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| Library > History > 50 Years of Education > Post Vietnam War Era |
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The Post-Vietnam War Era
The post-Vietnam War era marked a significant turning point in the history of Air University. For even though the conflict in Southeast Asia had ended, the Cold War lingered and the potential for future violent confrontations remained and in some ways increased. It was in this very volatile environment that Air University re-energized its mission of "educating and producing such planners and future leaders . . . [capable of designing] an Air Force so adequate that it need never be used."
Doing this required major changes in the command's educational system. For as Lt Gen Raymond B. Furlong, the AU commander, noted, "with a command motto of 'Progress Unhindered by Tradition' we had too often become traditionalist." He concluded, for example, that the emphasis at the command's senior PME school had drifted away from how to fight an air war to high level policy and decision making. Thus, during the mid-1970s, the general launched a three-year campaign of curriculum review and overhaul that became known as "putting the 'war' back into the war college."
This new "think-war" mindset quickly permeated the entire AU community. A commitment and eagerness to seek new horizons and to play a more significant and imaginative role in the exploitation of aerospace power could be sensed among the faculty and staff of the entire AU family. Everywhere, there was a ferment that was reminiscent of the early days of the Tactical School.
This aura of excitement, created by the emphasis on airpower employment, swelled beyond the perimeters of the PME schools. Throughout the base there were enthusiastic talks and discussions about the proposed Command Readiness Exercise System, a highly automated futuristic system designed to provide a decision-making environment in which emerging air commanders and battle staffs could examine war fighting processes. Implemented in three phases, the system became fully operational in 1989 and provided a real-world wargaming capability for the Air Force.
The same excitement also characterized efforts to establish the Airpower Research Institute. In concert with the Air Command and Staff College, the Air War College began in 1979 to implement the charter of this newly established research body, whose mission called for cooperative research on airpower relative to the attainment of national objectives by permitting a closer association between Air University and the operational commands.
Air University's post-Vietnam War period was also marked by continuous organizational growth and development. Effective 1 October 1975, for example, the Air Force established the Air Force Logistics Management Center (AFLMC) and assigned it to Air University. On that same day, a new organization called the Leadership and Management Development Center (LMDC) also joined the AU family. The following year this center merged with the AU Institute for Professional Development but retained its same name.
The command also gained two other units during this time. HQ Civil Air Patrol-USAF, located at Maxwell, became a member of Air University on 1 July 1976, following the inactivation of Headquarters Command. Seven days later, on 8 July 1976, the Air Force Judge Advocate General School became a named activity and was assigned to the Leadership and Management Development Center for administrative control. Thus, 1975 and 1976 saw the establishment of five new functions at Maxwell, which greatly expanded the roles and missions of both the base and the command.
But perhaps one of the most significant developments in the history of the command occurred two years later when HQ USAF realigned Air University under Air Training Command. This realignment took place on 15 May 1978 when Air University became an ATC subordinate organization. Though several efforts had been made in the past to combine Air Training Command and Air University, this was the first time in Air University's history that it actually lost its major command status.
For the next five years, Air University remained an ATC subordinate unit. Then, on 1 July 1983, the Air Force separated Air University from Air Training Command and the former regained its major command status. However, HQ USAF reassigned the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps, which had been a part of Air University since 1 August 1952, to Air Training Command. This loss of a major subordinate unit, was somewhat offset by the establishment in early January of a new AU organization called the Center for Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and Education (CADRE). The center was responsible for researching and analyzing current and future issues of concern to the Air Force and its major commands; developing and testing concepts and ideas of airpower doctrine and strategy; and publishing these findings in articles, monographs, and books.
Also, on 15 August 1983, HQ USAF redesignated the Academic Instructor and Foreign Officer School as the Educational Development Center, though the mission of the organization did not change. Three years later, on 1 August 1986, Air University merged the Leadership and Management Development Center with the Educational Development Center. On 6 August 1987, HQ USAF again changed the name of the center. Its new designation became the AU Center for Professional Development. A few months later, on 24 December 1987, HQ USAF redesignated the organization as the Ira C. Eaker Center for Professional Development.
The following year, Air University began making major changes to the AWC and ACSC curricula. As a result of the Department of Defense (DOD) Reorganization Act of 1986, a "Joint Specialty" was established whereby the Secretary of Defense was to designate at least a thousand joint duty assignments to be awarded to officers who had successfully completed a joint military education school and a full tour of duty in a joint assignment. This law created a requirement for an additional 3,500 billets to be filled either by certified specialists or recent graduates of a joint PME course. Since the National Defense University, the major center for joint military education and training, produced only 750 graduates a year, it became necessary for the Department of Defense to devise some plan for coming up with the additional graduates.
One way of doing this was to accredit the various senior and intermediate service schools as "joint" education while at the same time maintaining their specific service orientation. After considerable discussion, Adm William Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, decided on a "dual-track" system where only part of a service's senior and intermediate PME programs would meet the "joint-education" requirements. As a result, on 8 December 1987, HQ USAF directed Air University to begin pilot AWC and ACSC programs that met the joint curriculum standards.
Beginning in the fall of 1988, Air University developed courses for these two PME schools using the joint professional military education model. In addition, these schools not only had students from all the sister services but faculty and staff personnel from each branch of the military as well. In the spring of 1989, the Air War College graduated its first students from the new dual-track system.
Meanwhile, on 13 November 1987, the House Armed Services Committee had established a Panel on Military Education. Chaired by Congressman Ike Skelton, Democrat from Missouri, and with Congressman Jack Davis, Republican from Illinois, as the ranking minority member, the panel's charter was to review DOD plans for implementing the provisions of the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 and to assess the ability of the DOD military education system to develop professional military strategists and officers skilled in joint and combined operations and tactics. After hearings and visits at the various service schools; the National Defense University; and war colleges in the United Kingdom, France, and West Germany, the panel concluded that the DOD system of education was basically sound and was fully comparable to the most prestigious of the foreign PME school systems they had visited.
But Congressman Skelton also felt that the DOD PME schools were not up to the standard that should be expected of the premier armed forces in the world. He felt these schools needed to improve the level of education in strategic thinking, emphasize "jointness" more, and upgrade their overall quality--particularly the faculties. At Air University, the command quickly took steps to hire highly qualified civilian instructors and to ensure that it only assigned highly qualified military officers to the various PME faculties. In a statement he made several years later in regards to Air University's PME schools, Congressman Skeleton summed up the success of this effort when he said "the cream has finally risen to the top."
Another significant outgrowth of the congressional PME review was the establishment of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies (SAAS). Since one of the recommendations of the panel was to improve the level of education in strategic thinking, Air University responded by creating an institution that provided a one-year follow-up to Air Command and Staff College. The mission of this school was to "create soldiers/scholars who have a superior ability to develop, evaluate, and employ airpower." With 25 students enrolled, the School of Advanced Airpower Studies began its first class in the fall of 1991.
That same year, another organization, the Air Force Quality Center, joined the AU family. The idea first surfaced at the 1990 Corona Conference, where Secretary of the Air Force Donald B. Rice and the USAF Chief of Staff Gen Merrill A. McPeak created a vision of a USAF office to assist with inculcating total quality management principles into all USAF units. This concept, later known as Quality Air Force or QAF, led to the establishment of the center on 1 August 1991 as an AU subordinate unit. The center provided USAF commanders and their organizations with the concepts, methods, tools, and advice to aid them in attaining a QAF culture, as well as QAF education programs, consulting services, training resource materials, and related research and analysis services.
No other significant organizational changes occurred at Air University until 1 July 1993. At that time, HQ USAF reassigned Air University to Air Training Command as a result of "The Year of Training" initiative. On that day, the Air Force redesignated the resulting organization the Air Education and Training Command (AETC) to reflect its joint education and training mission. As a part of this major restructuring action, the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps, the Officer Training School, the Community College of the Air Force, and the First Sergeant's Academy all became AU subordinate organizations. Similarly, the Air Force also placed the legal and chaplain training programs under Air University's jurisdiction. For only the second time in its history, the Air Force's education and training programs were within a single major command.
Several other significant organizational changes also took place at Air University during that year. On 15 December, for example, the Air Force established the College for Enlisted Professional Military Education (CEPME) and assigned it to Air University. At the same time, the USAF Senior Noncommissioned Officer Academy was assigned to this new organization. In addition, all 10 NCO academies located in the continental United States became operating locations of CEPME. These actions, in effect, essentially placed all of the Air Forces NCO PME programs, except those in the European and Pacific theaters of operation, under Air University's purview.
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