the profession of arms essay

Army, Profession of Arms Essay

Introduction, the military as a profession of arms, the criteria used to determine the profession of arms.

The military as a profession has been a major subject of discussion in many states due to its complexity and its mandate to the people. The world has evolved from simple forms of military technologies to complex forms of military technologies. There are various forms of lethal and dangerous military technologies in the world today.

Every state has its own meaning of the profession of arms in relation to its past military cultures and traditions. The United States for instance describes it as, ‘ A preeminent military task that embeds soldiers’ preparation to combat including preparing to kill or preparing to die as the most basic principles of the force.’ A profession usually requires a lot of skills and knowledge. America embraces professionalism in its approach to military science since it has set out the basic principles of the army in relation to its work and expertise. The main clients of the American military are the citizens of America. The military profession is perceived to be a calling rather than an occupation. The profession involves the use of lethal weapons and an undefined force for the maintenance and defense of the laws and the rights of the American people. The soldiers are supposed to shoulder the heavy burden of their sole clients.

One of the criteria considered is expertise. This entails vast expert knowledge and the manifestation of unique skills in the various army units and command posts. Secondly, trust is important for peaceful civil relations between the military and civilians. This is also one of the basic reasons for proper and successful operations of the military since it is given the task of protecting its citizens at all costs.

In order for the profession to manifest itself in concrete terms, it must have continuous development that will greatly influence its meaning and purpose through good leadership. It must embrace the various codes of ethics that are stipulated in its creed such as adaptability and resilience to service. Another criterion is the values which it must embrace for the service of its country. The past cultures and beliefs of the military form an important aspect in the modern legitimacy of the military. This helps to shape the character of the soldiers both in combat and in civilian aspects. Lastly, service is a core motto of the profession of arms since it forms the basis of the military or army in general.

The army’s duty is to protect and serve the citizens of its state, maintain peace, security, protect the mandated territories, commonwealths, and possessions. The army has four modern perspectives that guide its operations which are the human development expertise of high quality service and knowledge through education and development systems, the political cultural expertise which entails the civil-military relations and media-military relations, military technical expertise which entails the employment of combat personnel, weaponry and equipments or systems, and the moral or ethical expertise(Bender,2007).The army needs to be given checks and balances through the army ethics and external relations.

The professional skills such as trust, leadership, character, and duty are the main cornerstones of the military institution. This institution should be respected by all the civilians and given provisions in the constitution in order to work effectively.

Bender, Bryan. Gates Calls for Buildup in Troops. Boston, USA: The Boston Globe Publishers, 2007.

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Mastering the Profession of Arms, Part I: The Enduring Nature

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Two centuries ago, Carl von Clausewitz described the need for able intellects to lead armies in his work, On War . He noted that any complex activity, virtuously executed, requires the gifts of intellect and temperament, as well as two other indispensable qualities . First, “an intellect that even in the darkest hour retains some glitterings of the inner light which leads to truth .” And, second, the courage “to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.”

More recently, Williamson Murray wrote in Strategy and Military Effectiveness :

[W]ar is an incredibly complex endeavour. It is…the most demanding intellectually and morally. The cost of slovenly thinking at every level of war can translate into the deaths of innumerable men and women, most of whom deserve better from their leaders.

What Murray describes here is the need for military leaders to seek mastery of the most complex and intellectually challenging of professions — the profession of arms. And it is a profession that is becoming more challenging to master. Technology continues to advance, our societies change, and great power competition once again defines the strategic environment. It is therefore imperative that we evolve our understanding of the profession, how its key competencies are evolving, and how our institutions can remain at the forefront of “professional practice.”

Professionalism is when a person is engaged in creative and intellectually challenging work. A profession requires skills and knowledge, often based on first principles — propositional knowledge. Professions are subject to strict codes of conduct, which in some cases are based on rigorous ethical and moral obligations — such as doctors and the Hippocratic Oath.

Clausewitz describes war as having an enduring nature but constantly changing character. I propose that, like war, the profession of arms reflects this duality. It is a profession that is constantly evolving as society and technology changes, while also being underpinned by enduring features.

Understanding these features provides insights into the culture of military organizations.  More importantly, understanding changes in society, geopolitics, and technology can assist in ensuring the contemporary and future relevance of military education and training continuums. Based on the U.S. and Australian experiences, I offer three propositions in three articles. In this first installment, I propose that there exists an enduring nature of the profession of arms. In the next installment, I propose that there are seven key drivers for contemporary changes in the competencies required in the profession of arms. Finally, in the third installment, I propose that there are seven essential and evolving competencies of the military professional in digital-age warfare.

The Birth and Life of the Profession

One of the best examinations of the birth of the military profession was conducted by a renowned soldier-historian from the British Army, Sir John Hackett. In 1962, Hackett presented a series of lectures at Trinity College in Cambridge that charted the profession’s development. As Hackett argues, the emergence of a modern profession of arms — one built upon notions of the nation-state and the regularization of armed service in Western Europe — can be traced to the early 1800s. The profession was also brought forth by the Prussian disasters at Jena and Auestadt.

Prussia was the first state to institute a complete and well-rounded approach to the profession over the period between 1806 and 1812. As White has described in The Enlightened Soldier , Scharnhorst was particularly influential in the early definition of the profession of arms. He was heavily influenced by the ideas of Immanuel Kant and the German enlightenment idea of bildung , which described the perfection of one’s character and intellect through education. Applying his deep experience as an instructor and his operational experience with the English-Hanoverian Army in the 1790s, Scharnhorst sought to define the profession through the lens of a disciplined intellect and the modernization (or transformation) of warfare. Only through the nurturing the intellect of military officers could a military force sustain a progressive approach to the changing character of warfare.

In his influential examination of the military profession, The Soldier and the State , Samuel Huntington recognized Scharnhorst’s approach as the start of military professionalism in the West. Describing the founding of the Kriegsakademie in Berlin in 1810, Huntington examined how this underpinned reforms to the Prussian military and how it comprised one of the key drivers of military professionalism in Prussia. Scharnhorst also instituted requirements for general and special entry, promotion exams, advancement on merit, an effective staff system, and a sense of collective unity and responsibility. Together, these defined the profession of arms for the Prussian Army, and this approach to developing its commanders and staff underpinned its success on the battlefield in the 1800s.

Clausewitz also offered a definition for the profession. Although he examined it through the lens of military genius, his conception shared much with Scharnhorst’s. He described the two indispensable qualities as an intellect that retains some glitterings of the inner light which leads to truth even in the darkest hour and the courage to follow this faint light. He examined these qualities through the constructs of coup d’ oeil (the inner eye) and determination. These qualities had to be honed. Determination, however, was beyond those of low intelligence, requiring a special type of mind. Ultimately, the bildung -like blending of these two qualities ensured the military professional could develop an increased capacity to deal with the unexpected.

In The Soldier and the State , Huntington identified what he believed were the central elements of the profession. This provides a foundational definition of the contemporary profession of arms that is tweaked and adapted by different nations accordingly to their distinct national, strategic, and military culture. Huntington identified three core aspects of a profession in general and of the profession of arms specifically: expertise, responsibility, and corporateness.

A well-defined sphere of expertise was identified by Huntington and he noted that it was common to all, or almost all, officers. This was what differentiated them from civilian professionals. Appropriating Lasswell’s term, “the management of violence,” Huntington described the core function of a military force as successful armed combat. The special skill of the military leader — particularly officers — was the direction, operation, and control of organizations with a primary purpose of applying violence.

The second element that Huntington believed defined the military profession was responsibility. The expertise developed by the military professional imposes a special responsibility to society. Society insists that the management of violence be only used for socially approved purposes — this is a manifestation of Clausewitz’s famous dictum of war being a part of politics and subordinate to it. As Huntington noted, while all professions are to some extent regulated by the state, the military profession is monopolized by the state.

The final element that defined the military professional, in Huntington’s view, was that of corporateness. He wrote that the corporate structure of the profession included the official bureaucracy as well as societies, associations, schools, journals, customs, and traditions.  This he defined as the professional world of the military officer. The line between a military officer and a civilian is also publicly symbolized by uniforms and insignia of rank.

Morris Janowitz was another crucial contributor to defining the profession of arms. He established the study of the profession of arms and society as a subfield within sociology, and was the author of numerous studies and articles on the military professional and society. But his classic study of The Professional Soldier , published in 1960, remains a landmark in defining the profession as well as an important study in civil-military relations. He also studied military professionalism through the lens of various models of political-military elites.

Writing in Conflict Resolution in 1957, Janowitz described how military operations, given their growing technical complexity, had passed from the domain of drafted citizens to be the preserve of highly trained professionals. He was of the view that war-making would in the future rely on a highly professionalised and specialised occupation, the professional soldier. Due to technological change, professional soldiers would require longer formal training to acquire mastery, with temporary citizen armies becoming less important and relevant. Further, the needs of the state now dictated that the old periodic model (rapid expansion followed by similarly rapid dismemberment) must give way to more permanent military establishments. This demanded military professionals who were the masters of military operations and who possessed sufficiently intellectual skills to provide advice to government leaders.

In the 1970s, both the U.S. and Australian armies reviewed their professions. In 1970, the U.S. Army Study on Military Professionalism sought to deal with the heart and soul of the Army’s leaders — its ethics, morality and professional competence. It found a strong correlation in the relationship between professional ethics and professional competency. Further, it provided a range of recommendations on the explicit description of the elements of the military professional and the institutional education, training, and cultural requirements to achieve an optimal blend of ethical behavior and excellence in executing the breadth of military duties.

The 1978 Regular Officer Development Study was a detailed study commissioned by the Australian Army to review the profession of arms in the Australian context. A key finding of the committee was that, in comparison to qualifications held by middle managers in the civilian community, mid-ranking army leaders were under qualified and most did not hold an undergraduate tertiary qualification let alone any post-graduate work. The study recommended that an Officer Development Program be established and that this should include a sponsored self-development program of tertiary correspondence studies to complement military training.

Two more recent reviews of the profession round out this examination of the development of the profession of arms. First, an important contribution to understanding the contemporary profession of arms was the work of Maj. Gen. Craig Orme in 2011. His report, Beyond Compliance , proposed an Australian profession of arms concept. In noting that professionalism was a foundational value, it proposed four characteristics of the profession: being an expert, stewardship, being a representative, and service to the state. Finally, and most recently, was the review of the profession of arms conducted by the U.S. Army over the period 2010 to 2013. The result was the 2015 publication, The United States Army Profession . It listed five essential characteristics that defined the Army profession: trust, military expertise, honourable service, espirit de corps , and stewardship of the profession.

The Enduring Nature of the Profession

After reviewing this history, it is clear that the profession of arms could broadly be described as having an enduring nature (what is the profession) and changing competencies (what should the profession and its members be able to do).  Contemporary and future military forces need to appreciate both of these aspects of the profession of arms to ensure their education and training activities remain relevant.

The best guide to identifying the enduring nature of the profession remains the work of Huntington. As noted earlier, he proposed three key characteristics of the profession: expertise, responsibility, and corporateness. The U.S. Army 2013 approach with five elements and Orme’s four characteristics provides a guide to what the characteristics of the military profession might be in a contemporary sense. Using this as foundational material, I propose that there are four elements that comprise the enduring nature of the military profession. These are: expertise, stewardship, corporateness, and service to the state.

Expertise . Huntington wrote that the skill of the officer is neither a craft nor an art. It is instead an extraordinarily complex intellectual skill requiring comprehensive study and training. And as Orme notes , being an expert demands a commitment to constantly excel in individual and collective achievements by mastering the skills and the theoretical knowledge relevant to their role. It requires them to have a working understanding of the context and complimentary activities associated with that role, including to potentially undertake the roles of those immediately above them in the chain of command, for short durations.

Stewardship . Military professionals are stewards of their profession. While it might be simply described as leaving things better than one found them, it is the professional obligation to constantly seek improvement in individuals and teams. It speaks of a professional responsibility to foster and nurture the profession writ large for the future — professional military schools and colleges are an element of this. Stewardship is driven by an imperative to remain at the leading edge of the profession and not “drift away” from best practice due to issues peripheral to the profession. Stewardship also implies the obligation to care for and enhance the assets placed at the disposal of leaders.

Corporateness . The profession of arms retains a corporate character. It possesses its own formal military bureaucracy and organizations as well as associations, schools and training centers, journals, customs, and traditions. This corporate approach includes possessing a strong idea of the mission of the profession and the cultures, policies, and supporting structures that underpin it.  Finally, a critical element of this corporateness is the importance of professional self-identity. This aligns with Huntington’s view of the corporateness of a profession. In particular, Huntington noted, “The functional imperatives of security gives rise to complex vocational institutions which mold members into an autonomous social unit.”

Service to the State. In his classic book on management, Concept of the Corporation , Peter Drucker also wrote that corporate institutions should be instruments for “the organization of human efforts to a common end.” As a member of the profession of arms, personal loyalty must be to the state, the military institution, and the government. Military activities — at least in democracies — are conducted for the advancement of national interests rather than individual or corporate interests. The expertise developed by the military professional imposes a special responsibility. As Huntington notes, the state insists that the management of violence be only used for socially approved purposes. This was also a key theme in Clausewitz’s classic On War, where he wrote that the political object will determine both the military objective to be reached and the amount of effort it requires. At heart, being a servant of the state requires members, as individuals, to be prepared to risk injury or death on lawful, state-directed missions.

Like war, the profession of arms reflects a duality. It is a profession that is constantly evolving as society and technology changes, but it is also a profession that has enduring features. This article, in reviewing the modern development of the profession, has proposed four enduring features of the profession of arms. But, understanding these only provides us with a partial understanding of how we might prepare our people for contemporary and future conflicts. We must also appreciate how the profession changes over time, what that means for military education and training. Importantly, we must understand what is driving changes in the profession of arms.

Mick Ryan is an Australian Army officer. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Marine Corps Staff College and School of Advanced Warfare, he is a passionate advocate of professional education and lifelong learning.

Image: U.S. Army Medical Dept.

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Strengthening the Profession: A Call to All Army Leaders to Revitalize Our Professional Discourse

General Randy George , General Gary Brito and Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer | 09.11.23

Today our Army finds itself in an interwar period. We do not know when it will end, and so the work we must do is urgent work. We must modernize our equipment and doctrine, we must train hard, and we must reinvest in our profession. To do this work well, we cannot solely depend on the thoughts and voices of senior leaders in high command, as we can assure you: we do not have all the answers. Instead, we must strengthen our profession from top to bottom by building expertise through written discourse. We must also train hard on mission essential tasks and individual warfighting skills. This will ensure that when called, our Army is ready.

Our Army must reinvest in venues that produce vital professional discourse to improve our professional expertise. When we were leading companies, Infantry , Armor , and other branch magazines allowed us to learn from our peers, plan the best possible training, and see new ways of operating. But today, the Army’s professional publications need our help. They publish fewer pages and less often . Their authorship is not as diverse as our Army. And their means of circulation have not kept pace with this smartphone era. This is despite the hard work of dedicated editorial staff through a period of great transition.

The US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) will lead this effort to reinvest in the professional dialogue needed for this interwar period as an integral part of a larger plan to strengthen our profession. Created to change the Army and celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, TRADOC will strengthen the profession by attending to its institutions, experiences, and culture . These renewed professional publications will give every one of the Army’s soldiers, NCOs, officers, and civilian professionals the opportunity to partake in a conversation as wide, diverse, and thoughtful as the Army itself.

To succeed in renewing the Army’s publications, however, top-down reinvestment alone will not do. We need the help of every leader in the Army.

The Path Forward

As one way of strengthening the Army’s professional institutions, experiences, and culture, we acknowledge the work of the Harding Project . Started by an Army major and captain, the Harding Project is an effort to renew professional military publications. Their detailed analysis and careful prescriptions convinced us to think harder about the role of our publications in the Army profession.

Professional writing is important. In a hierarchical organization like the Army, professional writing allows leaders to inform the force of changes, while others share lessons laterally . As these lessons accumulate, professional writing connects communities of interest around shared problems and then informs doctrinal development . Writing can also create an outlet for issues that may not find a hearing in other forums. And finally, writing well builds talented communicators—a critical component of modern military leadership.

While today’s media environment is crowded, there is a critical place for a vibrant set of Army publications for several reasons. First, only our publications are backed by the full faith and credit of the Army, and while non-Army outlets have provided valuable space for the discussion of issues vital to our service, we can’t count on them to stick around. Second, even while Army outlets like MWI have demonstrated that there is an appetite for articles and other media that advance our understanding of our profession and the challenges ahead, they rightly do not focus on niche branch issues. That responsibility rests with our professional bulletins: Infantry , Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin , and twelve others . These publications have been impactful throughout their history— Military Review helped drive development of AirLand Battle in the 1970s, for example, as Armor (then Cavalry Journal ) drove discourse around the tank in the run-up to World War II—and we need them to remain impactful today. The challenges (and opportunities) of the years ahead are no less formidable than those earlier moments; we need a robust, bottom-up professional discussion to help drive us forward.

Given the importance of the Army’s professional journals, we must focus on renewing the institutions that support professional writing. The first step is modernizing to web-first, mobile-friendly outlets supported by social media. Soldiers encounter content on social media or through recommendations from their friends. After encountering an article on social media, links direct them to that article on the web. Unfortunately, our professional publications, with the exception of Army University Press, have largely missed this transition. This may be partly due to declines in resources; regardless, it’s time to get started.

After modernizing, the Army will better connect our outlets by experimenting with volunteer editors. When the Infantry Journal renewed in the 1930s, active duty soldiers rotated through editorial positions to keep publications fresh. For a variety of reasons, the Army no longer staffs journals with uniformed personnel. As a result, many officers and soldiers feel little connection to their publications. We’re going to fix that.

Finally, we will fix our archives. If you’ve ever tried to search for historic Infantry articles, you might have noticed that you can’t. That’s because our archives are in massive PDF files. Put another way, we’ve locked ourselves out of thousands of lessons our predecessors learned. We are going to fix that too. Our Army Center of Military History and its reach to over twenty Army museums are but a few resources that can assist in this area.

We have evidence this approach will work. Six months ago, the Army University Press and Military Review adopted a modern, web-first platform supported by social media. Since then, their weekly visitors are up by 60.1 percent while their subscribers have increased by 54 percent. Army University Press also just added branch magazines to its landing page as a first effort to raise the profile of all of our Army’s professional publications.

As members of the profession of arms, we ask for your support over the next few months. As a modest gesture to recognize our talented writers, we will recognize three impactful articles each month with a pen, coin, and personal note of congratulations. We’ve sent our first ones to First Lieutenant Mara Tazartus for her article on engagement area development in Armor and Sergeant First Class Leyton Summerlin for his article on standards in Infantry. Now we are scouring the internet for September’s authors. During the Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting in October, we will feature the professional writing renewal during the forum on professionalism . If you are there, look for the Army University Press’s kiosk at the Army exhibit and give them your feedback on our outlets.

A Call to Action

In the interwar period before World War II, our greatest generals and warfighters contributed their thoughts to branch publications. In the Infantry Journal , then Major George C. Marshall wrote about “Profiting by War Experiences,” while then Major George S. Patton, Jr. contributed his thoughts on “Success in War.” Likewise, noncommissioned officers like Sergeant Terry Bull contributed articles on “Battle Practice” while Staff Sergeant Robert W. Gordon both wrote for and edited the journal. Their contributions demonstrated the strength of the profession by helping solve the real problems of the day.

To strengthen the profession today, our role as senior leaders is to ensure the institution provides relevant, quality places for the force to develop and refine our martial knowledge—ideas about leadership, training, and warfighting. We know those ideas are out there. We see them every time we talk with soldiers, whether at home station, at the combat training centers, or on deployment. This is also evident in the contributions of those who are currently writing in the online forums mentioned above and in Military Review .

Yet our professions currently misses out on those ideas. Many of the great ideas we hear are too specific, too technical for general-purpose publications. Yet the nature of our profession is that the details are just as important—probably even more important —than the big ideas. Branch journals are the place to share new ideas, ask questions, and identify challenges and solutions.

What sort of ideas, questions, and solutions are we looking for? Professions are defined by a combination of formal institutional inputs like doctrine, experiences in training and deployment, and an understanding of the world as a whole. Branch journals are a place to bring all these influences together.

As Marshall and Patton did before, we need those leaders operating where it matters to offer their ideas about where our doctrine and school curricula get it right, need improvement, or are missing something. The profession also requires sharing innovative tactics, techniques, and procedures more widely than just within your unit or group of colleagues. The Army devotes enormous resources to realistic, demanding training. Share what you learn!

Finally, one of the hallmarks of our age is that so much happening in the civilian world can—and must—be incorporated into our operations for the Army to succeed. What ideas, techniques, and technologies can we incorporate into how we operate? As we watch the war in Ukraine, there are numerous, clear signs that successful armies are learning organizations that quickly apply imaginative solutions.

As you contribute to our revitalized professional journals, you will be solving problems and you will also be strengthening the profession. For individuals, writing a well-argued article with supporting evidence hones the ability to think critically and communicate. These are essential leader traits. It also requires some courage to put your ideas out there, and both individuals and the institution will take some licks in the process. But this is exactly the type of courage we need right now. It is no different than any other form of training. Well-meaning leaders may be wary of “rocking the boat,” but the Army needs the absolute best ideas at echelon. You have our commitment that we will be open to the best ideas, even if they challenge the sacred cows of the Army’s conventional wisdom. Encourage writing in your formations so that our Army remains the greatest ground force in the world—strong, professional, and ready to defend its fellow citizens.

This is a critical and challenging time to be a soldier of all ranks. The strategic environment virtually ensures there will be plenty of work for the Army in the years ahead, even if we cannot know exactly when, where, or how threats will manifest. Making matters more challenging, the pace of change, technological but also social and cultural, is so great that the character of war is changing faster than ever—faster even than a century ago, when Patton was predicting the impact of technologies like the tank. The country and future soldiers depend on us to devote as much effort to preparing intellectually as we do physically.

We cannot remain static, so we ask this of you: Write for your branch magazines and professional bulletins . Look for opportunities to volunteer as an editor. Spread the word. And join us as we commit to renewing one of our Army’s greatest assets, our culture of professional military writing.

General Randy George is the acting chief of staff of the US Army and the 38th vice chief of staff of the US Army.

General Gary Brito is the 18th commanding general of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia.

Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer is the 17th sergeant major of the Army.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Chin-U Pak, 2nd Infantry Division/ROK-US Combined Division

This is a very exciting development and I hope that the vocal support of senior leaders provides traction across the Army.

I respectfully suggest that we must revive a number of important Army publications that were shortsightedly terminated or greatly reduced in recent years.

Recruiter Journal should be #1 on the list for immediate resuscitation. This venerable publication served our Army from 1919 well into the 2010s. As a former USAREC, on-production AMEDD recruiter in NYC during the early 2000s, I can personally attest to the importance of encouraging lateral professional discourse within the recruiting community. This type of information sharing will empower those in the field who are currently siloed. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to sunset Recruiter Journal, but it was a myopic decision in retrospect. Our current accessions crisis requires focused writing, reflection, and information sharing. To me, this aligns with the newly launched USAREC Scholars program for high potential CPTs. Perhaps publication in a revived Recruiter Journal could be part of that program?

My second suggestion is that Army Sustainment's current focus is too broad. Individual branch journals should be revived (e.g. OD, QM, and TC). If that is not feasible, at least cleave AG and Finance topics into a separate journal. As an Army Sustainment subscriber, I see the periodicals potential. LSCO/LSMO is a whole new ballgame for an Army whose leaders cut their teeth in GWOT. Many assumptions may not be operative in LSCO (e.g. a permissive environment robust contract support is feasible). To be blunt, many capabilities and much knowledge have atrophied over the last two decades in the sustainment community. LSCO will require real, branch-specific technical skills in petroleum, multimodal transportation, maintenance management, and ammunition. The Army may have to do a lot more for itself than it's done since Desert Storm. This relearning has to start somewhere and it seems to me the branch-agnostic, 90A, "jack of all trades" approach to sustainment leader development won't get us where we need to be. Making all sustainers 90As upon CCC graduation was a 15 year experiment that demands reevaluation and I hope to write a short piece saying as much for Army Sustainment.

Thirdly, what happened to Army Reserve/Warrior Citizen? It also needs to be revived and restored to its historic name: Army Reserve. During my USAWC research, I reviewed a number of issues from the 1970s and 1980s. I was blown away by the robust internal debate and commentary. We have nothing like that today, but need it more than ever. The USAR is quite siloed and stove piped and needs this professional forum.

Finally, what about the AMEDD? AMEDD Journal provides a vital role as a peer-reviewed professional journal for our clinicians; however, it has limited utility for the MTOE operational medical community. As a peer reviewed medical periodical it also has glacial publication lead times. This is not a suggestion to sunset, terminate, or change AMEDD Journal. Instead, perhaps we need something else for our MTOE operational medical community, specifically, the enlisted 68W.

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