As the belief that developing human capital is the best hedge against constricting budgets and uncertainty gains traction, initiatives at the U.S. Army War College reflect the Chief of Staff's vision of a top-level intellectual rebirth. The school assessed its academic program and has pursued improvement under the rubrics of faculty, curriculum, students, and integration. Odierno's ideal is officers capable of abstract strategic thinking, and faculty are being challenged to upgrade through scholarship vice being merely good teachers while students will be subjected to greater rigor than the old pass-fail system and will have a wider array of activities they can prioritize en route to holistic development. Further effort will center on encouraging closer teamwork among the college's component organizations.

Partnership will be an enduring reality in the globally integrated setting the force will operate in. A Mission Partner Environment (MPE) will offset the often-damaging excessive exclusiveness of using only the Secure Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET) for warfighting, an operational framework that stymies combined efforts in the battlespace. The MPE paradigm proposes a mission network based on common standards, operational concepts, and tactics, techniques, and procedures among nations, commanders, and components for operations and warfighting, with information-sharing flowing naturally from effective command and control. MPE will contribute to the Chairman's vision of a globally integrated force that can arrive at the crisis scene with an MPE mindset enabling seamless work with allied, coalition, interagency, and intergovernmental partners

Centralized command, distributed control, and decentralized execution are not a break from history but rather an appropriate adjustment to today's economic conditions and varieties of conflict. Effective distributed control relies on clear articulation of intent and standing directions about when and how actions should be undertaken. Most essential in conflicts involving the air instrument will be "the ingenuity, aggressiveness, and fighting spirit of our Airmen." Distributed control could be intentional or it could be an adaptation to enemy measures, but either case demands a force that is capable of prevailing in contested environments and empowered with doctrine and practices that ensure that our Airmen will not be frustrated by asymmetric attacks on our command and control architecture or leadership nodes.