Published Airpower
Journal
- Winter
1992
DISTRIBUTION
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Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
We have kept at the forefront of our conviction that the most important part of our business is the human part.
--Gen Merrill A. McPeak
Chief of Staff, US Air Force
CHANGE is inevitable. Some welcome it; others feel very uncomfortable with it. Rarely, however, can anyone stop change, especially social change. Rather than being feared, change should be understood. That's the first step toward dealing with it. Since change affects people and people rate the highest priority, certain changes within our Air Force demand a closer look.
Recent difficulties experienced by many officers' clubs, or O clubs, indicate that our Air Force is experiencing significant change. Although the nature of this change has been debated for years, its effects on the club escape widespread attention. Basically, professional reconditioning within the last decade shifted the traditional definition of officership away from generalist to specialist; and not surprisingly, the club is like a petri dish for studying these divergent officer values. Whether this metamorphosis is deliberate is not clear, but it's causing confusion among officers and forecasting trouble in the future.
Problems such as underfunded club operations and waning officer participation create headaches for wing commanders who need more solutions rather than more problems. Combat readiness, on the other hand, must remain the premier objective for all commanders. Certainly the officers' club could serve a major function here. Making the officers' club a place where attendees learn tolerance of other specialties can encourage cohesiveness and enhance combat effectiveness directly. Also, by creating a place where family ties are strengthened, the club would produce an indirect yet positive effect on our combat capability. An understanding of this relationship might lead to an increase in combat readiness as well as fewer club problems. To formulate solutions, we must first examine the traditional definition of officership.
Despite the demonstrated growing concern for officership qualities and professionalism, the Air Force has not addressed the issue squarely by providing a clear, officially sanctioned statement of expected officer qualities.
--Maj Richard W. Stokes
Preserving the Lambent Flame
Many Air Force officers feel caught in a philosophical tug-of-war. At odds are traditionalism and specialization, each pulling the officer in opposite professional directions. While commissioning sources emphasize traditional aspects of officership, follow-on training courses stress specialized skills. In the traditionalist camp, generalism reigns; but today's high technology demands specialization. For clarity's sake, it would be ideal to have a perfect model of traditional officer roles, but it is extremely difficult to develop a single, all-inclusive definition. Officer training manuals do, however, provide some guidelines.1
Consensus seems to hold that the first three items on an officer's job description are (1) take responsibility for your actions, (2) know yourself and seek self-improvement, and (3) know your job. But what is "your job"? Substatements under "Know Yourself and Seek Self-Improvement" direct officers to analyze the successes and failures of others, to develop the art of good writing and speaking, and to increase the scope of their knowledge by reading and making new friends. The various "jobs" of the generalist are apparent. Even today, an officer's winding career path strongly hints of a USAF generalist philosophy, as stated in The Armed Forces Officer of 1950:
In civil life, the man who flits from job to job is soon regarded as a drifter and unstable. In the military establishment, an ability to adjust from job to job and to achieve greater all-around qualification by making a successful record in a diversified experience becomes a major asset in a career. Generalship, in its real sense, requires a wider knowledge of human affairs, supported by specialized knowledge of professional techniques. Those who get to the top have to be many-sided men, with skill in the control and guidance of a multi-farious variety of activities. Therefore, even the young specialist who has his eyes on a narrow track, because his talents seem to lie in that direction, is well advised to raise his sights and extend his interest to the far horizons of the profession, even while directing the greater part of his force to a particular field.2
But while officers traditionally are encouraged to be generalists, advanced technologies require specialization that tends to contradict generalism. In 1984, then-Maj Richard W. Stokes wrote,
From the early Air Force days of the late forties through the late sixties, our expressed intent was to commission officers with broad-based liberal arts educations to become generalists. The specific requirements for technical expertise to support increased technical sophistication has apparently obviated that practice. . . . The young people we are bringing into the Air Force as officers today question the value of traditional officership concepts.3
Not that we could have executed Desert Shield/Desert Storm-type missions without our technical sophistication. The point here is only "to portray the degree to which specialization has altered the complexion of the officer corps."4
In short, historical traditionalism has necessarily yielded to compulsory specialization, but not without backlash. Along with the generalist, officers' clubs and their patrons are paying a high toll for our technological edge.
Clearly, currents of change are churning up officership roles, and officers' clubs tumble along with them. Club activities and clientele are shifting. The needs of older officers and retirees are often different from those of lesser rank; and even among younger officers, marketing surveys reveal major differences in club usage. Researching these discrepancies revealed two broad trends strongly influencing officer redefinition. First, the sociology of the military is changing due to unhampered influences from its parent society; and, second, certain Department of Defense (DOD) policies and Air Force practices act as catalysts in redefining long-standing definitions of officership. Some limited preliminary research, though inconclusive as yet, indicates that ominous qualitative differences in officer roles are already entrenched (table 1).
These broad, synergistic trends forecast a decline in O club membership and participation by causing a redefinition of officer roles. In fact, they suggest total abandonment of the club without some sort of "strategic and tactical" intervention. Solutions are at hand; both long- and short-term suggestions for institutional change are outlined later in this article. Metaphorically speaking, the O club need not be an "OK Corral" where officers shoot it out over disputed professional roles; one must only analyze the emerging officer corps and provide a clear definition of officership to resolve current institutional disagreements.
The two major trends listed above, societal change and DOD/USAF practices, are the simple distillation of numerous other forces. Understanding these influences is basic. Early research generally confirms the hypothesis of the presence and impact of these influences by showing a majority of officers (67 percent) wish to be free of their blue club cards, but not all for the same reasons. Six minor phenomena seem to account for the officer redefinition and resultant lack of interest in the O club.
Sociological changes in American society, the first major trend, umbrellas three social phenomena: (1) working spouses, (2) a "New-Dad" syndrome, and (3) a bias against alcohol. The second trend, DOD policies and USAF practices, also has three distinct elements: (1) pay raises and club fund decreases, (2) a shift in job description for the rated force, and (3) changes in the Officer Performance Report (OPR). Exactly how these factors influence the collective mind of the Air Force officer corps is the crux of the O club problem. Of the two major trends, sociological changes in the broader society of which the Air Force is a microcosm, will be analyzed first. One of these three social phenomena is well documented due to its pervasive impact on American life-styles.
The women's liberation movement of the 1970s forced a final and definite realization that women had a right to work outside the home. With that fact well established, the Air Force was forced to deal with this issue. While adapting its structure for working women (child-care facilities; increased family services; and new morale, welfare, and recreation [MWR] activities), our Air Force still hasn't fully recognized changes in the hearts and minds of its people. For instance, whereas colonels and generals witnessed these changes as adults, captains and lieutenants literally grew up within this social upheaval. To see Mom and Dad both working was a natural part of their childhood. This was the norm for them, as it was for their future spouses growing up then also. Now, 20 years later, the fact that an officer's spouse works outside the home is neither abnormal nor nontraditional. It should be completely understandable that since ofttimes both partners in civilian couples work outside the home, both partners in military couples would too (table 2).
However, the fallout of such an arrangement smacks military tradition in the face. After work, the majority of couples want to relax together and share their day. Such behavior strengthens a marriage. One psychologist noted that in families where both parents worked, marriages were under more stress. "[It] was not their division of labor. It was the huge amount of time that housework, [children], and careers were taking from their marriage."5 A detour to the club approaches absurdity in these households--not because the military person is "henpecked" but because the couple is genuinely more interested in each other's day, even to the point where traditionally required "face time" at the club is no longer the stronger influence.
Janet Giele of Brandeis University points out that "families are responding to a new social climate, one that recognizes a variety of options, supports individual self-determination, and is supportive of the changing realities of family life."6 Air Force families are no exception. Officers see these changes among their civilian friends and expect the same treatment in the military. In their study on this subject, Hamilton McCubbin and Martha Marsden state that "the conflict between the two social institutions--the military and the family--over the same resource, the service member, produces strains and dilemmas for all concerned."7 Does this mean that officers don't feel the impact of their choice not to visit the club? Make no mistake; they understand the stakes (table 3), but a prioritization has taken place and the club fell second, behind the family. This phenomena is even stronger when Baby comes along.
While babies haven't changed, their parents have. The stereotyped family of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s rarely exists anymore. In particular, fathers have drastically changed their minds about fathering. A New-Dad syndrome has emerged ("evolved" is more accurate since this situation is the expected consequence of the change in attitudes caused by the women's movement), and Father now wants to be Daddy. Arlie Hochschild, in her book The Second Shift, details the evolution of this New Dad:
In the history of American fatherhood, there have been three stages, each a response to economic change. In the first, agrarian stage, a father trained and disciplined his son for employment . . . while his wife brought up the girls. As economic life and vocational training moved out of the family in the early nineteenth century, fathers left more of the rearing of their children to their wives. . . . [In] these stages, the father was often distant and stern. Not until the early twentieth century, when increasing numbers of women began to work outside the home, did the culture rediscover the father as an active presence in the home, and establish the idea that "father was friendly." . . . Today, most families are in the third stage of economic development but in the second stage of fatherhood. [However, some men] lead the way into that third stage of fatherhood. But they've done it privately. . . . Lacking a national social movement to support them in a public challenge to the prevailing notion of manhood, they've acted on their own.8
The New-Dad label also applies to officers whose spouses work at home. While some fathers maintain the traditional division of family chores, many more race home after work to play with their children and relieve Mom, who has been with the kids all day. This complex relationship has not gone completely unnoticed by military leadership. Gen George L. Butler, then commander of the Strategic Air Command, acknowledged not only the importance of the family but also how it has been neglected:
If there is anything I regret in my military career, it is that it has taken so long for us to properly recognize and care for families. Ultimately, as in society at large, the strength of our military comes down to the strength of the family. If life at home is not well-founded, relationships not strong, values not well-rooted, then ultimately that will spill over into the workplace. With a solid, secure, loving foundation at home, we and the nation are clearly the beneficiary.9
Culturally, New Dad is a hit! Fathers receive praise from wife, children, and society when they take an active role in child rearing. In fact, the nation pleads for Dad to come home in order to solve many of the nation's ills. With so much pressure to bring Dad home in the 1990s, it should be no shock that the club is less important. Perhaps the traditional man of the house is trading his beer-drinking, joke-telling buddies for the rewarding pleasures of family and home.
Speaking of beer, it's no joke that the military officer is up against an entirely different pressure-- substance abuse--in modern America, and herein lies the last sociological influence. Regardless of one's marital or parental status, drugs and alcohol are out in the 1990s. Accordingly, the club loses again. In many ways, younger officers are allowed to drink as much as their superiors ever did; actually, "healthy" diet alcoholic drinks, a nearby "designated driver" sipping a cola, and free taxi-ride cards make "guilt-free" drinking easier.10
Given this "permission" for public drinking, why then aren't more officers flocking to the club? To answer this, first remember that human behavior synergistically combines ideas and life-styles in such a manner as to derive the best of all worlds (Maslow's hierarchy of needs manipulated by smart people). Combined with the forces mentioned earlier, many officers who do drink want to go home and enjoy cocktails with their spouses; or perhaps couples will get together at home or elsewhere. And for those health-conscious officers who feel alcohol is bad news, a workout before going home or a jog after work might seem a better use of their time (and, don't forget, the family can be included!). In a phrase, "Just say no" translates into "Adios, O club!"
In summarizing the effects of a changing society on an officer's self-definition, analysis of late twentieth-century sociology could have predicted a decline in the number of reasons for attending the club--or, more correctly stated, an increase in the number of reasons for not attending. So, society is guilty as charged. But it hasn't worked alone.
Obviously, as society changes, so does the military. The Department of Defense and the Air Force have always been obliged to respond to societal and global change. Unfortunately, many of our institutional decisions are constructed to solve immediate shortfalls, and it seems that little thought is given to the potential long-range outcome of such decisions, especially their effect on the human spirit.11 "It is noteworthy that both the early Air Force intent to recruit generalists and the recent evolution to specialists appear to be reactions to the increasing complexity of aerial warfare rather than a result of planning or foresight," noted Major Stokes.12 USAF and DOD officials made several such decisions in the 1980s. Three specific policy changes, acting in tandem with the social forces addressed earlier, foster this definite and observable redefinition of officership. These changes include (1) an increase in officer pay combined with the elimination of governmental funding of clubs, (2) the elimination of additional duties from the young rated force, and (3) the introduction of the OPR with its exclusive emphasis on an officer's primary duties. This redefinition, assuming it to be an Air Force concern, certainly took a backseat to the more immediate problems of the late 1980s that were the targets of these three policies. To understand this complicated interaction, we must study these three policy changes in context.
In the past, the officers' club provided a haven for officers, who swelled with pride when hosting family and friends at the club. Such royal amenities as silver, crystal, and fine eating for such a low price were a fringe benefit--one not overlooked by accountants when assessing an officer's total compensation. In addition, the club's back-room bars historically attracted fun-loving and rowdy officers quick to share a drink and hair-raising war stories. But all that has changed.
Beginning in the early 1980s at the outset of the Reagan military buildup, military pay rose steeply. Officer pay began to compete with civilian pay, starting with a 10 percent jump in 1981 and continuing since then with raises of 3 or 4 percent annually. At the very same time, undoubtedly due to direct competition for funds, Congress decided that taxpayers should not be subsidizing such frivolity as military clubs. So, all officer and enlisted clubs were dropped from the appropriated funds lists and suddenly were on their own. Consequently, the club fell from grace again from competition with restaurants and off-base clubs that were now affordable to the officer.
We can only guess whether Congress or the Department of Defense considered the long-term consequence of these two divergent actions. More important, how would the Air Force deal with the situation? In all fairness to our Air Force, Congress overrode the USAF's insistence that just such a chain of events would occur given these circumstances. But we lost, widening the gap between old and new officer definitions. Furthermore, other factors of USAF origin were at play during this same era.
In the mid-1980s, senior USAF leaders grappling with pilot-retention problems formulated a new policy called "Depth before Breadth." Among other changes, this policy eliminated many additional duties and shifted emphasis to one's primary job to the exclusion of all else during the first 10 years of service. Obviously, such action contributes to the fundamental redefinition of officership; and while this may actually be the goal, our Air Force may lose cohesiveness in the long term.
In terms of classical Darwinian theory, Air Force officers are evolving into a variety of highly specialized organisms, comfortable performing in a niche designed for their particular type of training. Unfortunately, such specialization is the antithesis of O club involvement. Major Stokes writes, "As we concentrate greater numbers of accession quotas on the technologists necessary to support the continuing complexity of our weapon systems inventory, we should anticipate even greater difficulty preserving a traditional officer ethos."13 If officers are no longer rewarded for traditional officer behavior and their largest rewards come from specialization, why attend the club? Simply stated, specialization hurts traditional institutions like the club, and we are encouraging such behavior in two important ways.
First, slashing additional duties from rated officers' job descriptions directly affects their self-definition as officers. The mere deletion of such leadership and management duties from their job description forces officers to develop a stricter job definition than would otherwise be derived. It's not the deletion of actual duties that causes consternation but the absence of them from a new officer's internal job description. Undoubtedly, opportunities for management present themselves throughout the year; but knowing such "occasions" lie outside the realm of one's primary job furthers the redefinition process.
Second, no longer having relatively easy and uncomplicated programs to work, many junior rated officers will not taste leadership and management issues until years later. Many will not have the chance to "cut their management and leadership teeth" until a time when such experience would normally already be expected, a complaint oft voiced by civilian corporations about military managers. Fortunately, many nonrated officers have earlier opportunities to develop leadership and management skills; however, rated officers will likely continue to make up the bulk of the senior leadership despite the reduced opportunity in their early years.
Evolving job descriptions send mixed messages to officers commissioned in the 1980s, especially rated officers. In fact, the blurry evolution of officer roles can be easily traced using the ongoing series of ideal officer slogans: a leader, leader-manager, leader-manager-warrior, or warrior-leader. And now, as if reducing additional duties didn't elicit the desired response, we started using the OPR, which actually disallows credit for nearly everything that has traditionally defined an officer.
The OPR, another mid-1980s invention, has significantly altered the professional outlook of officers. Regardless of precommission training and despite the Lieutenants Professional Development Program and Squadron Officer School dogma, years of strictly structured OPRs have "taught" captains and lieutenants what the Air Force expects of them. Since writing, briefing, and public-speaking skills, community and base involvement, as well as limited additional duty credit, are all absent from an officer's primary performance report, a very limited professional definition has developed. Moreover, combine this OPR system with an "up-or-out" philosophy, the perception of a "one-mistake Air Force," and fierce competition in an atmosphere of unprecedented personnel reductions, and most officers will not attempt any variation to this expected professional behavior. "The only problem is, unless you're willing to accept change--or maybe create some of your own--you'll never know if things might be better than they have always been."14 Herein lies the real long-term harm for our Air Force.
Like the natural selection process in Darwin's theory, the OPR now reflects increased specialization and is used as a guide for weeding out undesirables. If an officer's new approaches to problem solving are unsuccessful, his branch on the officer evolution tree is cut and more "politically correct" branches survive. This "unnatural selection" will explode in the coming years, and the generalist will become an "endangered species." Perhaps this is the ultimate goal of USAF senior leadership, but the result will be a more pronounced move toward civilian corporateness.
Ultimately, culpability for the demise of the O club rests equally on the Air Force and society. Both are responsible for "civilianizing" the force. Officers have been weaned from that which makes them traditional officers, that semblance of unity and common purpose. Indeed, initial indications show a majority of club attendees tend to interact only with friends of similar specialty. Interestingly enough, more nonrated officers attend the club than rated ones; but once there, both groups associate with friends of their own specialty by a 3:2 ratio.15 Specialization definitely affects one's self-definition.
The focal point for this entire discussion has been the officers' club. The O club problem is really a symptom of the officer corps' unclear self-definition and identity crisis. In the midst of this crisis, officers are told that being a member of the club is part of being an officer--that membership increases officer corps camaraderie. And yet, in practice, the opposite is perceived. In one preliminary study, 70 percent of the respondents said they did not feel officer camaraderie is increased by O club membership. On the other hand, 67 percent said camaraderie was increased through club participation (club membership is not viewed as analogous to participation). Forty-six percent felt the club was not the appropriate center for developing camaraderie in the 1990s, and only 42 percent thought it could be if certain changes were made. Curiously, even though a majority of officers view theoretical participation in O club events as good for esprit de corps, only a minority attend.
In addition, the emerging corps of "redefined officers" resents forced membership since specialization dictates that membership enhances none of the required skills that the Air Force rewards. On the contrary, the kind of encouragement they receive to accept club membership seems to run counter to everything the commissioned officer represents. Does this unofficial practice of promotional or positional blackmail work? From a human behavior viewpoint, certain phenomena can be predicted; unofficial coercion does indeed maintain healthy membership rates, but the psychological realities of specialization and civilian sociological influences cause sharp drops in participation. So, predictably, membership is up, participation is down, and resentment runs high.
Without some credible solution that acknowledges the redefinition of officership, the O club, like the generalist officer, will die out. The question is whether senior leadership can accept the psychological dynamics that result from societal change in combination with directed policy and guide our force out of this situation. Common ground can and should be found.
An understanding of the human situations associated with the job go far to solve the technical problems; in fact, such understanding may be a prerequisite of a solution.
--Joseph M. Juran
Federal Total Quality
Management Handbook
It's not a question of improving the appearance or service of clubs; it's a question of redefining its purpose based on a redefinition of officers' needs and desires in combination with the service's needs. In light of our changing needs and the realization that some clubs are in good working order, the following five suggestions are some options to study for the clubs that are struggling
If the military expects to maintain an all-volunteer force with a select group of motivated and skilled professional soldiers, it cannot ignore the potent influence of the military family. Neither can it fail to shape and project the kinds of policies needed to develop a military community that will support the new military. Policies that focus on the superior soldier, the cohesive and effective unit, and the military mission but that subordinate the family unit can only hamper the military's effort to achieve its mission and will ultimately lead to losses in valuable manpower, training, and equipment.16
Again, changes in attitudes are imperative.
In addition, certain changes in our own Air Force practices should coincide with changes in club structure. The following three possible options reinforce the club, make participation more desirable in light of the current social changes, and can be instituted immediately:
1. Add a child-care center directly into the club's facilities. This allows parents of small children to drop by together after work and not feel remiss in parental duties or marital togetherness.
2. Promote/reward generalist practices via OPR for such things as lecturing, writing, on- and off-base group activities, professional association, Girl/Boy Scout or Big Brother/Sister involvement, Little League coaching, and so forth. Such activities provide nonlike specialties with a common identity, and they cultivate management and leadership skills. Most important, they reduce the trend toward overspecialization. "Where legitimate, appropriate, and realistic prerequisites exist, we must meet them with a supply of qualified candidates, but we cannot afford to become so enamored with technical credentials that we eliminate room for the generalist in the officer corps. The generalists must still offer a balance against a total reliance on technology to win our wars."17 In other words, "as technology increases, the need for more personal interaction increases."18 Generalists in society tend to remind us of such truisms.
3. Retask additional duties to the rated force. This highly screened and well-trained force can certainly concentrate on primary duties while learning what it takes to manage resources and to lead people, thereby providing self-discovery as well as personalized leadership techniques that are successful. "The military leader needs much more than the basic professional knowledge required to accomplish his combat mission. Any military man who hopes to become a great leader must therefore constantly increase the scope of his knowledge and his grasp of techniques."19 In this way, rated officers become aligned with their nonrated counterparts who explore these concepts early in their careers, further promoting the idea of an officer corps.
We know how to change the Air Force to be responsive to a changing world. And we in the Air Force are intelligent enough, mature enough, smart enough and responsible enough to make this change effective and make the Air Force a smaller but a better and stronger force.
--Maj Gen Stephen B. Croker
Commander, Air Combat Command
(Provisional), 1991
These recommendations and variations of current practices address the trend toward declining participation in the officer's club, which indirectly affects our combat readiness. Simply demanding that officers join and participate in the O club will not increase morale or participation. On the contrary, such policies may smother individual spirit and directly affect our combat readiness. As General Patton reminds us:
Success in war lurks invisible in that vitalizing spark, yet as evident as the lightning--the warrior's soul--it is the cold glitter of the attacker's eye, not the point of the questing bayonet that breaks the line. It is the cataclysmic ecstasy of conflict in the flier, not the perfection of his machine gun, which drops the enemy in flaming ruin. Yet volumes are devoted to armament; pages to inspiration.20
Given the changes occurring in military society and the renewed interest in participative management amid massive personnel cuts, we owe our people some smart solutions instead of forced ones. Whenever a cure for ailing military clubs is prescribed, it necessarily must include diversification and tolerance as ingredients. Acceptable remedies will be discovered by those remaining receptive, even intuitive, to their changing environment. These leaders understand that directing or managing change in the military as an inseparable part of a larger society is, in effect, their only true job description. The rest of the work will get done.
The most reliable way to anticipate the future is by understanding the present.
--John Naisbitt
Megatrends
Notes
1. J. B. Sweet, ed., Essentials of Military Training: A Manual for Members of the Regular Army, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve (Harrisburg, Pa.: The Stackpole Company, 1959), 152.
2. Department of Defense, The Armed Forces Officer (Washington, D.C.: Armed Forces Information Service, 1950), 36-37.
3. Maj Richard W. Stokes, Jr., Preserving the Lambent Flame: Traditional Values and the USAF Officer Accession Program (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, September 1984), 4-5.
4. Ibid., 5.
5. Arlie R. Hochschild, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home (New York: Viking-Penguin, Inc., 1989), 162.
6. Janet Z. Giele, Listening to America's Families: Action for the 80's: A Summary for the Report to the President, Congress and Families of the Nation (Washington, D.C.: White House Conference on Families, 1980), 161.
7. H. I. McCubbin and M. A. Marsden, "The Military Family," in The Changing World of the American Military, ed. Franklin D. Margiotta (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1978), 211.
8. Hochschild, 186-87.
9. Quoted in Lt Col Michael B. Perini, "SAC Adjusts to a Post-Cold War Era," Airman 36, no.1 (January 1992): 14.
10. Designated drivers and free taxi service are ideas highly encouraged by the military. While not specifically endorsing alcoholic indulgence, this practice is similar to providing free condoms to high school students. What's a parent or general supposed to do?
11. American military leaders rarely are human behaviorists or psychologists but generally are engineering, business, or political science specialists well versed in military strategy. Such backgrounds rarely focus on the human dimension except as it relates to "the Mission." Perhaps this is now changing with the new emphasis on human personality and Total Quality Management.
12. Stokes, 4.
13. Ibid., 10.
14. MSgt Dick Hodgson, "Accepting Change," The Peacemaker (Dyess AFB, Texas, base newspaper), 10 January 1992.
15. The retired officer community is not addressed in this article. Although they impact club activity and revenues, retired officers have little effect on changing officer roles and the move toward specialization and away from activities such as the club.
16. McCubbin and Marsden, 215-16.
17. Stokes, 47.
18. John Naisbitt, Megatrends (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1982), 53.
19. Sweet, 152.
20. Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers, 1885-1940, vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1972), 796-97.
Capt Clay K. Culver (BS, Memphis State University; MA, National University at Scramento) is a flight commander and B-1B defensive systems officer, 28th Bombardment Squadron, Air Combat Command, McConnell AFB, Kansas. He previously served as an assistant operations officer, 453d Flying Training Squadron, USAF Electronic Warfare School, and as an advanced electronic combat and navigator instructor at Mather AFB, California. At K. I. Sawyer AFB, Michigan. Captain Culver was a squadron executive officer and a B-52H electronic warfare officer with the 644th Bomb Squadron. He has published in the Journal of Electronic Defense. His article on the B-1B appeared in the 50th anniversary issue of the Navigator. Captain Culver is a graduate of Squadron Officer School.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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