some recent and promising developments regarding
the role of Civil Affairs in American strategy.
For instance, the U.S. Marine Corps already has a
company grade and basic school, and will add a staff
course in January 2015 in Washington, DC. Maj. Gen.
Ammerman identified readiness, training and leader
developments among the top items on his list of priorities for USACAPOC. Clearly a focus on preparation is vital to address what Brig. Gen. Irizarry called
a need to develop “credible CA expertise.” For most
of its existence, the professional military education for
Civil Affairs has been “a pick-up game,” hampering
its professionalization as a force.
Brig. Gen. Van Roosen noted a goal of the Institute for Military Support to Governance (IMSG), established in 2014, is to provide predictable, accredited
skills. He added that 54 functional specialty cells reside at the Army’s Civil Affairs battalions, brigades
and commands, but that few personnel met the criteria
for the doctrinal skill identifiers. Irizarry, in his comments, argued that CA personnel need to be “expert
generalists” conversant with operational design. The
expertise needed is one that enables a system-wide
view of a field such as agriculture or engineering, or
threat finance. That observation echoes a 2014 Naval
Postgraduate School report for the IMSG in 2014. Van
Roosen remarked that the IMSG has now completed
its analysis of expertise, identified 22 categories, and
will soon issue its own report. These personnel would
perform as advisory teams, in military government,
support to civil authority and theater security cooperation beginning in October 2015 when the conversion
of a portion of the 38A Civil Affairs to the new 38G
(Governance) takes place. By directly commissioning
some officers, the IMSG seeks to more readily access
expertise from the civilian sector.
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