Page 6 - Cormorant Year of 2013 course photo

4 general

Editorial

ACSC –

Mid-life Crisis?

By Cdr T G Sharpe

“Dear Secretary of State for Defence, you are invited to deliver

the following: gather 262 students from 49 countries, at their

mid to late career point, and educate them to post-graduate level

whilst on full pay. Their ages will range from 32 to 53 and their

previous military and life experiences will be very different. You

are to prepare them for equally diverse employment on completion.

Regards, PM”

I

HAVE NO IDEA WHAT response that but radical departure to study Defence

invitation would elicit were it to be Procurement. There are also four major away
suggested in today’s austere climate, trips; two of them to ive different European

but fortunately for the students of
countries, one to Washington and Norfolk
ACSC16, the Course is tried, tested and
and one to the beaches in Normandy. They

part of the fabric of British Defence. Further are all captured in this magazine but without

good news, for the taxpayer at least, is that doubt add a great deal of depth to our
this is not the ‘post-ops year off’ that the understanding of the issues covered in 2D in

pre-Course sales pitch and jibe from your the lecture theatre.
mates might have you believe. ‘Busy’ is an

overused word at the moment, but it does The power of the Course to attract lecturers

apply in this instance. Between research at the highest political and military level
papers, essays, exams and syndicate room remains reassuringly intact. Stand-out

discussion briefs a student has to write in lectures were Sir Charles Haddon-Cave on

excess of 50,000 words. To research this, Operating Risk and the 2006 Nimrod crash,
there is Essential Reading totaling very nearly Major General Buster Howes (twice) on

6,000,000 words and that’s not all – the leadership (his own) and as Defence Attaché
Desirable and Supplementary reading is a lot to HM’s Ambassador to Washington, Mr Ed

more (apparently). Whichever way you cut Ferguson on Strategic Planning, Mr John

it, the core deliverables are time consuming Thompson, PUS to the Secretary of State for
and offer plenty of sea-room for those who Defence and Stephen Reicher, professor of

wish to step into the Training vs. Education psychology at the University of St Andrews,
debate.
on the Banality of Evil, to name but a few.

The quality was not always this high; the

All this is wrapped up in a well-structured skill became knowing what to take from
lecture program that moves from the strategic each lecture across a wide range of topics.

in Term one, through the operational level

in Term two, to campaign delivery in Term At the strategic level, 2013 has offered
three. These major blocks are interspersed plenty to discuss. The US pivot to Asia,

with the single Service phase, visits to each austerity, sequestration, the Arab Spring,
Service, leadership lectures and a short
Brazil-Russia-China-India (BRIC), the