Colonel (ret) John R. Carter, Jr. is the Director of XA, Education Support Squadron, Spaatz Center for Officer Education. He previously was the special assistant to the Commander of the Spaatz Center for Officer Education. He has served in a variety of operational assignments, accumulating more than 3400 flight hours in the O-2, A-10 and F-16. He commanded the 354th Fighter Squadron, an A-10 squadron at Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ, served as Commandant of the Air Force Weapons School at Nellis AFB, NV, Vice Commander of the 51st Fighter Wing, Osan AB, Korea and served as the Vice Commandant of the Air War College for
three years prior to assuming his current duties. His staff assignments include director of the Commander's Action Group at Air Combat Command and division chief for Space requirements on the Air Staff. Col Carter holds a B.S. degree from Duke University, and Masters degrees from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS). He is the author of Airpower and the Cult of the Offensive, a CADRE Paper published by Air University Press. His professional military education includes SOS by correspondence, Air Command and Staff College in residence, SAASS, Air War College by correspondence and a year as a national security fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
Dr. Mark Conversino joined the faculty of the Air War College in 2002 following his retirement from active duty with the Air Force. He has taught previously at the School of Advanced Airpower Studies and in the Department of History at the US Air Force Academy. While on active duty, Dr. Conversino served as Commander, 93d Maintenance Squadron, in support of the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System aircraft. He also held various aircraft maintenance assignments in the Strategic Air Command, Air Mobility Command and Air Combat Command. Prior to joining the Air War College faculty, he was in a Joint assignment at the Defense Logistics Agency, working on the personal staff of the Agency's director. He is the author of Fighting With The Soviets: The Failure of Operation Frantic, 1944-1945, University Press of Kansas, 1997, several chapters in edited works and numerous articles in defense-related journals. From 1998 to 2000, he was a Permanent Guest Lecturer at Squadron Officer School. Dr. Conversino is a Distinguished Graduate of the Air Command and Staff College and a graduate of the Air War College by seminar. He holds a B.A. from Eastern Kentucky University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Indiana University. His areas of interest and expertise are military history (particularly World War II), logistics, Soviet and Eastern Bloc history and politics, and airpower history, theory and doctrine.