USMC PROPONENT NOTES
(March 1997)

On 22 Feb. 1997, DoD Directive 1315.17 established new policy guidelines for the services' Foreign Area Officer (FAO) programs. It tasks Military Secretaries to develop and retain officers possessing: graduate level education or duty experience in the foreign regions in which they specialize; foreign language skills at the professional level; and qualification in their principal military specialties. The directive also tasks the heads of DoD components to designate positions in their organizations that require the above qualifications.

This Directive is only the latest indication of increased DoD emphasis on the services' FAO programs. Working with the DoN over the past year, HQMC has already improved its FAO program to meet or exceed the DoD requirement. With the release of MCO 1520.11E, the Marine Corps will further increase its ability to "develop and retain" a corps of regionally and linguistically experienced officers.

The goal of the revised FAO order is to expand the size of the Marine Corps pol-mil officer pool from 200 to 500 officers over the next 10 years, without breaking the bank with increased budget and manpower costs. The new order establishes the Political-military Officer Program, that will provide Marines interested in serving in exotic overseas billets far more flexibility and career options than the current FAO program.

This flexibility will come with the addition of a new Regional Affairs Officer (RAO) program. Unlike FAO training, which along with a follow-on utilization tour could keep an officer out of the fleet for up to 7 years, the RAO program will use an incremental approach for training pol-mil officers. RAO training will include a Naval Postgraduate (NPS) degree in Area Studies followed by a fleet or external tour that provides further on-the-job training. RAOs will be especially well suited for JUSMAG, DIA or other external billets that require niche language training immediately prior to assignment. The first 7 RAOs will be selected by this year's FAO board to attend Monterey in the summer of 1998.

The good news for current Marine FAOs, is that those trained under the old two year program will be eligible to apply for the National Security Affairs (NSA) Area Studies degree. This will bring some of us up the standard of our USA counterparts and will be an especially good deal for majors who have not attended PME for grade. FAOs who successfully complete the NSA curriculum Joint Electives program will receive credit for both Phase I JPME and the first three courses of the Marine C&S non-residence course. The other courses will be offered through directed study courses.

Finally, the DoD tasker to component heads requiring that they designate FAO positions within their organizations should eliminate the monitors' practice of filling desirable FAO billets with whatever officer is closest at hand when the post comes open. I have already identified 200 billets of this type that will be reserved for designated pol-mil officers in the next revision of the Joint Manpower Manning Document. For further information on the Pol-mil Officer programs, contact me at HQMC (code PLU) at DSN 224-3706/7/8.

1997, Foreign Area Officer Association
Springfield, Virginia
Maintained by LTC Steve Gotowicki.
http://www.faoa.org