Specialized knowledge, skills, and mindsets are necessary for effective security cooperation. However, efforts to develop the security cooperation workforce face significant challenges, including disagreement over what constitutes expertise and a manning system that often treats security cooperation as a temporary assignment rather than a career path. Building a professional, competent, and unified workforce requires understanding the qualities that define exceptional security cooperation practitioners and the barriers to professional development, competency-based education, and strategic retention. It also necessitates identifying how to shift from a culture of compliance and “box checking,” where success is measured by task completion, to a professional culture that emphasizes strategic outcomes, critical thinking, continuous improvement, specialized expertise, and collaboration.
To effectively overcome these challenges and build this enterprise, what approaches work best to plan and resource multi-year Security Cooperation strategies, bridge gaps, and deliver a professional, diversified, and right-sized Security Cooperation workforce?
- Stuard, Maj. Kathryn L., "Cooperate to Outcompete: Security Cooperation Impacts on Grey-Zone Conflict in the Indo-Pacific," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- Stuard addresses this question by critiquing the USAF's standard two-to-four-year Permanent Change of Station (PCS) cycles, which prioritize creating broadly adaptable Airmen but fail to build the deep regional expertise required to navigate the complexities of the Indo-Pacific theater. To deliver a right-sized, professional workforce capable of outcompeting China, she recommends extending PCS assignments for security cooperation personnel to five to seven years and establishing regional specialization tracks that focus on local languages, cultures, and policy education. By incentivizing these longer assignments and tailoring career paths to allow Airmen to rotate consistently within the region, Stuard asserts that the USAF can foster the trust, continuity, and strategic acumen needed to develop enduring, multi-year relationships with regional partners.