Consolidation of all War Colleges: Save Costs

The Department of Defense operates five special war colleges; US Army War College, Air War College, Naval War College, Marine Corps War College, and the National Defense University.

These colleges offer distance learning and in person curriculum for a select group of senior military officers each year with enrollment numbers in the few hundreds.

The operation and maintenance of five is redundant, costly, and the output and performance of these senior officers is not commensurate with the character and excellence expected by the American People.

In order to save costs, consolidate efforts, and improve the “joint warfighting” capabilities of our senior officers, these five war colleges should be condensed or consolidated into one .

No. Each branch of the military has a distinct different war-fighting function. They are not redundant. Land warfare, naval warfare, and air warfare, are distinctly different. The officers who serve in these branches must have their disparate professional focus to that the services can educate those who will be in higher level command and staff positions. Yes, there are joint operations, and there can be some cross pollination of education in this area, but this is just one facet. An Army officer of twenty years is not going to know anything about naval warfare, and vice-versa, so there is no redundancy in what is taught at these colleges. Leave them the way they have been. They are the cumulative expertise and wisdom of many generations of professional officers.

2 Likes

Thanks Harold, understood. I served for 33 years retiring as an O6 and spent time in Afghanistan and Iraq. The results speak for themselves.
Cut costs, consolidate, the current approach isn’t winning.

Theodore, I came on active duty in 1983, and still work for the Army after I retired. I too spent time in a lot of places in some of these wars. I have not seen an officer who graduated from the War College, or NDU, or other service college that did not know their branch profession. The results of these places of education are excellent. We have already cut the military “costs” drastically after the Cold War - remember the “peace dividend?” We have to have specialized education for the different services. It’s no different in that respect than the medical world; after basic education, they specialize. You don’t go to an eye doctor to treat arthritis, and you don’t put a naval officer in an armored brigade command position. They don’t know anything about it. These colleges are important for senior officer education in the respective branches.

good input, thanks harold!

1 Like

All the branch war colleges have students from other branches. I joined the Navy in June of '72 and my ‘A’ School, Quartermaster ‘A’ school (Navy QMs are navigators) for the East was at Newport, RI at the time, the home of the Naval War College.

I was changing to go swimming and a USAF officer just got out and we talked some when I told him my father was Retired USAF. I did not know of an air base near by, and asked where he was stationed. He was a student at the Naval War College. I have later seen articles from Navy Officers at the Air War College, and from Marines at the Army War College. So there is cross-pollination at the war colleges. The National Defense University (formerly the National War College) has students from all branches.

Of course, there are officers from the other services that get to attend another service’s schools, but they generally attend in the portions that are fairly generic in joint doctrine; the entire service course is not all joint material. Portions of it are branch specific. One course I attended that was purely joint was JPME-II – and that one I believe is the catch all for any officer who will have an assignment at a joint command. So there already is a joint for all course. Also, the earlier courses, at least in the Army, had some visiting officers from other branches for Captain (0-3) level pre-command, but here also they did not bring them in for the in the weeds branch specifics.