Joint professional military education (JPME) must retain its focus or lose efficiency. Eliminating confusion is seen here as involving reestablishing clearly what the purpose of JPME is, updating what is needed to attain it, and reshaping JPME programs according to results. Time must be carefully allocated. Students should neither be rushed so they can return quickly to their units, nor should they be expected to complete the course requirements on their own time as they maintain full involvement with their units and missions. Making education an add-on to already full schedules compromises its quality and results in poor performance. Today’s security environment is complex and demanding, and decisionmakers need to see the broad picture. Accordingly, we reduce the quality of their educations at considerable risk.

The quality of Professional Military Education (PME) has risen to the point where, even though the congressional 2010 assessment of JPME largely ignored distance learning, online instruction has advanced beyond earlier correspondence programs that were neither interactive nor intellectually rigorous. Now interactive online technologies provide what has been missing with well crafted and intellectually engaging programs. The Air Command and Staff College online master’s program shows the potential of online courses to deliver quality graduate and required education. For sufficient numbers of officers and DOD civilians to become the optimal assets that are needed in a complex security environment, the PME apparatus has to escape the confines of resident education. Face-to-face interaction is conceded to be preferable, but resources are too thin to provide it to everyone. Current technology makes new forms of distance education an attractive option.

Security Force Assistance (SFA) involves combatant commands in training, equipping, and advising foreign militaries to solidify various regions and reduce the need for direct U.S. intervention. It also develops regional partners, enhances access, and assists with diplomatic initiatives. The value is tangible enough that scaling back could have direct operational consequences. Yet other security cooperation activities serve many of the same ends, and reducing the number of SFA engagements could greatly enhance the highest priority SFA missions. Moreover, despite the argument that SFA costs are lower than committing the Nation’s resources to combat, current fiscal realities call for reductions in every budget area, including SFA. So DOD’s global military-to-military effort must be integrated with overall U.S. efforts with nonessential endeavors cleared to make way for what is essential.