5.2 Professional Military Education

What PME Is For

AFH 1 states that Professional Military Education (PME) enhances performance in each phase of professional development and builds upon the foundation of leadership abilities developed during the earlier stages of an individual's career. PME complements training, experience, and other educational programs to provide enlisted leaders "a continuum of learning via progressive courses concentrated on developing leadership, Airmanship, and military professionalism."

The purpose statement to remember: PME ensures development of USAF institutional competencies and subcompetencies vital to critical thinking, sound decision-making, and a strategic mindset. The governing publication is DAFI 36-2670.

History and Home

In 1955, enlisted PME schools were established across the USAF to give NCOs the leadership and management training required to assume day-to-day mission execution responsibilities. AFH 1 notes the stand-up coincided with the release of the first official enlisted force structure, which established leadership roles and responsibilities at each grade. That 1955 pairing — schools plus first enlisted force structure — is a testable link.

Operational control of stateside enlisted PME schools lies with Air Education and Training Command at the Thomas N. Barnes Center for Enlisted Education, located at Maxwell Air Force Base-Gunter Annex, Alabama. The Barnes Center, Academic Affairs develops enlisted PME programs, faculty development, and operational program management. Barnes Center programs use performance evaluations and objective examinations and are designed with experiential activities, problem-centered leadership laboratories, personal reflection, guided discussion, case study analysis, and writing assignments.

The credit rule: "With the exception of the Chief Leadership Course, Airmen are awarded collegiate academic credit for completing enlisted PME courses through the Community College of the Air Force, which is accredited through Air University by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges."

The Enlisted PME Continuum

The Attribute Lists

Three schools have named four- or three-item attribute lists, and the PFE turns them into matching items.

ALS-DL and ALS-BLC core attributes (four): (1) professional Airmen, (2) expeditionary Airmen, (3) supervisor of Airmen, (4) supervisory communicator.

ALS curriculum (four): (1) mission, (2) leadership, (3) problem solving, (4) USAF culture.

SNCO-DL attributes (three): (1) self-awareness, (2) leadership and management, (3) joint warfighter.

The ALS pair is the trap: the core attributes and the curriculum are different four-item lists for the same school. If the stem says "curriculum," the answer is mission/leadership/problem solving/USAF culture.

A Policy Change Worth Knowing

AFH 1 records that EPME Distance Learning Course completion is no longer a prerequisite for resident attendance, effective 26 April 2018, and that Air University no longer allows new enrollments for active component Airmen — RegAF Airmen may access EPME DLC for reference purposes only through the Air University Student Information System (AUSIS).

Enlisted Joint PME

CJCSI 1805.01B, Enlisted Professional Military Education Policy, requires all enlisted personnel operating in joint, interagency, multinational, and coalition warfighting organizations to learn joint concepts. EJPME is web-based and accessible from anywhere at any time.

Both have learning areas in: (1) national strategic overview; (2) joint interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational capabilities; (3) foundations of joint operations; and (4) Joint Force leadership.

Prerequisite rule: students must complete rank-required service enlisted PME before enrolling in EJPME.

International PME

Inter-American Air Forces Academy (IAAFA). Established as a training program on 15 March 1943, at the request of Peru's Minister of Aeronautics, General Fernando Melgar, initially training 11 Peruvian students at Albrook Air Force Station, Panama Canal Zone — the first United States aeronautics training in Latin America. Today it is hosted by AETC at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, graduates an average of 900 students annually, has graduated over 35,000 students in its 75-year history, and is the only PME center in the USAF capable of offering all three enlisted tiers of PME — ALS, NCOA, and SNCOA. That last fact is the single most testable line in the passage.

Inter-European Air Forces Academy (IEAFA). Passed into U.S. law in Public Law 106-291, Section 1268, of the Carl Levin and Howard P. "Buck" McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, 19 December 2014, and codified as permanent authority in 2017. It serves NATO members and Partnership for Peace signatories, was officially activated on 23 March 2016, and is subordinate to Headquarters USAFE-AFAFRICA and the Warrior Preparation Center at Einsiedlerhof Air Station, Germany. It has educated more than 500 students from 32 countries and uniquely integrates officers and NCOs in a combined learning environment.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency leads DoD efforts to train, educate, advise, and equip foreign partners, and DoD policy requires security cooperation to be planned, programmed, budgeted, and executed with the same high degree of attention and efficiency as other integral DoD activities.