Public repotting burelen for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and revievring the collection of infonnation. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of Infomiation, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarleis Sennces, Directorate for Infonnation Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington, VA ^2&-4302, and to the Office of Management and Budget, Papenwork Reduction Project (0704-0188), Washington, DC 20503. The prevailing U.S. Army professional military education (PME) system reflects the legacy of the twentieth-century, modem, mechanized age of warfere. The twenty-first century security environment presents a unique set of challenges for U.S. national security and military strategy. The rise of a new information-age of warfare exacerbates the perpetual dichotomy between strategic intent and tactical action in war poUcy. In this new age, perhaps more than ever before, the distinction between periods of peace and episodes of war has become an arbitrary distinction; war in this age is increasingly just a "continuation of politics and poUcy by other (all) means." Yet, the persisting PME continues to separate the martial tactical e5q)ert (the warfighter) from the extra-martial operational and strategic expert (the warthinker), even constructing the career development profile of the Army officer corps is this bifiircated manner. Effective war policy through the integration of Ae fiill spectrum of national and multinational (coaUtional) capabilities is less effectively learned under such an education and career development system. What the information-age of warfere demands is the education, training, and ejq)erienced-based learning of xmiformed 'strategic planners' -experts well versed in the planning, management, and leadership of Ml spectrum, holistic war policy. How the U.S. Anny is designed to educate its officers in strategy and planning will determine success, or failure, in its efiForts to produce and sustain strategic planners. The security challenges that will face the next generation of military leaders demands that action be taken now to reassess and redesign the ways in which the Army educates and develops uniformed professionals, expert in advice-giving on matters related to national policy, national strategy, and experienced in the operational planning and tactical execution of martial actions intended to translate strategic goals into tangible effects. This new information age of warfere reflects a uniquely complex and ambiguous strategic environment. It reveals a graying of the distinctions between the strategic and the tactical levels of war and a growing synchronicity between the martial and extra-martial aspects of war.
AGENCY USE ONLY (LeavePerhaps at no other time in modem history has the notion of war as a continu...
