Page 11 - The Cormorant Issue 14

An Academic Perspective on the Strategic Defence and Security Review
Professor Matt Uttley MA PhD FRSA FRHistS Dean of Academic Studies
The editors kindly invited me to offer an academic perspective on the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). My contribution focuses on SDSR implementation questions that are germane to all students graduating from the Staff College this year, Defence officials charged with “reshaping” officer training in the so-called “era of austerity” and those of us in university aca- demia that support the UK’s professional military education effort. From my perspective the core questions are three-fold: First, is the Joint Services Command and Staff College (JSCSC) model of military education still “fit for purpose” in the contemporary con- text? Second, in what ways does an ACSC education add value to Defence’s “conceptual component” of fighting power? And, third, what future changes to the current ACSC construct might be required for the JSCSC to remain a global leader in high-quality military education during a period of reducing budgets?
The JSCSC is certainly an international exemplar of “best prac- tice” with a model of professional military education that is the envy of many foreign armed forces. This reputation and status stems from a blend of attributes unique to Shrivenham, which include the ethos originally carried forward from the single-Ser- vice staff colleges at Camberley, Greenwich and Bracknell dur- ing the late-1990s; the co-location of Intermediate, Advanced and Higher staff training and education at a single site; a Private Finance Initiative framework that provides first-class support facilities and long-term contractual stability to the JSCSC enter- prise; the embedded military-academic partnership with King’s College London, which provides research-led education and the seamless integration of the MA in Defence Studies within the ACSC syllabus; and, the presence of a cadre of high-quality mili- tary directing staff carefully selected to develop the next genera- tion of military leaders and commanders.
These ingredients currently ensure that the JSCSC rigorously educates its students in the conceptual component, thereby enabling them to make an incisive professional contribution to national defence and security in subsequent appointments. The robustness of this model is born out in diverse indicators that include extensive staff and student course validation, frequent Defence Customer and MA external examiners’ audits, exter- nal scrutiny by bodies including the National Audit Office and through international staff college benchmarking exercises. The JSCSC model of military education is therefore certainly “fit for purpose” when measured against the UK Armed Forces’ current requirements and international comparison.
Stringent post-SDSR budget pressures affecting Defence and the predictions arising from the Future Character of Conflict (FCOC) study have combined to raise searching questions about the scale, scope, content and direction of the UK’s future profes- sional military education requirement. The SDSR makes refer- ence to people being “our winning edge”; similarly, the FCOC study notes that “education will be essential” in outmatching potential adversaries who might threaten the UK’s national inter- ests. At issue is precisely how investment in the ACSC augments Defence’s conceptual component.1
1 The subsequent sections of this Perspective draw extensively on the analysis in R Lock, M Uttley & P Lyall, “Honing Defence’s Intellectual Edge”, RUSI Journal, May 2011.
A starting point to evaluate the “added-value” of an ACSC edu- cation is the largely unchallenged assumption that the military is a professional occupational group. Professions are distinguished from other occupations because they possess a systematic body of abstract and practical knowledge, with a unifying theoretical basis and logical connections between its main parts.2 Moreover, as James Burke points out, professions enjoy “control – almost always contested [by other professions] – over a jurisdiction within which expert knowledge is applied”.3 The quality of the knowledge-base from which a profession diagnoses and solves problems has a direct bearing on its status, influence, and per- ceived legitimacy and utility (when compared to contending pro- fessional groups) in the eyes of its civilian client. The officer corps of contemporary armed forces is assumed to meet these criteria because they possess systematised propositional knowledge the “conceptual component” – in the form of military thought, theory, doctrine, concepts and decision-making tools, which underpins the practical employment of “military force against an intelligent foe(s) towards the attainment of policy objectives”.4
Unlike other occupations the military profession confronts a unique dilemma – the inherent tension between the science and art of strategy in the development and application of its expert abstract and practical knowledge:
• On the one hand, armed forces are the fusion of a military profession and a hierarchical and integrated organisational structure. The organisational imperative for large, com- plicated and integrated armed forces is to fix norms, rules and principles of warfare into pseudo-scientific policies, pro-
2 C. Winch, “What do Teachers Need to Know about Teaching? A Critical Examination of the Occupational Knowledge of Teachers”, British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 52, No. 2, 2004, pp. 181.
3 J Burke, “Expertise, Jurisdiction, and Legitimacy of the Military Profession”, in L J Matthews (ed.), The Future of the Army Profession, (Boston: McGraw-Hill Primis), 2002, p. 23.
4 D Lonsdale, “Strategy”, in D Jordan, J D Kiras, D J Lonsdale, I Speller, C Tuck & C D Walton, Understanding Modern War, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP), 2008, p. 23.
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