Staff college

Staff colleges (also command and staff colleges and war colleges) train military officers in the administrative, staff and policy aspects of their profession. It is usual for such training to occur at several levels in a career. For example, an officer may be sent to various staff courses: as a captain they may be sent to a single service command and staff school to prepare for company command and equivalent staff posts; as a major to a single or joint service college to prepare for battalion command and equivalent staff posts; and as a colonel or brigadier to a higher staff college to prepare for brigade and division command and equivalent postings.

The success of Staff Colleges spawned, in the mid-twentieth century, a civilian imitation in what are called administrative staff colleges. These institutions apply some of the principles of the education of the military colleges to the executive development of managers from both the public and private sectors of the economy. The first and best-known administrative staff college was established in Britain at Greenlands near Henley, Oxfordshire and is now renamed Henley Management College.

History

The first modern staff college was that of Prussia. Prussian advanced officer education began under the reign of Fredrick the Great in 1710. The Seven Years' War demonstrated the inadequacy of the education that Generals had at that time, but it was not until 1801 that staff training in a modern sense began when Gerhard von Scharnhorst became the director of the Prussian Military Academy. The Prussian defeats at the hand of Napoleon I led to the creation of the Allgemeine Kriegsschule (General War Academy) with a nine month programme covering mathematics, tactics, strategy, staff work, weapons science, military geography, languages, physics, chemistry and administration.^[1] The German staff courses have been used as a basic templates for other staff courses around the world.

Staff Course formats

Nations have taken a wide variety of approaches to the form, curriculum and status of staff colleges, but have much in common with the Prussian courses of the early 19th Century. Some courses act as filters for promotion or entry into a specialist staff corps. The length of courses varies widely, from three months to three years, with some having entrance and/or exit examinations. The more senior the course, the more likely that it will include strategic, political and joint aspects, with junior courses often focusing on single service and tactical military aspects of warfare.

Idiom

Certain terms of art or idiom have developed in staff colleges over time, and then been used in wider college or university settings and everyday usage, including:

• staff refers to the professional personnel (usually called Directing Staff (DS)) and employees of the college;
• fight the white, normally expressed as do not fight the white (as in do not go against the staff's pre-determined answer), where the 'white' is the question given to students, which may lack realism or not fit current operations. A "pink" is the Staff College's staff answer to a particular problem or issue. Pinks and whites referred to the color coding of course material where problems and information for use of students was printed on standard white sheets of papers while material intended for use by directing staff (which often contained suggested solutions/answers)was produced on pink sheets. This practice originates from staff colleges of British origins. The tradition survives across several Commonwealth staff colleges such as the Command and Staff College, Quetta.

Staff colleges

The following is an incomplete list of staff colleges, by continent by country:

Africa

Ghana

• Ghana Armed Forces Command And Staff College, Military Academy And Training Schools, Teshie, Accra

Kenya

• Defense Staff College, Nairobi

Nigeria

• Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Jaji in Kaduna State

Uganda

• Uganda Senior Command and Staff College, Kimaka in Jinja District
• Uganda Junior Staff College, Jinja in Jinja District

The Americas

Argentina

• Escuela Superior de Guerra "Teniente General Luis María Campos".^[2]

Canada

• Canadian Land Force Command and Staff College
• Canadian Forces College

United States of America

Air Force

• Air University, HQ at Maxwell AFB, Alabama
  • Air Command and Staff College
  • Air War College
  • Air Force Institute of Technology (Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio)

Army

• Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
• School of Advanced Military Studies
• U.S. Army War College (Carlisle, Pennsylvania)
• U.S. Army Warrant Officer Career College

Navy

• Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island
  • College of Naval Command and Staff
  • College of Naval Warfare
• Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey, California)^[3]

Marines

• Marine Corps University
  • Marine Corps War College
  • Marine Corps Command and Staff College
  • School of Advanced Warfighting
  • Expeditionary Warfare School

Joint

• Defense Acquisition University - five campuses - HQ at Fort Belvoir, Virginia
• National Defense University in Washington D.C.
  • National War College
  • Industrial College of the Armed Forces
  • Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia,

Asia

Bangladesh

• Defence Services Command And Staff College Mirpur

China

• People's Liberation Army National Defense University
  • Nanjing PLA Army Command College
  • Shijiazhuang PLA Army Command College
  • PLA Naval Command College
  • PLA Air Force Command College
  • PLA Artillery Command College
  • Second Artillery Corps Command College

India

• Defence Services Staff College, Wellington

Japan

• Naval War College (Japan)

Lebanon

• Fouad Shehab Command and Staff College

Nepal

• Army Command and Staff College(www.acsc-shivapuri.mil.np/)

Pakistan

• National Defence University
• Command and Staff College
• PAF Air War College
• Pakistan Navy War College

Philippines

• Armed Forces of the Philippines Command and General Staff College

Singapore

• Goh Keng Swee Command and Staff College

Sri Lanka

• General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University
• Defence Services Command and Staff College
• SLAF Junior Command & Staff College

Taiwan (Republic of China)

• National Defense University
  • Army Command and Staff College
  • Naval Command and Staff College
  • Air Command and Staff College

United Arab Emirates

• Armed Forces of the UAE Command and Staff College

Europe

France

• École de guerre ("War School"). Created in 1993 by the fusion of the four Écoles supérieures de guerre ("War Higher Schools"). Formerly known as
• Centre des hautes études militaires ("School of Advanced Military Studies"). Created in 1952. The students must have completed the École de guerre.
• Institut des hautes études de la défense nationale ("School of Advanced Defense Studies"). Created in 1936. The students are civilians, both civil servants and high-profile executives, but the students of the Centre des hautes études militaires also attend the Institut..
• École supérieure des officiers de réserve spécialistes d'état-major ("Reserve Staff Officers School"). Following the defeat of 1870-71 war, it was created in 1899 by a group of Reserve Officers and then officially became a staff college in 1900.

All these schools are seated in the école militaire in Paris.

Germany

• Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr, Armed Forces Staff and Command College.
• Bundesakademie für Sicherheitspolitik, Federal Academy for Security Policy.

Portugal

• Instituto de Estudos Superiores Militares ("Higher Military Studies Institute"), Portuguese Armed Forces Joint Command and Staff College. Created in 2005 by the fusion of the former three separate Army, Navy and Air Force staff colleges
• Instituto da Defesa Nacional ("National Defense Institute"), Ministry of Defense college for National and International Security policy, created in 1967.

United Kingdom

• Defence Academy of the United Kingdom (Shrivenham)
  • Joint Services Command and Staff College for officers (OF2 to OF6) and Warrant Officers (Shrivenham)
    • JSCSC was formed by the merger of: Staff College, Camberley (Army), Royal Naval College, Greenwich and RAF Staff College, Bracknell
  • Royal College of Defence Studies for officers (OF6 to OF7) and civilians (London)

Oceania

Australia

The Australian Defence College (ADC) was officially opened in 1999 in Canberra. It is a Joint organisation, and comprises:

• the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies (CDSS), Weston Creek,
• the Australian Command and Staff College (ACSC), Weston Creek, and
• the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA).

Prior to the establishment of the Australian Command and Staff College, middle management officer Command and Staff training was conducted at separate single Service staff colleges:

• the RAN Staff Course at the RAN Staff College at HMAS Penguin in Sydney
• the Army Command and Staff Course was conducted at the Army Command and Staff College at Fort Queenscliff in Victoria; and
• the RAAF Staff Course at the RAAF Staff College at RAAF Base Fairbairn in Canberra.

New Zealand

• New Zealand Defence College

Intercontinental

NATO

• NATO Defence College

See also

• Command and Staff College (disambiguation)
• Staff (military)
• War College

References