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Professional Military Education Is a National Security Imperative

 

Lt. Gen. Mike Plehn, US Air Force, Retired

 

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“Education is a better safeguard of Liberty than a standing army,” said Edward Everett, the talented nineteenth-century orator, politician, and educator who is perhaps least well-known for being the man who spoke for two hours at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg in 1863 before President Abraham Lincoln spoke for his historic two minutes.¹ Notwithstanding that pedigree, Everett is absolutely correct: education is a powerful results multiplier when properly applied by dedicated professionals, particularly in the military realm. This article serves as an introduction to a series of thought pieces that will explore the importance and value of professional military education (PME) in preserving and advancing national security.

As a retired senior officer with more than thirty-seven years in uniform, I am a staunch advocate for a well-trained and well-educated military force. So, while Everett’s statement is likely true in an abstract sense, it doesn’t stop the bullets from flying once an adversary decides to take that step. When that happens with the United States, we turn to our highly trained and constantly ready military, experienced not only on harsh battlefields but also thoughtfully educated in the classrooms of our PME programs.

Magnifying the importance of that education is the realization that the preferred weapons on the battlefields of today and tomorrow will be more than just bullets. The character of warfare—how wars are fought—is ever changing. Look no further than lethal drones in Ukraine, cyberattacks across the globe, and the burgeoning incorporation of artificial intelligence algorithms in commercial and military equipment to understand that our world is experiencing a profound concatenation of technological advancements that will dramatically alter the way we live and the way our militaries fight for and defend our national interests.

Against this backdrop of fast-paced technological change, now more than ever, the United States and its allies and partners need the best-educated, most creative, and most competent and daring leaders at the forefront of their military units. Recognizing the critical importance of this requirement, the Pentagon released a 2020 roadmap for personnel development titled Developing Today’s Joint Officers for Tomorrow’s Ways of War. This twelve-page document—quite possibly the best of its kind ever released—is subtitled The Joint Chiefs of Staff Vision and Guidance for Professional Military Education and Talent Management.² It describes the importance of deliberately developing the intellectual and experiential capabilities of military officers so they are prepared to prevail in conflict and competition. Although not explicitly addressed in the document, these concepts are equally applicable to the enlisted and officer forces.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this vision is its four-element framework for developing the talent of future leaders, which consists of training, education, experience, and self-improvement.³ Each element is an essential aspect of professional growth, and when taken together, they represent a developmental cycle in an individual’s career. Typically, an officer or enlisted service member will go through multiple developmental cycles over several years, each building upon the last. So, while PME may appear episodic when viewed as a single event, in practice, it is more cyclical and cumulative than episodic, and its continuity is enhanced by an individual’s investment in self-improvement—the continuation of reading, thinking, and writing when outside the classroom between discrete PME courses.

It is worth a short digression to distinguish the critical difference between training and education. When the military needs its service members to be able to fire a weapon, drive a tank, fly a plane, or perform any other well-defined task, it will train them to do so. Hence, “basic training,” “pilot training,” and other similarly designated programs. On the other hand, when the military needs its service members to plan and execute complex applications of the national instruments of power, including the use of military force, it will educate them to do so.

This critical distinction is perhaps best encapsulated by US Army Gen. Peter Schoomaker’s observation that we train for certainty and educate for uncertainty in the Armed Forces.⁴ When the military needs personnel to move, shoot, or communicate, we train them to do so. Determining when—and which units—to move, shoot, or communicate requires more complex thinking, and we educate them with theory, practice, and case studies to better inform their decision-making in the heat of crisis.

In many ways, this approach mirrors the civilian concept of continuing education but with more depth and rigor, particularly for the in-residence education programs. Every uniformed branch of the military has its own PME requirements and resources, designed to develop the professional abilities of its service members from basic trainees to the most senior enlisted and officer ranks. Most of these courses are available in distance-learning and in-residence formats.

Significantly, many US PME institutions were established following the conclusion of a serious war or conflict, with farsighted leaders recognizing how additional education might have enabled better performance. This is particularly true for the senior-most tier of officer PME at the war college level. The senior service college—a.k.a. top-level school, war college, or senior developmental education, depending on which branch is under discussion—educates mid- to senior-level officers primarily at the lieutenant colonel and colonel ranks (commander and captain ranks for naval officers) as they prepare to fill key staff billets or command large units in war and peace.

In the United States, the oldest is the Naval War College, established in 1884.⁵ Following the experiences of the Spanish-American War in 1899, the Army War College was next in 1901.⁶ After difficulties supplying war-materiel requirements in World War I, the Army established a specialized institution to educate officers on logistics and the defense industrial base, ushering in the Army Industrial College in 1924 (later expanded into the Industrial College of the Armed Forces and now the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy).⁷ Similarly, the experiences of World War II demanded the founding of additional PME institutions such as the National War College, the Armed Forces Staff College, and the Air War College, which were all established in the late 1940s.⁸

The current consortium of senior service colleges in the United States consists of the service war colleges (Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Space Force) and the joint service colleges of the National Defense University (NDU): the College of Information and Cyberspace, College of International Security Affairs, Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Management, the Joint Forces Staff College, and the National War College.⁹ Bringing additional depth and richness to senior-level PME, there are myriad other programs available at civilian universities and think tanks as well as international programs at allied and partner nation war colleges.

Each program has its own unique focus, and with such a range of choices, officers can broaden their knowledge well beyond their own service or specialty. In my case, I attended the College of Naval Command and Staff as a major, completed the Air War College correspondence course over two years, and then studied for a year at a civilian think tank as a National Defense Fellow for my in-residence war college education. I also had a small taste of international PME at the United Kingdom’s Pinnacle Course for one- and two-star senior officers.

What I have concluded from these varied experiences is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to PME. I have benefited from both practitioners and academicians who guided my development in the profession of arms. In the realm of armed conflict, the most effective leaders have a firm grasp on both theory and practice.

Perhaps the greatest strength of attending in-residence PME is having the time and space to think deeply about national security issues and then being required to formulate those thoughts into a coherent written position. Nothing is more clarifying, or humbling in many cases, than having your ideas scrutinized and critiqued by fellow professionals. This is the value of academic rigor in nurturing our current and future leaders’ ability to think critically and strategically in pursuit of national defense objectives.

I saw the value of this intellectual development and growth clearly as the NDU’s president for almost four years, from February 2021 to October 2024. During that time, we conferred master’s degrees on more than two thousand officers from the US military and US government, as well as from allied and partner nations. I also personally interacted with more than sixty students in the classroom as an instructor and assistant professor in NDU’s two-course elective concentration on national security interagency leadership.

After my second year of coteaching this course, one of my former students stopped me in the halls of the Pentagon one day to update me on his job after graduating from NDU. He thanked me for the education he received in the elective concentration, noting he was now his directorate’s liaison to the National Security Council staff because of the knowledge and familiarity with the national security decision-making process he gleaned from his education at NDU.

Not only could I share many similar testimonials, but I would also assert that I can discern with a fair bit of confidence which officers have attended senior-level PME and which have not. There is a clarity of thinking and structure of presentation in our senior PME graduates that does not manifest in those who have not received this education.

Ultimately, this education results in military personnel who are better able to assess complex situations, formulate feasible and effective approaches to them, and ensure the military instrument of power best supports our national interests.

To conclude this introductory article, I should like to return to where it began and amplify Everett’s proposition regarding the role of education in safeguarding liberty. As a senior leader experienced in both war and peace—and who also has been both a consumer and producer of PME—I would submit that a broadly and well-educated military is a better safeguard of national security than one that is not.

For the safety and prosperity of the United States, as well as that of our allies and partners, the national security imperative is clear: we must continue developing and educating our current and future leaders, both officers and enlisted, throughout their careers. We must train them to act with certainty in their most tactical actions, and we must educate them to think critically, creatively, and boldly across the spectrum of national security interests and threats they will encounter now and in the future. Preserving the breadth and depth of PME will ensure we do so..

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Notes

1. H. C. Skavlem, “Self-Culture,” in State Agricultural Society, Including a Full Report of the State Agricultural Convention, Held in February 1876, and Numerous Practical Papers and Cummunications, comp. W. W. Field (E. B. Bolens, 1876), 415; Britannica, “Edward Everett,” updated 11 January 2026, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Everett.
2. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers for Tomorrow’s Ways of War: The Joint Chiefs of Staff Vision and Guidance for Professional Military Education and Talent Management (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1 May 2020), https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/education/jcs_pme_tm_vision.pdf?ver=2020-05-15-102429-817.
3. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers for Tomorrow’s Ways of War, 4.
4. Nominations Before the Senate Armed Services Committee, 108th Cong., 1st sess. (2008), https://www.congress.gov/108/chrg/shrg23390/CHRG-108shrg23390.htm. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker is well known for saying that we “train for certainty [and] educate for uncertainty” both as the commander of US Special Operations Command and as chief of staff of the Army. He repeated this axiom in his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing to be Army chief of staff.
5. “History and Campus,” US Naval War College, accessed 3 March 2026, https://usnwc.edu/About/History-and-Campus/.
6. “Historical Carlisle Barracks: Army War College Evolution,” US Army War College, accessed 3 March 2026, https://www.armywarcollege.edu/history.cfm.
7. “Mission,” Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy, accessed 3 March 2026, https://es.ndu.edu/About/Mission/.
8. “History of the National War College,” National War College, accessed 3 March 2026, https://nwc.ndu.edu/History/; “History,” Joint Forces Staff College, accessed 3 March 2026, https://jfsc.ndu.edu/About/History/; “Air War College History,” Air University, accessed 3 March 2026, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/AWC/History/.
9. “Colleges,” National Defense University, accessed 3 March 2026, https://www.ndu.edu/Academics/Colleges/.

 

 

 

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May-June 2026