The author raises some good issues that underscore the need for a solid education as a foundation for all officers, not just SF O-3s. I wonder why many of the goals mentioned cannot be achieved with a solid undergraduate program during ROTC. Maybe we should encourage more cadets to major in anthropology, sociology, or a foreign language. Most people that I know just majored in whatever seemed easiest because the degree was just another block to check in order to get commissioned. This is obviously not a solution for existing officers, but something that I wish would get more consideration among the powers-that-be.

In specific regard to the SF O-3, this seems to be the guy for whom grad school is the least appropriate. Grad school, imo, is most valuable to those individuals who have some real-life experience to put the graduate education in context. An SF O-3 just doesn't tend to have the same level of experience as his CF counterparts. For example, over halfway through my third tour in Iraq, I met up with a few SF Captains who were just arriving in country and were preparing to take charge of ODAs within a month or so thereafter. They came on active duty at the same time that I did and were finally deploying for the first time. Welcome to the party. They redeployed about three months later. Three months experience versus three years among many of their CF peers. A friend of mine deployed to OIF I as an Infantry PL, at the same time that I did, and redeployed in early 2004. Then he went the SF route. He finally deployed with an ODA in 2008. If either of those examples are typical of most SF O-3s, then maybe we should let them get a little more operational time under their belts. It seems that they already spend most of their lives in training.

Just to be clear, I'm not knocking any of those guys. They're all smart folks and seemed to know their jobs. I'm just saying that their actual time performing their duties on a deployment seems pretty short. Classroom time, regardless of how enlightening or interesting, is theory. You can only ingest so much theory and hold so much of it down without some real-life experience to settle it. If we expected guys to be in charge of an ODA for two or three deployments and then go to grad school, then that would seem reasonable. But my understanding - and please someone correct me if I'm wrong - is that most are off to some staff job, followed by promotion to O-4 soon after one successful deployment on an ODA.