全球智库信息集成服务系统

• Annual snapshots of JQO statistics provide no longitudinal basis to assess the magnitude or consistency of findings or make meaningful comparisons across services.
• The trends over the last ten years show that all services have achieved considerable growth in absolute numbers for the inventory of JQOs. However, for FYs 2015–2017, these numbers stabilized and even declined in terms of annual appointees.
• Joint education is primarily accomplished based on timing and availability of officers within their career progression vice in a manner that allows education to proceed joint assignment. This outcome is despite an increasing variety of venues to complete joint education requirements.
• The services have taken diverse approaches to talent management and the timing associated with gaining joint experience. Some services value officers achieving joint experience earlier in their careers versus others attempting to delay officers' time away from key junctures in their service developmental process. Also, officers have differentially taken advantage of alternative joint experience paths by service.
• JQO designation is trending toward higher grades. This outcome is a paradox as the preponderance of joint duty assignments are for more junior officers. Accordingly, many officers are relying on only their initial joint education as the sole instructional preparation for their joint duty assignment.
• The services face evolving threats and the need for more advanced joint operational concepts. Jointness is progressing beyond interservice capability to include interagency, multinational, and coalition jointness for expanding mission areas (space and cyberwarfare). Existing JQOs constraints will remain, and even grow, in the continuing development and management of joint personnel.

The passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act in 1986 resulted in significant personnel reforms in defining and developing joint military officers. The fundamental elements for educating and managing joint officers are codified in law and implemented via Department of Defense policy. Over time, policies have been updated to reflect operational considerations and to provide additional enhancements and flexibilities. The overall objective of this report was to quantify and assess the production of joint qualified officers (JQOs) and thereby establish a baseline of joint officer management (JOM) and joint professional military education (JPME) outcomes against which to assess historical trends. The report provides such historical trends for field grade officers in the active component over a ten-year period. The authors analyzed JQO inventories and appointees on an annual basis, examining trends, addressing the sequencing of education and duty assignment; and conducting two case studies to examine the experiences of JQOs. To gain a historical context and to appreciate other factors that may have contributed to trend variances, the authors reviewed relevant laws, policies, and regulations and engaged in discussions with the JOM and JPME offices of the services and Joint Staff to better understand their perceptions on data validity, gain their historical recollections of policy and operational events, understand their thoughts on the report's findings, and identify potential practices that may be effective for others. The trends presented in the report serve as a baseline allowing policymakers to evaluate impact of both current and future policy changes.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  Achieving Designation as a Joint Qualified Officer

• Chapter Three

  Historical Inventories of Joint Qualified Officers

• Chapter Four

  Education and Experience Requirements

• Chapter Five

  Sequencing of Joint Education and Joint Experience

• Chapter Six

  Joint Qualified Officer Designation Experiences: Two Case Studies

• Chapter Seven

  Observations and Implications