Irregular Warfare: Impact on Future Professional Military Education

Current feedback from ongoing operations within Afghanistan and Iraq demands that the United States Army must take near term action in order to enhance the war fighting ability of its officer corps to operate effectively in an irregular warfare environment. The utility of a decisive war between nation states continues to decline and will eventually reach critical mass based upon the extreme imbalance of military power and a U.S. monopoly. While the likelihood of a major conflict decreases conflict itself promises to increase over the next 25 years with threats that are more diffuse harder to anticipate and more difficult to neutralize than ever before. Based upon this new and emerging threat we must retool our Professional Military Education (PM B) Institutions in order to produce officers better prepared to deal with both conventional and irregular warfare. These identified skill sets assist in future training and professional development strategies of junior officers while aiding in the prioritization of resources for officer education. It's critical that we train and maintain a balanced officer corps with a culture that is capable and prepared to conduct operations across the entire spectrum of operations.