Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Donald J. Mrozek / This dissertation examines the development of the professional military studies curriculum at the United States Air Force Academy. The study explores the rationale behind establishing an Air Force Academy, along the lines similar to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point or the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. The quest for an additional academy emphasized the need for specialized training of air force cadets and creating a common bond for its future officer corps, rather than recognizing the necessity to equip them with a professional military education regarding warfare and how air power influences war, for example. This trend continued in the two main studies used to justify the Air Force Academy, as well as the development of the initial curriculum, where an integrated academic curriculum, one that emphasized both the sciences and engineering as well as the social sciences and humanities, placed any discussion of professional military studies on the back burner. The challenge of the Academy’s general academic curriculum on the cadet’s time left little room for the development of a strong, rigorous professional military studies program. However, the confluence of a cheating scandal at West Point and the resulting report, as well as a reflection during the 25th anniversary of the Academy’s founding in 1979, which developed questions on the professional military studies program within the curriculum, led to the establishment of a Permanent Professor within the Deputy Commandant for Military Instruction, and resulted in drastic changes to the curriculum for the cadets, specifically involving professional military studies. Today, the United States Air Force Academy has a Department of Military and Strategic Studies under the overall authority of the Dean of Faculty. This department has as its charter the role to provide “the study of the context, theory, and application of military power”—with special emphasis on the role of airpower to the art and science of war. The document that helps define the duty of the department also states that this necessary study for officer candidates constitutes “the essence of a military academy education” and, most certainly, the central core of a professional military studies program.

This study reports on an investigation to determine the applicability of the peer rating technique to Air Force ROTC cadets at North Texas State College which has an enrollment of approximately 7000 students. The specific problem investigated was whether or not the peer rating would be useful in solving the leader identification problem in Air Force ROTC.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Donald J. Mrozek / On March 30, 1972 the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) launched a conventional offensive, dubbed the Easter Offensive, against South Vietnam. In response to this act President Richard Nixon ordered the United States Air Force (USAF) and Navy (USN) to resume bombing North Vietnam. For the next nine months, USAF conducted offensive operations against the whole of the DRV in an attempt to accomplish four major objectives. First, USAF units sought to interdict sufficiently the North Vietnamese Army's (NVA's) supply lines to preclude continued conventional operations in South Vietnam. Second, President Nixon had directed the Air Force to inflict sufficient punishment on North Vietnam in order to deter further aggression against its southern neighbor. Third, as implied by the Nixon Doctrine, USAF was to establish convincingly its ability to conduct conventional operations in support of an allied nation during a major conflict. Finally, with the introduction of B-52 bombers in December 1972, the Air Force was to maintain the credibility of manned strategic aircraft as part of American nuclear deterrence policy. Historically, the United States Air Force and many civilian observers have maintained that the United States Air Force succeeded in all four tasks. However, the evidence strongly indicates that the United States Air Force not only failed to achieve all but the interdiction objective during the course of operations against North Vietnam, but that this defeat stemmed from the decision not to develop a comprehensive Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) doctrine from 1968 through 1972. In choosing this course of action, USAF's military and civilian leaders guaranteed that American forces would be unable to bring sufficient force to bear to achieve President Nixon's goals. Furthermore, by choosing this course of action and, in addition, refocusing the Air Force on nuclear delivery rather than enhancing USAF's capability to penetrate an integrated air defense (IADS), these same leaders ignored the results of Operation Rolling Thunder. The consequence of this choice, as will be shown in the following pages, was an outcome that had serious implications for the United States' Cold War conventional and nuclear military policy.

This investigation sought to describe the organization, function, and scope of the internal public affairs program of Carswell Air Force Base, Texas. Data came from in-depth interviews, office files, and military publications. The Carswell Air Force Base internal public affairs program appeared to be without direction and reactive in nature. Personnel had little or no formal journalism or public relations training and demonstrated only a vague awareness of the relationships between publics, tools, and activities. Still, the job seemed to get done, although perhaps not as well or as efficiently as possible. This raises the question: Where does formal journalism or public relations training fit into the running of a public affairs/relations office?

General Nathan F. Twining distinguished himself in leading the American Fifteenth Air Force during the last full year of World War II in the European Theatre. Drawing on the leadership qualities he had already shown in combat in the Pacific Theatre, he was the only USAAF leader who commanded three separate air forces during World War II. His command of the Fifteenth Air Force gave him his biggest, longest lasting, and most challenging experience of the war, which would be the foundation for the reputation that eventually would win him appointment to the nation's highest military post as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Cold War.

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Missile Combat Crew members are officers in the United States Air Force responsible for operating nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. They undergo on-the-job training as part of the curriculum necessary to progress in their careers and achieve higher levels of job responsibility. The curriculum they use is created and maintained by 20th Air Force Test and Training Section. This product is known as the Missile Combat Crew Commander Upgrade program, and it has received criticisms from stakeholders who use it for being out of date and failing to capture the necessary topics for ensuring adequate on the job training is being conducted. This project seeks to examine these critiques, break down the curriculum produced by 20th AF into stages (creation, implementation, and feedback) for evaluation, uses principles of user-oriented design drawing on design anthropology to suggest alternative methods for curriculum creation, and utilizes the results of a diagnostic survey to provide data-driven recommendations to 20th AF for future rewrites of their product based on feedback from the crew members who use their product in the field.

Spousal congruence at multiple levels of perception was examined in relationship to marital adjustment. Subjects were 164 active duty and retired Air Force married couples.