VOLUME 1 2018 NUMBER 1 AN OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES The Responsibility Threshold for Military Officership Maj Joseph O. Chapa (USAF) Department of Philosophy, United States Air Force Academy CENTER FOR CHARACTER & LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT EDITORIAL STAFF: Dr. Douglas Lindsay, USAF (Ret), Editor in Chief Ms. Julie Imada, Editor and Chief, CCLD Strategic Communications JCLD is published at the United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Articles in JCLD may be reproduced in whole or in part without permission. A standard source credit line is required for each reprint or citation. For information about the Journal of Character and Leadership Development or the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Center for Character and Leadership Development, to inquire about print subscriptions, or to be added to the Journal’s electronic subscription list, contact us at: [email protected] Phone: 719-333-4904 The Journal of Character & Leadership Development The Center for Character & Development U.S. Air Force Academy 2300 Cadet Drive Suite 300 USAF Academy, CO 80840-62600 ISSN 2372-9465 (print) ISSN 2372-9481 (online) Manuscripts may be submitted via Scholastica at https://jcld.scholasticahq.com/for-authors INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION Leading Through Change Mark C. Anarumo, Col, USAF Permanent Professor Director, Center for Character and Leadership Development Douglas R Lindsay, PhD Editor in Chief Journal of Character and Leadership Development Greetings readers, and thank you for Force Academy in the Center for Character & considering this Occasional Paper and allowing Leadership Development (CCLD), the aim of us to introduce our new Journal of Character the new Journal of Character and Leadership and Leadership Development. We are excited Development (JCLD) extends to the larger about this evolution of our previous publication academic and applied communities. The intent and honored to take our place as scholarship is to establish a forum for the discussion of leaders in the emerging fields of character and topics relevant to leadership and character leadership development. development. Over the past several years, the JCLI filled Many of you will recall our previous a gap in the literature. JCLD will still fill the publication, the Journal of Character and previously identified gap, but will significantly Leadership Integration (JCLI). JCLI was increase the quality of scholarship and presence established to contribute to the science and in the field. Though the formal JCLD will discourse around the integration of the be published semi-annually, there will be leadership and character domains. In the past, scholarship outside normal publication cycles. as is true with many academic disciplines, In order to get this scholarship that is both these topics were studied in isolation. In fact, innovative and pushes our thinking out to there are many decades of substantial research larger audiences in a timely manner, CCLD has on both character and leadership which were begun publishing an Occasional Paper Series. studied independently. While this approach This outlet allows us to examine topics that has produced insight into these complex may not fit squarely within the intent of the topics, we have found that it is integration Journal but provides critical insight into topics of such work that is critical for development of interest. Through this Series, we hope to in both of these areas. While the focus of expand the dialogue around topics of interest to this initial effort was at the United States Air our readership in support of JCLD. INTRODUCTION 1 THE RESPONSIBILITY THRESHOLD FOR MILITARY OFFICERSHIP The current Occasional Paper was written by that officership consists of the responsibility Maj Joseph Chapa and is an excellent treatise around four dimensions: personnel, financial on the topic of officership. In the paper, Maj resources, mission objectives, and concentrated Chapa elaborates on the distinctions that are lethality. Through a balanced discussion, he made between the officer and enlisted forces outlines how these dimensions can be used to and the limitations of previous definitions determine thresholds that drive the demand of officership. The case that he uses as the for officer leadership. After a cogent discussion backdrop for the discussion is the recent use of the dimensions, he addresses a common of enlisted personnel as Global Hawk piolots. objection to officership, or what he refers to as He adeptly steps through seminal work done the “Lieutenant Problem.” This is the situation by Huntington and Stavridis and colleagues, that exists when a new Lieutenant is placed in identifies limitations to how officership a leadership situation over numerous personnel is defined, and distinguishes between the that have much more experience. Through officer and enlisted forces. As a result of that an insightful application of the model, Maj discussion, he presents a framework that can Chapa examines several examples of Lieutenant be used to explain our traditional distinction Apprenticeship that have been successfully between officers and enlisted members. The implemented to help grow future leaders. framework has four dimensions that overcome We hope you will enjoy this first Occasional the limitations of previous definitions of Paper and we look forward to bringing you officership and can be used to account for timely and innovated content for many years to both combat and support officers. Instead come through this series and the new Journal of of focusing on previous factors such as Character and Leadership Development. education and leadership training, he states 2 FEATURE FEATURE The Responsibility Threshold for Military Officership Maj Joseph O. Chapa (USAF) is now a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Oxford. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government. Correspondence concerning this article can be sent to [email protected] Joseph Chapa is a Major in the U.S. Air Force and a doctoral student in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He is a Senior Pilot with more than 1,000 flight and instructor hours, many of which were flown in support of major US combat and humanitarian operations. He holds an M.A. in Philosophy from Boston College, and a B.A. in Philosophy from Boston University. His areas of expertise include the Just War Tradition, military ethics, and especially the ethics of remote and autonomous weapons. ABSTRACT This paper proposes a new framework for defining military officership. Developments in technology and policy have raised questions about the nature of the profession of arms and long-held distinctions between officer and enlisted roles. Recent scholarship has argued that the advent of the cyber domain demands that we broaden the expertise of the military professional from Huntington’s traditional conception of the “management of violence.” At the same time, the US Air Force has recently opened RQ-4 Global Hawk pilot positions to enlisted members—a significant departure from Air Force cultural norms. The paper argues that recent conceptions fail to account for the officer/enlisted distinction and that officership ought to be defined instead in terms of the additive responsibility for people, finances, mission objectives, and concentrated lethality. This conception of officership provides a model against which to evaluate military positions to determine whether they ought to be filled by officers or enlisted members. Conclusions, though they will be applicable to the enlisted Global Hawk pilot decision, will also apply much more broadly to joint and international conceptions of military officership. FEATURE 3 THE RESPONSIBILITY THRESHOLD FOR MILITARY OFFICERSHIP Introduction There may be a strong temptation here to In late 2015, the Secretary and Chief of Staff of cast both questions in normative terms. (a) the US Air Force announced that future RQ-4 What ought to be the role of the officer, and Global Hawk pilot positions will be filled, (b) ought officers to fill Global Hawk pilot at least in part, by enlisted Airmen (SECAF positions. These are both interesting questions Public Affairs, 2015). The first class of enlisted but putting the first question in normative pilots completed undergraduate remotely terms is tantamount to asking “ought there to piloted aircraft training (URT) in May of 2017, be an officer/enlisted distinction at all?” Such breaking a precedent that had been in place a discussion would open too many doors and since WWII (Martin, 2017). This tremendous close too few, and this cannot be a paper about change in the relationship between Air Force everything. Instead, this paper’s scope is limited aviation roles and force structure invites a long- by the recognition that there is an officer/ overdue discussion of the profession of arms in enlisted distinction. What is at stake here is the general and the distinction between officers and descriptive (rather than the normative) question enlisted members in particular. about the grounds on which the officer/enlisted The fact that enlisted Airmen will (and in distinction is based in actual practice. fact already do) pilot the RQ-4 Global Hawk I propose the following outline for the work raises an important question: Should we limit that lies ahead. First, I will engage Huntington’s (or should we have limited) Global Hawk classic and still widely accepted conception pilot positions (or