacity. This is 

achieved through A) the Developing Leaders goal of the Air Force Culture, Region 

and Language Program; B) making Global, Regional and Culture awareness, Communications, Building Teams and Coalitions, and Negotiating part of the Air Force 

leadership development policy; and C) Promotion Board Precepts. 
133 

Dr. SNYDER. How are you focusing assignments for the new FAOs, RAOs, RAS, 

PAS, and other regional experts to gain return on the investment and continue to 

develop their skills—will they get lost in the personnel system? 

Mr. MCDADE. Both the Air Force International Affairs Specialist (IAS) program 

and Political-Military Affairs Specialist (PAS) program target future senior leaders 

to prepare them with the necessary political-military education and real world experience they will need as leaders at the highest level of responsibility in the Air Force 

and Joint arenas. The IAS program ensures a return on investment and continues 

to develop Regional Affairs Specialist (RAS) skills through a multi-faceted approach. 

The program is unique in that designated RAS Officers are dual-tracked between 

their FAO-type assignments and their primary Air Force specialty. This rotational 

assignment policy serves to provide a level of expertise not only to the specialized 

FAO community, but also to the GPF when RAS officers return to their ‘‘line’’ unit. 

This expertise inter-change pays dividends to all involved since a RAS officer stays 

current in their primary specialty, while also providing their functional communities 

with highly specialized culture, regional and language capability and expertise. 

Where possible, non-RAS assignments will also provide added RAS development, 

such that an assignment in a primary career field-related position occurs within the 

RAS geographic area of specialization. Additionally, there are language and regional 

enhancement programs designed to improve RAS officers’ expertise, to include tutoring and language and area studies immersion to continue RAS skills development. 

For officers in the PAS program, we send select officers to training in preparation 

for a specific position as a PAS officer. Once an officer becomes a RAS or PAS officer, they receive a skill code designating them as such and we use these skill codes 

to track them throughout their Air Force career. 

Dr. SNYDER. The Chairman’s Language and Regional Expertise Planning Instruction, CJCSI 3126.01, states that ‘‘[l]anguage skills and regional expertise are critical 

‘warfighting skills’ that are integral to joint operations.’’ Similarly, DOD Directive 

3126.01 states: ‘‘[i]t is DOD policy that: . . . Foreign language and regional expertise 

be considered critical competencies essential to the DoD mission and shall be managed to maximize the accession, development, maintenance, enhancement, and employment of these critical skills appropriate to the Department of Defense’s mission 

needs.’’ What is the significance of identifying these skills as critical warfighting 

skills or competencies in terms of organizing, training, and equipping the force? 

Please identify the other critical warfighting skills or competencies. Are language 

skills and regional expertise now considered to be on par with those other skills and 

competencies? 

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Language, Regional Expertise, and Culture (LREC) skills 

identification allows for planning and inclusion of this skill set in future operational 

plans and training priorities. Navy considers LREC to be critical warfighting competencies in the execution of the Maritime Strategy and for Theater Security Cooperation efforts. However, these competencies are not required for every member 

of the service. Given the nature of these skills, training and equipping the force in 

all three LREC areas would require sizeable investments in resources and time, and 

would exceed Navy’s needs. As indicated in our Language, Regional Expertise, and 

Culture Strategy, Navy’s vision and end state for these skills is: 

• Language fluency for some, but not all 

• Regional expertise for some, but not all 

• Cultural awareness for all 

To ensure LREC skills are appropriately prioritized and aligned with other critical 

warfighting skills, Navy has integrated LREC skills into the Navy Mission Essential 

Task List (NMETL) process. NMETs form the critical building blocks for Fleet training, aligning unit training tasks with essential Navy missions to support national 

strategy. NMETs have matured over the last several years, and have developed necessary specificity to assess training with appropriate conditions and standards. Language and cultural awareness proficiencies have been established as specific Navy 

Tactical Tasks, associated with appropriate Navy Mission Essential Tasks, with appropriate training being assigned to fulfill the task. This will make LREC skills essential, critical capabilities, aligned with appropriate Navy missions. NMETs have 

evolved over the last several years, and, by comparison, mission-essential language/ 

cultural awareness tasks are relatively new. Though mission essential LREC tasks 

are still evolving, they will be integrated into Navy missions where they are most 

critically needed. 

To deliver required LREC training, Navy created the Center for Language, Regional Expertise, and Culture (CLREC) in Pensacola, Florida, and funds the Naval 

Postgraduate School’s Regional Security Education Program which offers geographi-
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cally relevant instruction to Navy strike groups underway. This training is augmented by Navy Professional Military Education (PME), which provides additional 

regional and cultural content. Additionally, the Naval Postgraduate School’s Regional Security Education Program (RSEP) is an exceptional means for delivering 

tailored, regionally-focused education on political-military and culturally sensitive 

issues to deploying Naval forces. 

Language and regional expertise very much are on par with other critical 

warfighting skills and competencies, such as maritime security, sea control, logistics, and disaster response. For some occupations such as Foreign Area Officers, 

cryptolinguists, naval attaches, etc., language fluency and regional expertise are essential. For the majority of other Navy occupations, these skills are valuable but not 

absolutely necessary. Cultural awareness, however, is a required core competency 

for all. 

Dr. SNYDER. Since we are planning to employ general purpose forces to carry out 

irregular warfare missions like building partner capacity, conducting 

counterinsurgencies and stability operations—missions that have been traditionally 

conducted by special operations forces—should we be looking at the way special operations forces acquire and maintain their language, regional, and cultural skills as 

a model for doing the same with the general purpose forces? 

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Yes, but only for training relevant to the specific mission of 

the General Purpose Force (GPF). For example, a Navy Expeditionary Combat Command unit will receive intensive cultural awareness and language familiarity instruction prior to deployments during which it will engage foreign nationals. Depending upon the mission assigned, other GPF within the Navy (e.g. individual officers and Sailors augmenting select ground forces overseas) also might benefit from 

this training model. 

For the majority of the Navy GPF, however, this model would deliver more Language, Regional Expertise, and Culture (LREC) immersion than required by their 

missions. It also would compete with time needed to train in other mission-essential 

and combat-related skills. For example, the crew of a deploying submarine is unlikely to need intensive language training, but it certainly would benefit from basic 

cultural awareness instruction prior to foreign engagement. To optimize resources 

and maximize the training benefit, instruction must be tailored to the specific mission of the GPF. Navy does not simply promote a ‘‘one size fits all’’ response to 

LREC requirements related to Irregular Warfare (IW) missions. 

To facilitate multiple levels of training, Navy established in February 2006 the 

Center for LREC (CLREC) at the Center for Information Dominance in Pensacola, 

Florida. CLREC provides pre-deployment training solutions in language and culture. 

This includes country studies on Navy Knowledge Online (NKO) and Mobile Training Teams (MTTs). CLREC also provides Cross-Cultural Competency and Language 

Familiarization material, which are self-paced instructional programs available via 

NKO. 

Dr. SNYDER. Has the Language Roadmap or your Service’s strategy for foreign 

language, cultural awareness and regional expertise changed the way you are recruiting, aside from the heritage speakers program? Would someone with foreign 

language skills be considered preferable to someone without them, all other things 

being equal? Are individuals with language skills placed on career paths or do they 

receive assignments that use those skills? 

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Both the Defense Language Transformation Roadmap and 

the Navy Language, Regional Expertise, and Culture (LREC) Strategy put a premium on screening for foreign language skills in new accessions (officer, enlisted 

and civilian), but beyond Navy’s Heritage Recruiting Program, neither significantly 

altered the existing recruiting process. Navy’s compulsory screening of military recruits at all officer and enlisted accession points has resulted in visibility into the 

depth and breadth of foreign language skills in the Navy. Similarly, voluntary declarations of language skills across the Department of Navy civilian workforce have 

added another layer of potential linguistic capability. The information gathered is 

forwarded to the Navy Foreign Language Office (OPNAV N13F) for inclusion in a 

data base for analysis. 

There is no preference for individuals with language skills except when recruiting 

to those billets that have specific language requirements. Under most circumstances, language is not a key factor in recruiting because the majority of 

Navy’s annual recruiting requirement is for career fields with no language requirements. For example, the qualifications for a subsurface, surface, or aviation commission do not include language. On the other hand, foreign language would be viewed 

as a very positive attribute for a commission in naval intelligence or information 

warfare. In all cases, language ability is beneficial to the Navy, but it is of particular value in those occupations where it is likely be used. 
135 

Upon verification of language proficiency, candidates who qualify are informed 

about occupational fields in which their skills would be of particular value. For example, an enlisted prospect with strong language ability—and who desires to use 

the language skill—may be advised of ratings such as Hospital Corpsman, Storekeeper, or Master-at-Arms in which his or her linguistic skills are most likely to be 

exercised. It is important to note that in the vast majority of cases, Navy makes 

every attempt to place recruits into the career fields of their choosing. For example, 

a recruit with native Chinese language ability, but with extremely high math, 

science, and engineering skills, may opt for a highly technical occupation (such as 

advanced electronics) that does not require a language skill, but which is of equal 

value to the service. 

Dr. SNYDER. We know that there are established means for assessing levels of foreign language proficiency. How will you measure and assess cultural awareness proficiency? Please provide examples. 

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Until standards and guidelines are institutionalized within 

the Department of Defense (DoD), measuring cultural awareness proficiency will remain highly subjective and dependent on the knowledge and experience level of the 

instructor providing the training. Cultural awareness and regional area content are 

integral to our service academies (Naval Academy, Senior Enlisted Academy), reserve officer training programs, officer career training schools, recruit basic training, 

and Professional Military Education. Navy has established a Center of Excellence 

(CE) in Pensacola, Florida to oversee and standardize training and impart essential 

and mission-targeted cultural education to Sailors. The CE develops country and 

language familiarization packages and reviews Professional Military Education and 

Cultural and Regional Awareness Training for content. At the high end, the proficiency of Foreign Area Officers and other officers receiving in-resident instruction 

at war colleges is accounted for in degree transcripts. 

Navy continues to work to develop methods for assessment within the force while 

relying on the overall performance of maritime and humanitarian assistance operations as a barometer for the successful institutionalization of cultural awareness 

in Navy doctrine. Recent operations include humanitarian deployments of USNS 

MERCY and USNS COMFORT. When DoD institutionalized standards and methods 

are developed, Navy will move forward to implement them in order to more accurately measure proficiency levels. 

Dr. SNYDER. Lower level language capabilities are being more fully incorporated 

into the general force, yet the current testing is designed for language professionals, 

who have higher level language capabilities. How do you plan to evaluate language 

training provided to the general purpose forces? What measures or tests will be 

used? What challenges are associated with evaluating language capabilities for the 

general purpose force? 

Admiral HOLLOWAY. The preferred method for testing foreign language proficiency 

within the Navy is the Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) series of exams. 

When no DLPT exists for a particular language, the Defense Language Office (DLO) 

permits other types of tests on a case-by-case basis once they are certified for use 

by the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC). Navy has 

made a great effort to ensure the DLPT series of exams is available to the force 

at Navy College Offices and testing centers both in the United States and abroad. 

An additional component of the DLPT tests is the Oral Proficiency Interview 

(OPI) used to assess fluency in speaking and to infer listening ability in those cases 

where a certified test does not exist. The OPI is administered verbally in the target 

language. It is dynamic by nature in that the testing official, using his or her subjective judgment, adjusts the level of test difficulty in order to evaluate the appropriate 

level of language proficiency to assign. OPIs must be coordinated through the 

DLIFLC in Monterey, California, which then schedules one-on-one telephone calls 

between the examinee and a qualified instructor. DLIFLC uses its own faculty for 

many of the tests, but contracts State Department’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI) 

or the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) when required. Identifying qualified examiners—particularly in less commonly taught languages such as Akan, Twi, Baluchi—can be a problem. It also can prove difficult 

to coordinate a connection across multiple time-zones. 

Navy supports the current DLPT system, and in particular, the standards set by 

the latest revision, DLPT5. With that in mind, we remain open to other credible 

avenues for language proficiency evaluation in order to be ready to respond to the 

needs of our forward deployed operational forces. 

Dr. SNYDER. Will a unit’s readiness reporting include indicators reflecting its foreign language skills readiness and cultural awareness readiness? 

Admiral HOLLOWAY. In June 2007, Navy implemented a Mission Essential Task 

(MET) for cultural awareness. Execution and completion of this MET will be tracked 
136 

via the Defense Readiness Reporting System, Navy (DRRS–N) and will be part of 

individual unit readiness reporting. Language skills readiness is only captured at 

the unit level for the small number of commands, predominantly in the Navy Special Warfare and Cryptologic communities, which have discrete language Navy Enlisted Classifications (NECs). This impact enters the Personnel Figure of Merit 

(PFOM) calculation used to inform the capability-based MET assessment. Additionally, Navy employs COGNOS, a business intelligence tool, to collate authoritative 

manpower and personnel data sources to monitor the pool of individuals with cultural awareness and foreign language skills. 

In the future, a unit’s language readiness will be accessible through the Language 

Readiness Index functionality of the Defense Readiness Reporting System which 

currently is under development as part of the Defense Language Transformation 

Roadmap. 

Dr. SNYDER. Is foreign language proficiency a consideration for promotion outside 

of the linguist or foreign area officer career paths? Wouldn’t making some set level 

of foreign language ability a criterion for advancement to general or flag officer and 

senior non-commissioned officer create a pipeline for the future? 

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Foreign language proficiency currently is not a consideration 

for promotion outside of the linguist and Foreign Area Officer career paths. Precepts 

for promotion and selection boards do call out the value of foreign language or regional expertise acquired prior to or during a service member’s career, and they emphasize the utility of those skills to the nation’s Maritime Strategy. 

Foreign language ability clearly could be a valuable attribute in the overall skill 

set of Navy Flag Officers, but few Navy Flag Officer assignments require proficiency. The same is true for senior Non-Commissioned Officers outside the 

cryptologic community. Mandating minimum foreign language proficiency levels for 

some or all of Navy’s senior officers/enlisted force may yield greater aggregate linguistic capability for the force, but it would not create a pipeline or blueprint for 

future linguists. 

Navy has taken the following steps to infuse the officer corps with language skills: 

• Current promotion board precepts recognize language skill, cultural knowledge, 

and overseas experiences as critical competencies. 

• Navy Flag Officers en route duties overseas are offered language familiarity 

training and tutors. 

• The U.S. Naval Academy now requires four semesters of language for non-technical majors. New majors in Chinese and Arabic for the Class of 2010 have been 

instituted. 

• 20–25 Naval ROTC Scholarships now are dedicated to Regional Studies/Language. 

• In FY08 the Navy began purchasing 100 DLI Seats per year dedicated to nonFAO officer language training. 

Dr. SNYDER. How are you focusing assignments for the new FAOs, RAOs, RAS, 

PAS, and other regional experts to gain return on the investment and continue to 

develop their skills—will they get lost in the personnel system? 

Admiral HOLLOWAY. In September 2006, Navy established a Foreign Area Officer 

(FAO) restricted line community. The community support structure and leadership 

includes a Community Manager who is charged with oversight of FAO selections, 

professional development, and tracking of individual officer utilization, plus a Detailer who monitors individual FAO career growth and assigns him or her to a billet 

that will support both the individual’s career needs and the requirements of the 

Navy. This team of officers, backed by the Navy’s recently established Foreign Language Office, closely monitors individual FAOs career progression to ensure they are 

not lost in the system. 

Once trained and designated a FAO, the officer can expect to have the following 

nominal career path in order to continue to develop his or her professional skills: 

• First Assignment: Billet in the region/country of specialty requiring extensive 

use of recently acquired language skills and regional knowledge. 

• Second Assignment: Staff or in country billet focused on the region of specialty. 

The billet will require extensive regional expertise, may not call for extensive 

language skills. 

• Third Assignment: Billet in the region of specialty requiring use of language 

skills and extensive regional knowledge. 

Follow on assignments will vary depending upon the direction of the officer’s career development and the needs of the Navy, and could include such diverse assign-
137 

ments as senior staff officer, attache ́, military assist group, etc. The assignment is 

expected to focus on the region of specialty. 

Dr. SNYDER. The Chairman’s Language and Regional Expertise Planning Instruction, CJCSI 3126.01, states that ‘‘[l]anguage skills and regional expertise are critical 

‘warfighting skills’ that are integral to joint operations.’’ Similarly, DOD Directive 

3126.01 states: ‘‘[i]t is DOD policy that: . . . Foreign language and regional expertise 

be considered critical competencies essential to the DoD mission and shall be managed to maximize the accession, development, maintenance, enhancement, and employment of these critical skills appropriate to the Department of Defense’s mission 

needs.’’ What is the significance of identifying these skills as critical warfighting 

skills or competencies in terms of organizing, training, and equipping the force? 

Please identify the other critical warfighting skills or competencies. Are language 

skills and regional expertise now considered to be on par with those other skills and 

competencies? 

General LAKE. The significance of identifying language and cultural skills as critical competencies was essential in bringing about foundational transformation in the 

Department of Defense. By placing this statement in policy, it clearly informed DoD 

planners that they must consider these skills as they determine how to meet the 

post-9/11 challenges faced by the DoD today. The Defense Language Program has 

often cited this policy statement during drafting of doctrine, organization, training, 

materiel, leadership and education, personnel, and facilities (DOTMLPF) needed to 

conduct Irregular Warfare. As such, language and culture are recognized as critical 

warfighting competencies and embedded into longstanding DoD policy. 

Today’s operations increasingly require our forces to operate with coalition and alliance partners and interact with foreign populations in a variety of regions, with 

diverse languages and cultures. Given the focus on regional populations rather than 

opposing organized military forces, language and culture emerge as key enablers for 

success. Lessons learned have proven that appropriate foreign language skills and 

cultural awareness lead to fewer combat actions and reduced impact on the local 

populace. This in turn enhances good will which directly benefits forces engaged in 

Irregular Warfare operations. 

The 34th Commandant of the Marine Corps, in his The Long War concept has 

identified four foundations of Marine Corps operations. These are 

• Leadership and Professionalism 

• Maneuver Warfare 

• Task Organized, Combined Arms Capable, Multi-purpose Marines 

• Cultural Awareness 

Marines who are culturally and linguistically adept provide a significant force enabler to the Combatant Commander. Failure to understand the critical importance 

of culture and language in establishing and maintaining foreign relationships can 

significantly hamper Irregular Warfare efforts. To instill greater cultural awareness 

across the Marine Corps and build the linguistic capabilities of individual Marines, 

emphasis has been placed on culture and language training through mandatory predeployment training. Like the other critical warfighting skills, language and culture 

skills are assessed during the capstone Mission Rehearsal Exercises prior to deployment. Required pre-deployment training and assessment highlight the importance 

of ensuring units have these critical warfighting skills prior to operational deployment to the respective areas of operation. 

Dr. SNYDER. Since we are planning to employ general purpose forces to carry out 

irregular warfare missions like building partner capacity, conducting 

counterinsurgencies and stability operations—missions that have been traditionally 

conducted by special operations forces—should we be looking at the way special operations forces acquire and maintain their language, regional, and cultural skills as 

a model for doing the same with the general purpose forces? 

General LAKE. Areas of deployment are one of the main differences between Special Operations Forces and General Purpose Forces. As a general rule, Special Operations Forces operate in specified regions of the world while General Purpose Forces 

can be deployed globally at any time. Unlike the ‘‘traditional’’ warfighting skills, 

language, regional and cultural training can only be conducted once the region of 

deployment is determined. Lessons learned from regionally-focused Special Operations Forces can be carried over to the General Purpose Forces to enhance lesson 

plans for potential deployments. 

The Marine Corps does not currently assign geographic regions to operating force 

units. However, recognizing that Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has a tremendously successful program for language and culture training, we maintain a 

working level relationship with the SOCOM Language Office (SOFLO) in addition 
138 

to the other service, DoD and US Gov agencies that provide and coordinate language and cultural training. Given that, it is important to understand that Marine 

Corps general purpose forces are not required to maintain language proficiency levels of that of SOCOM forces, nor that of personnel designated to maintain proficiency in a foreign language. The Marine Corps will continue to leverage other 

agency methods and models to improve the training curricula for language and cultural skills. As briefed during the hearing on 10 September 2008, the Marine Corps 

Career Marine Regional Studies program is applicable to the career force of Marines, both active and reserve, as is the current model of training and educating the 

total career force of Marines in regional cultural expertise and language skills. 

Dr. SNYDER. Has the Language Roadmap or your Service’s strategy for foreign 

language, cultural awareness and regional expertise changed the way you are recruiting, aside from the heritage speakers program? Would someone with foreign 

language skills be considered preferable to someone without them, all other things 

being equal? Are individuals with language skills placed on career paths or do they 

receive assignments that use those skills? 

General LAKE. The Marine Corps welcomes officer candidates that possess foreign 

language skills; however, it is not a requirement or a determinate factor in receiving 

a commission. In an effort to increase the number of accessions assigned to the DC/ 

E8 Cryptolinguist program, our Recruiting Command increased the enlistment incentive bonus from $4,000 in FY07 to $15,000 in FY08; the FY09 bonus will increase 

to $25,000, the highest bonus of all programs that we offer. In FY07, we recruited 

232 individuals under the DC/E6 ($4,000) program; so far this year we have recruited 217 individuals under the DC/E8 ($15,000) program. We have also enlisted 

82 more DD (intelligence) personnel in FY08 compared to FY07. 

Recruiters are trained to ask if the applicant speaks or writes a foreign language 

(self-professed; no proof or testing required) and capture that result on the DD1966 

Block 13 with 1st and 2nd language (using DoD Language Codes). Marine Corps 

recruiters have no way to gauge foreign language proficiency, therefore applicants 

who admit to a self-professed foreign language skill are not considered preferable 

when applying to enlist. On officer applicants, providing proof of proficiency, i.e. college course study, transcripts, degree, etc., is considered a positive attribute during 

the selection process. 

Enlisted Marines who obtain a primary MOS requiring a foreign language (26XX) 

are placed on specific career paths to use their language skills. Enlisted Marines 

may also obtain an additional language skill designator if they qualify, but are not 

assigned language-required billets. The intent for these Marines is to provide interpreter capability to units. 

Dr. SNYDER. We know that there are established means for assessing levels of foreign language proficiency. How will you measure and assess cultural awareness proficiency? Please provide examples. 

General LAKE. We are in the initial stages of developing the process to measure 

and assess cultural awareness proficiency as part of a larger effort to define the 

need for regional and cultural competence in sufficient detail to provide personnel 

with the mission-critical knowledge and skills they need to meet mission requirements. We are working on the five action items listed in our October 2007 White 

Paper, DoD Regional and Cultural Capabilities—The Way Ahead, that ensure we 

have a coordinated and comprehensive approach to integrate regional and cultural 

competencies all the other competencies needed in the Total Force. 

The five action items are: 1) Build a DoD Regional and Cultural Capabilities Strategic Plan; 2) Establish common terminology and a typology for identifying, developing, measuring, and managing regional and cultural capabilities; 3) Define and 

prioritize the Department’s strategic and operational demands for regional and cultural capabilities; 4) Operationalize the Department’s regional and cultural needs; 

5) Partner with the public and private sectors in solutions. 

The Marine Corps looks forward to future DoD-developed cultural awareness proficiency measurement and assessment policy. Until then, the Marine Corps will continue to adhere to Service-level cultural awareness and language proficiency pre-deployment assessment criteria and conduct assessments during the Mission Rehearsal Exercises prior to operational deployment. As Marine units take part in 

operational scenarios and navigate the ‘‘lanes’’ of the Mission Rehearsal Exercise, 

the Center for Advanced Operational Cultural Learning (CAOCL) evaluates individual Marines and the unit on six culture and communication skill areas. As an 

example, unit leaders are evaluated on Key Leadership Engagement, with points of 

observation such as ‘frequency of engagement’, ‘greetings and pleasantries’, and the 

‘conduct of meetings’. These skills and assessment areas are tailored to the culture 

of the region to which the unit will be deployed. Other evaluated topics include 

Communication, Managing Perceptions, Cultural Respect, Understanding Human 
139 

Terrain and Use of an Interpreter. This Service-level assessment ensures 

warfighters possess the region-specific culture and language skills to maximize the 

full potential of Marines prosecuting joint missions. 

Dr. SNYDER. Lower level language capabilities are being more fully incorporated 

into the general force, yet the current testing is designed for language professionals, 

who have higher level language capabilities. How do you plan to evaluate language 

training provided to the general purpose forces? What measures or tests will be 

used? What challenges are associated with evaluating language capabilities for the 

general purpose force? 

General LAKE. There is no minimum standard for language proficiency in the general purpose forces (GPF). The language training that is being provided for the GPF 

is introductory training and/or survival level skills. 

There is, however, a small percentage of the GPF (20 Marines per year) that receive comprehensive training via the Defense Language Institute (DLI) as a reenlistment incentive. As with all graduates of DLI, those Marines are tested with the 

Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT). 

All Marines who self profess a foreign language capability are encouraged to take 

the DLPT. According to DLI, the DLPT 5, the current DoD test of record for most 

languages, is not an accurate evaluation mechanism for Interagency Language 

Roundtable (ILR) sub 2 levels. For those Marines that believe they are sub 2, we 

encourage the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) as a means to accurately identify 

their skill level. Additionally, USSOCOM is currently working with OUSD to develop tests that accurately evaluate the lower levels of proficiency (ILR sub 2) and 

increase the availability of OPIs for ILR sub 2/2 service members. As those efforts 

mature, the Marine Corps will look to leverage those tests. 

As an incentive to involve more Marines in language training, the Director of Intelligence, in his capacity as Senior Language Authority (SLA), updated the Marine 

Corps order on Foreign Language Proficiency Pay (FLPP) to include payment of 

tested language skills for all MOSs. Prior to this, only Marines in the Intel and Foreign Area Officer (FAO) MOSs were authorized FLPP. Additionally, we are now paying GWOT languages at the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) 1/1 level rather than at the previous minimum of 2/2. As we continue to achieve goals outlined 

in the DoD Language Transformation Roadmap and to emphasize regional and language expertise within our general purpose forces, we expect increasing numbers of 

Marines to gain with language capabilities for which they will rate FLPP. Additionally, language learning is now required within certain ROTC and Service Academy 

programs. Most of the officers who successfully complete these programs test at a 

minimum 1/1 level in GWOT languages, rendering them eligible for FLPP. 

With the upcoming implementation of other culture and language initiatives such 

as the Career Marine Regional Studies program and the uploading of Rosetta Stone 

onto Marine Net, we expect additional Marines to test and gain eligibility for FLPP. 

Dr. SNYDER. Will a unit’s readiness reporting include indicators reflecting its foreign language skills readiness and cultural awareness readiness? 

General LAKE. No. The present readiness reporting system of record, the Global 

Status of Resources and Training System (GSORTS), does not contain indicators for 

those. The Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS), which is under development, does not have indicators that would summarize a unit’s readiness in those 

areas either. DRRS will have the ability to drill down into a unit’s personnel records 

to find data on personnel with foreign language skills, but there is nothing for cultural awareness. DRRS will gather its personnel foreign language skill data from 

Service authoritative data sources. Presently, the pulls from those authoritative 

data sources are not: web enabled, validated, or tested. 

Dr. SNYDER. Is foreign language proficiency a consideration for promotion outside 

of the linguist or foreign area officer career paths? Wouldn’t making some set level 

of foreign language ability a criterion for advancement to general or flag officer and 

senior non-commissioned officer create a pipeline for the future? 

General LAKE. No. The best and most qualified Marine Officers are selected for 

promotion regardless of MOS or language skills. It would be a mistake to make a 

set level of foreign language capability a requirement for GO/SNCO. 

More requirements or restrictions would limit the eligible populations to be considered for selection. Furthermore, setting a foreign language skill requirement for 

promotion would require all officers be afforded the chance to meet the requirement. 

We would be mandated to provide time off to every single officer in order to both 

learn and maintain a foreign language, which would negatively impact time needed 

for other vital skills. 

Dr. SNYDER. How are you focusing assignments for the new FAOs, RAOs, RAS, 

PAS, and other regional experts to gain return on the investment and continue to 

develop their skills—will they get lost in the personnel system? 
140 

General LAKE. The careers of Marine FAOs/RAOs are closely managed to ensure 

a balance of operational time in their primary MOSs with utilization tours in assignments that maximize a return on their FAO/RAO skills and progressively expand their expertise. Ideally, a FAO/RAO will serve as an attache ́ or Security Assistance Officer as an O–4/O–5, then, after a tour back in the operating forces, as 

the J–5/G–5 in a COCOM or Marine Component Command (MARFOR) as an O– 

6. There are, of course, many possible variations to this paradigm, but the idea of 

FAO/RAO billets increasing in responsibility and scope with increased rank and experience is key to continued development. 

Furthermore, when serving operational tours in their primary MOSs, every effort 

is made to ensure that FAOs/RAOs are assigned to units with an operational orientation toward their region of expertise. In this way, their FAO/RAO skills can be 

leveraged by Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) commanders even when they are 

not serving in a FAO/RAO billet. 

Finally, various pilot programs to ensure skill sustainment for FAOs/RAOs, especially when they are not serving in a FAO/RAO billet, are under development to ensure those skills do not atrophy. 

Dr. SNYDER. The Chairman’s Language and Regional Expertise Planning Instruction, CJCSI 3126.01, states that ‘‘[l]anguage skills and regional expertise are critical 

‘warfighting skills’ that are integral to joint operations.’’ Similarly, DOD Directive 

3126.01 states: ‘‘[i]t is DOD policy that: . . . Foreign language and regional expertise 

be considered critical competencies essential to the DoD mission and shall be managed to maximize the accession, development, maintenance, enhancement, and employment of these critical skills appropriate to the Department of Defense’s mission 

needs.’’ What is the significance of identifying these skills as critical warfighting 

skills or competencies in terms of organizing, training, and equipping the force? 

Please identify the other critical warfighting skills or competencies. Are language 

skills and regional expertise now considered to be on par with those other skills and 

competencies? 

General PATTON. Identification of language and regional expertise as critical skills 

is the bedrock of transformational efforts. It ensures that the lessons learned from 

our current engagements are not lost and imbeds within the strategic guidance. 

DOD guidance directs its components to increase foreign language skills and cultural capability by identifying and training personnel with high aptitude for learning foreign languages, as well as military personnel who conduct irregular warfare, 

perform stability operations, work with coalition partners or are involved in training 

and advising missions. 

The Joint Staff has worked to incorporate language and regional expertise into 

an OSD strategic guidance and the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP), published in March 2008. The guidance provides strategic planning guidance and identifies foreign language for U.S. forces and English skills for allies as being important 

to security cooperation and campaign planning. It also reinforces the importance of 

language skills and regional expertise in regard to general purpose forces (GPF) and 

special operations forces (SOF). The JSCP implements this guidance and requires 

commanders to identify and prioritize language and regional expertise requirements 

critical to successful execution of their plans. In response to this guidance we expect 

that the combatant commands will identify increased requirements for language and 

culture as they plan for future engagements. 

Critical warfighting skills vary by career field, unit type and mission. Language 

skills are critical warfighting competencies for intelligence, special operations forces 

and Foreign Area Officers, but they are enabling skills for others. A foreign language capability is not essential for aircraft repair or bridge construction, but it 

could enable communication, particularly for those service members involved in stability operations, negotiations or training and advising missions. 

Dr. SNYDER. Since we are planning to employ general purpose forces to carry out 

irregular warfare missions like building partner capacity, conducting 

counterinsurgencies and stability operations—missions that have been traditionally 

conducted by special operations forces—should we be looking at the way special operations forces acquire and maintain their language, regional, and cultural skills as 

a model for doing the same with the general purpose forces? 

General PATTON. The Joint Operating Concept (JOC) for Irregular Warfare (IW) 

signed by Secretary Gates in September 2007, states that executing IW campaigns 

will increasingly require the GPF to perform missions that in the last few decades 

have been primarily special operations forces activities. Language and regional expertise have traditionally been critical skills for special operations forces, but to engage in IW GPF personnel will need cultural and language training for the operational areas to which they will deploy. It is envisioned that these forces will be able 

to communicate the strategic message and that increased interaction abroad is an 
141 

opportunity to gain area familiarization and gather useful information about potential operational areas. Building partnership capacity will require the GPF to have 

a greater degree of language and cultural instruction. 

It is essential that we maintain some balance between the need to expand IW 

mission capability and while ensuring that GPF remain prepared for the full spectrum of warfare. Special Forces model for all GPF could jeopardize other critical 

training time needed to ensure competency in traditional and non-traditional roles. 

This issue requires additional study. 

Dr. SNYDER. Has the Language Roadmap or your Service’s strategy for foreign 

language, cultural awareness and regional expertise changed the way you are recruiting, aside from the heritage speakers program? Would someone with foreign 

language skills be considered preferable to someone without them, all other things 

being equal? Are individuals with language skills placed on career paths or do they 

receive assignments that use those skills? 

General PATTON. The Services continue to recruit based on their manpower requirements. The Defense Language Transformation Roadmap hasn’t changed recruiting, but it has led to identification of self-professed language capability when 

recruits are assessed. I defer to the Services to make any additional comments. 

Dr. SNYDER. We know that there are established means for assessing levels of foreign language proficiency. How will you measure and assess cultural awareness proficiency? Please provide examples. 

General PATTON. OSD published regional proficiency skill level guidelines in DOD 

Instruction 5160.70 and the Joint Staff has published military planning guidance 

for regional expertise levels in the CJCSI 3126.01, ‘‘Language and Regional Expertise Planning’’. OSD has begun addressing how to measure and assess cultural 

awareness proficiency. The Joint Staff will participate with the Services and OSD 

on this effort and coordinate with combatant commands as needed. 

Dr. SNYDER. Lower level language capabilities are being more fully incorporated 

into the general force, yet the current testing is designed for language professionals, 

who have higher level language capabilities. How do you plan to evaluate language 

training provided to the general purpose forces? What measures or tests will be 

used? What challenges are associated with evaluating language capabilities for the 

general purpose force? 

General PATTON. The Defense Language Proficiency (DLPT) 5 and the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) are the two currently available testing methodologies. 

DLPT5s are available either in a lower-range test that gives scores from 0+ to 3 

on the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) scale, or in an upper-range test that 

gives scores from 3 to 4 on the ILR. Some languages have only a lower-range test; 

some have only an upper-range test; and some have both. The OPI usually differentiates listening and speaking skills up to level 2 on the ILR. When addressing lower 

level testing for general purpose forces the large number of people to be tested poses 

one challenge. Determining the best content and methodology are two other challenges. This is an issue that must be addressed in the next phase of language transformation. 

Dr. SNYDER. Will a unit’s readiness reporting include indicators reflecting its foreign language skills readiness and cultural awareness readiness? 

General PATTON. The Department readiness reporting systems currently have the 

capability of assessing language skill readiness, but only if the unit has a designed 

language requirement. Unit reporting in the Global Status of Resources and Training (GSORTS) measures the personnel, equipment and training readiness of a unit. 

If a unit has a language requirement deemed a critical skill, the unit’s language status would be captured in GSORTS metrics (or commander comments to the report). 

If there is no specified requirement, language is not considered a readiness metric. 

Language and cultural awareness readiness for general purpose force units is difficult to measure until the unit’s mission and destination are known. Once they 

know where they are going, the unit can refine training and readiness assessments 

in accordance with the operational area. 

As the Department migrates to OSD’s Defense Readiness Reporting System 

(DRRS), the Language Readiness Index (LRI) which is integrated into DRRS will 

be able to pull personnel data for each unit from Service authoritative data sources. 

Data will include unit members by name and language skills (if any). The combination of DRRS and LRI will enable assessment of a unit’s language readiness as well 

as a Services-wide search for specific language capability. LRI will also be used to 

compare regional expertise requirements with a unit’s capability. 

Dr. SNYDER. Is foreign language proficiency a consideration for promotion outside 

of the linguist or foreign area officer career paths? Wouldn’t making some set level 

of foreign language ability a criterion for advancement to general or flag officer and 

senior non-commissioned officer create a pipeline for the future? 
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General PATTON. The Deputy Secretary of Defense asked the Departments to review promotion board precepts to ensure that language and cultural awareness are 

valued attributes. This will particularly help shape the future senior officer corps. 

Officers pay close attention to what is expected of them and those who aspire to the 

higher grades will ensure that they develop the right skills. 

The Services have expanded both the availability of foreign language education 

and opportunities for immersion at their academies. They have also added established language requirements for graduation. These changes will shape the future 

senior leaders. 

The Joint Staff has made cultural awareness a Joint Professional Military Education (PME) requirement for Primary, Intermediate and Senior levels of education 

and published appropriate policy. A soon to be published update to Enlisted PME 

Policy includes a greater focus on cultural awareness in the E–6 and above courses. 

These PME standards will also shape the skills of senior officer and enlisted leaders. While relatively few general officer or flag officer assignments require language 

expertise, we are shaping the pool of future senior leaders. 

Dr. SNYDER. What are DOD’s plans for developing Phase II of the Roadmap (The 

Way Forward)? To what extent will this Phase II incorporate key elements of strategic planning, such as strategic goals and implementation tasks based on a needs 

analysis, linkage of these goals and tasks to funding, and metrics to assess 

progress? 

General PATTON. OSD is leading the development of goals, objectives and tasks 

for Phase II of the Roadmap. One issue that we must address is linking requirements identified in plans to how the Services build language capacity. Another important issue is addressing the need to test language skills at the lower levels. The 

Joint Staff is working collaboratively with other members of the Defense Language 

Steering Committee in developing the way ahead. OSD expects to have the plan 

completed by Spring 2009. 

Dr. SNYDER. Shouldn’t certain positions, like combatant commanders, their staffs, 

and Joint Staff positions, require some foreign language skills and regional expertise? Who, today, in those organizations would typically be required to have those 

kinds of skills and background? 

General PATTON. Select combatant command and Joint Staff positions do require 

regional expertise. Today, there are Foreign Area Officers (FAOs) within the combatant commands and on the Joint Staff. These officers provide professional level 

language and regional expertise skills. We currently have 28 FAO billets on the 

Joint Staff. They are utilized primarily for their regional expertise in the Strategic 

Plans and Policy Directorate. This total doesn’t include the J–2 whose report is sent 

through DIA. Recognizing the value that FAOs bring to the strategic environment, 

the combatant commands are increasing their requirements for FAOs. In FY 07 

there were a total of 294 FAO positions in the combatant commands; this total is 

projected to grow by 21 percent over the FYDP to 357 billets. 

Senior leadership should also have some level of regional expertise wherever they 

are assigned. Looking at the broader context of qualifications for general and flag 

officers, effective 1 October 2008, designation as a joint qualified officer became an 

active duty requirement for promotion to flag or general officer. To earn that qualification, an officer must have completed both phases of Joint Professional Military 

Education (JPME) and have a joint duty assignment. 

JPME policy requires completion of specific learning objectives that ensure senior 

officers understand key cultural differences and their implications for interacting 

with people from a culture. JPME expects leaders to be able to apply an analytical 

framework that incorporates the role that factors such as geopolitics, geostrategy, 

society, culture and religion play in shaping the desired outcomes of policies, strategies and campaigns in the joint, interagency, and multinational arena. 

Officers who want to be competitive know that they must complete JPME. These 

requirements will shape the pool of senior officers, while not restricting the pool of 

officers eligible to fill joint billets. Foreign language skills are not critical to most 

combatant command billets, Leadership ability and experience are paramount, while 

language skills would be value added. 

Dr. SNYDER. The Chairman’s Language and Regional Expertise Planning Instruction, CJCSI 3126.01, states that ‘‘[l]anguage skills and regional expertise are critical 

‘warfighting skills’ that are integral to joint operations.’’ Similarly, DOD Directive 

3126.01 states: ‘‘[i]t is DOD policy that: . . . Foreign language and regional expertise 

be considered critical competencies essential to the DoD mission and shall be managed to maximize the accession, development, maintenance, enhancement, and employment of these critical skills appropriate to the Department of Defense’s mission 

needs.’’ What is the significance of identifying these skills as critical warfighting 
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skills or competencies in terms of organizing, training, and equipping the force? 

Please identify the other critical warfighting skills or competencies. Are language 

skills and regional expertise now considered to be on par with those other skills and 

competencies? 

Mrs. MCGINN. The DoD Directive you are referencing is DoDD 5160.41E, not 

DoDD 3126.01. The publication of DoD Directive 5160.41E, Defense Language Program, in October 2005, was a landmark update of defense language policy that had 

not been updated since 1988. To my knowledge, this is the first time that the Department identified foreign language and regional expertise as skills critical to our 

DoD missions, and it was an essential first step in our overall transformation. The 

language in the Directive was broadly agreed to in the Department and reinforced 

in the deliberations and publication of the Quadrennial Defense Review and subsequent policy documents. Other critical competencies are determined by the Military 

Departments in consideration of their individual mission requirements. 

The significance of identifying language and cultural skills as critical competencies has been reflected in the initiation and subsequent growth of the 09L interpreter/translator program in the Army; heritage recruiting programs initiated by 

the other Departments; increased language instruction for officers pre-accession; 

growth of language translation and interpretation technology; broad expansion of 

pre-deployment training; incorporation of regional, cultural, and some language 

training into professional military education; and the improvements in foreign language proficiency pay to incentivize language learning and sustainment. It is also 

reflected in the groundbreaking action to conduct a self-assessment to determine potential language capability in the force, through which we have identified over 

217,200 members who profess to have proficiency in a language of strategic interest 

to the Department. The growth of our joint Foreign Area Officer programs is also 

reflective of the acknowledgement of the strategic importance of these skills. 

Dr. SNYDER. Since we are planning to employ general purpose forces to carry out 

irregular warfare missions like building partner capacity, conducting 

counterinsurgencies and stability operations—missions that have been traditionally 

conducted by special operations forces—should we be looking at the way special operations forces acquire and maintain their language, regional, and cultural skills as 

a model for doing the same with the general purpose forces? 

Mrs. MCGINN. While there are lessons to be learned from the special operations 

approach, area of deployment is one of the main differences between Special Operations Forces and General Purpose Forces. As a general rule, Special Operations 

Forces operate in a specified region of the world, whereas General Purpose Forces 

could potentially be deployed anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice. Unlike 

‘‘traditional’’ war fighting skills, language, regional, and cultural training for these 

forces need to be completed after the area of deployment is determined. One of the 

transformational changes reflected in Department of Defense Directive 5160.41E requires as policy that ‘‘military units deploying to, or in transit through, foreign territories shall be equipped, to the greatest extent practicable, with an appropriate capability to communicate in the languages of the territories of deployment or transit.’’ 

We have created pre-deployment materials and deployed mobile training teams 

through the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. The Military 

Services have also established tailored pre-deployment training. The Special Operations Command Senior Language Authority participates in the Defense Language 

Steering Committee and is part of our deliberations on foreign language needs. 

Through that forum, we can discover lessons learned from the Special Operations 

Forces to help inform future efforts for the General Purpose Forces. 

Dr. SNYDER. Has the Language Roadmap or your Service’s strategy for foreign 

language, cultural awareness and regional expertise changed the way you are recruiting, aside from the heritage speakers program? Would someone with foreign 

language skills be considered preferable to someone without them, all other things 

being equal? Are individuals with language skills placed on career paths or do they 

receive assignments that use those skills? 

Mrs. MCGINN. All Services continue to recruit to their requirements. However, the 

Defense Language Transformation Roadmap has affected the processes employed. 

For example, the Services now screen newly accessed personnel for language skills. 

These are entered into the Defense Manpower Data Center database for tracking 

purposes. The Defense Language Aptitude Battery is more widely used to determine 

which recruits have the aptitude to learn the more difficult languages. Officers, especially, are now more likely to enter service with language skills due to the improved course offerings in their commissioning programs. This provides opportunities for individuals to leverage skills while in the performance of their core duties 

and perhaps position themselves for admission into the Services’ Foreign Area Officer programs. 
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Individuals recruited for language skills are normally recruited for the specialties 

that require those skills, such as cryptologic linguists. These specialties have clear 

career paths and personnel who qualify (attain the necessary language proficiency) 

serve in specific unit manning document positions. These Service members are 

trained in the language at Department of Defense schools, and then moved to their 

units of assignment to begin their duties and increase their skill levels to professional level. 

Dr. SNYDER. We know that there are established means for assessing levels of foreign language proficiency. How will you measure and assess cultural awareness proficiency? Please provide examples. 

Mrs. MCGINN. We are in the initial stages of developing the process to measure 

and assess cultural proficiency. This is a part of a larger effort to define the need 

for regional and cultural competence in sufficient detail to provide personnel with 

the mission-critical knowledge and skills they need to meet mission requirements. 

We are working on the five action items listed in our October 2007 White Paper, 

‘‘DoD Regional and Cultural Capabilities—The Way Ahead,’’ that are designed to ensure we have a coordinated and comprehensive approach to integrate regional and 

cultural competencies into all the other competencies needed in the Total Force. 

The five action items are: 1) Build a Department of Defense (DoD) Regional and 

Cultural Capabilities Strategic Plan; 2) establish common terminology and a typology for identifying, developing, measuring, and managing regional and cultural capabilities; 3) Define and prioritize the Department’s strategic and operational demands for regional and cultural capabilities; 4) Operationalize the Department’s regional and cultural needs; and, 5) Partner with the public and private sectors in solutions. 

In September of this year, we conducted a cross-cultural roundtable discussion 

that included experts from business and academia. This roundtable addressed the 

second and the fifth goals of the White Paper. The roundtable provided the forum 

for the presentation, discussion, and debate on the issues surrounding cross-cultural 

and inter-cultural communications. The roundtable provided an opportunity for participants to exchange ideas and best practices and identify potential areas of cooperation that will help us move from theory to practice. 

The roundtable was a multi-disciplinary partnership between government, academia, and the private sector and sought to further our understanding of cross-cultural communication in a globalized world. The roundtable included three working 

groups who presented information and their insights on what constitutes cross-cultural communication, why it is important in today’s world, and how best to lay the 

foundation for building, sustaining, and training cross-cultural competency. The discussions that followed each presentation were rich with personal insights and experiences, candid comments, and lively exchanges with a solid balance of theoreticians 

and practitioners. We met the roundtable objectives, but we know that we still have 

a long road ahead of us. This cross-sector discussion has been an important first 

step. The Department is going to continue this comprehensive and cooperative joining of government, academia, and the private sector to guarantee future successes. 

Defining cross-cultural communication is a new discipline for academia as well as 

for DoD and we recognize that more work needs to be done and will continue this 

collaboration. 

In February of this year, we formed the Defense Regional and Cultural Capabilities Assessment Working Group to address, in detail, the second goal of the White 

Paper. Three sub-working groups are looking at how to: 

1. Develop definitions and terms of reference for language capabilities, regional 

capabilities (both global and culture-specific competencies), and cultural capabilities (to include country, region, and transformational). 

2. Develop global cross-cultural developmental and assessment models for all 

military and civilians that identify cross-cultural competencies at key accession 

points and leadership/management levels; and develop a set of macro-learning 

objectives for these cross-cultural competencies that are aligned with official 

DoD definitions for language, regional, and cultural capabilities; and 

3. Develop a professional development and assessment model for Defense-wide 

area ‘‘area specialists,’’ e.g., Foreign Area Officers, Intelligence and Language 

Analysts, etc., that provides a flexible, multi-disciplinary, systematic framework for identifying, assessing, and tracking area specialists in support of a 

mission-driven, enterprise-wide human capital management process. 

The working groups are making progress and will provide updates to the Defense 

Language Steering Committee. 
145 

Dr. SNYDER. Lower level language capabilities are being more fully incorporated 

into the general force, yet the current testing is designed for language professionals, 

who have higher level language capabilities. How do you plan to evaluate language 

training provided to the general purpose forces? What measures or tests will be 

used? What challenges are associated with evaluating language capabilities for the 

general purpose force? 

Mrs. MCGINN. Appropriate end-of-course tests are developed for the courses of 

training that Service members currently attend. The Services are also developing 

performance-based tests for follow-on assessment at the lower skill levels. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center is working on an Oral Proficiency Interview (computerized) that will be used to test proficiency at the lower 

skill levels. As Service members increase their language proficiency, they will be 

able to take the standard language proficiency tests. Language training in the General Purpose Forces must be relevant to the unit mission, the tasks Service members must perform, and the conditions under which they will perform them. The 

broad range of unit missions in the General Purpose Forces continues to make pertinent language training evaluation challenging. 

Dr. SNYDER. Will a unit’s readiness reporting include indicators reflecting its foreign language skills readiness and cultural awareness readiness? 

Mrs. MCGINN. Some units’ readiness might include indicators reflecting its foreign 

language readiness. Although cultural awareness is provided to all personnel prior 

to deployment, it is not currently reported as part of a unit’s readiness. With language and culture identified as key capabilities, we must be able to identify, capture, and document the language and culture capabilities of the Total Force and 

match those against the requirements to determine risk. It is imperative to know 

what resources are available and have the ability to match them against Department of Defense (DoD) Agencies, Combatant Commands, and the Services requirements quickly and precisely. The Language Readiness Index (LRI) is a tool created 

to measure the percent of operational and contingency needs that can be met with 

the projected inventory. 

The LRI is a direct result of the Defense Language Transformation Roadmap and 

will provide a wide array of management information to key personnel within the 

DoD Agencies, Combatant Commands, and the Services. It is not an assignment 

tool, rather it is designed to identify potential shortfalls in language capability so 

decision makers can assess risk and take appropriate action. The governing instructions for the LRI are contained in DoD Instruction 5160.70, ‘‘Management of DoD 

Language and Regional Proficiency Capabilities,’’ and in the Chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff Instruction 3126.01, ‘‘Language and Regional Expertise Planning.’’ 

Future spirals will include civilian data, a Cultural and Regional Awareness Module 

placeholder, a strategic plan on how to add language sources other than the military 

into the application, and new management reports. Additionally, it will be able to 

run various ‘‘what if ’’ scenarios against plans to determine language capability gaps. 

We have created the LRI as an application in the Defense Readiness Reporting 

System (DRRS). DRRS is the Department’s single readiness reporting system and 

will be able to track detailed information on forces, down to the individual level, and 

provide accurate, authoritative data. When complete, DRRS will consist of a network of applications, including the LRI, that provide force managers at all levels 

with the tools and information and ability to identify the gaps and assess the risks 

of conducting operations. 

Linking the LRI to DRRS ensures an integrated and synchronized approach to assessing Defense readiness across the Department. 

Dr. SNYDER. Is foreign language proficiency a consideration for promotion outside 

of the linguist or foreign area officer career paths? Wouldn’t making some set level 

of foreign language ability a criterion for advancement to general or flag officer and 

senior non-commissioned officer create a pipeline for the future? 

Mrs. MCGINN. The Defense Language Transformation Roadmap tasked the Military Departments to make foreign language ability a criterion for general officer/flag 

officer advancement. To help accomplish this, the Deputy Secretary of Defense published promotion board guidance for the Secretaries of the Military Departments. 

The guidance requests that the Military Departments review and revise promotion 

board precepts to ensure that language and cultural awareness, among other issues, 

receive the right degree of emphasis. 

To ensure a future pool of officers with these skills, each of the Service Academies 

has established foreign language course requirements, as outlined in my testimony. 

Senior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs also encourage enrollment in foreign language programs. This will lead to a broader pool of officers with foreign language skills for promotion and assignment considerations. 
146 

For the enlisted force, our recruits most often graduate from our nation’s public 

schools, which often do not include a mandate for foreign language study for high 

school graduation. The work we are doing with our Federal partners to improve and 

expand foreign language education in our nation’s schools is an attempt to broaden 

the base of foreign language competency in our forces. 

Dr. SNYDER. What are DOD’s plans for developing Phase II of the Roadmap (The 

Way Forward)? To what extent will this Phase II incorporate key elements of strategic planning, such as strategic goals and implementation tasks based on a needs 

analysis, linkage of these goals and tasks to funding, and metrics to assess 

progress? 

Mrs. MCGINN. As with the development of the original Defense Language Transformation Roadmap, our planning efforts for ‘‘Phase II’’ have begun with an understanding of our current environment through the validation or adjustment of the 

original Roadmap assumptions and goals. The resulting new or revised assumptions 

and goals will identify the tasks required to continue progress toward building language, culture, and regional proficiency capability in the Department. As with the 

current Roadmap, they will also form the basis for future budget requests. Metrics 

will be set to assess progress, as appropriate. 

Dr. SNYDER. Shouldn’t certain positions, like combatant commanders, their staffs, 

and Joint Staff positions, require some foreign language skills and regional expertise? Who, today, in those organizations would typically be required to have those 

kinds of skills and background? 

Mrs. MCGINN. The Joint Staff and the Combatant Commands (COCOMs) have 

Foreign Area Officer (FAO) billets, which require foreign language and regional expertise skills. FAOs are assigned as political-military officers, country/regional desk 

officers, liaison officers, and security assistance officers at the Joint Staff and 

COCOMs. According to the Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 Department of Defense Annual 

FAO Report, the COCOMs and Joint Staff have a total of 322 FAO billets, with 273 

of those filled. Over the Future Years Defense Program, FAO billets will increase 

20 percent, to 385 billets by FY 2014. 

In addition to their FAO personnel, the Air Force and Marine Corps have commissioned officers that have regional expertise but no foreign language skill. They are 

called political-military affairs strategists and regional affairs officers, respectively. 

These officers are assigned to the COCOMs and Service Component Commands and 

provide critical capability to the operating forces. 

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