History
In the 1930s, few officers were qualified, either by training or experience, to engage in joint operations. The demands of World War II brought out the urgent need for joint action by ground, sea, and air forces. To alleviate the friction and misunderstanding resulting from lack of joint experience, the Joint Chiefs of Staff established an Army and Navy Staff College (ANSCOL) in 1943. ANSCOL conducted a four-month course that was successful in training officers for joint command and staff duties. ANSCOL, which had been established to meet the immediate needs of war, was discontinued upon its conclusion.
A joint committee was appointed to prepare a directive for a new school. This directive, which was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 28 June 1946, established the Armed Forces Staff College. Responsibility for the operation and maintenance of its facilities was charged to the Chief of Naval Operations.
Following a temporary residence in Washington, D.C., JFSC was established in Norfolk, Virginia, on August 13, 1946. The site, formerly a U.S. Naval Receiving Station, was selected by the Secretaries of War and Navy because of its immediate availability and its proximity to varied high-level military activities. There were 150 students from all Services in the first class. They assembled in converted administration buildings on February 3, 1947 to be greeted by the first commandant, Air Force Lieutenant General Delos C. Emmons. The faculty officers came from joint assignments in all theaters of World War II.
With the construction of Normandy Hall in 1962, JFSC completed its transition from a temporary to a permanent institution. JFSC was assigned to the National Defense University on August 12, 1981. In 1999 JFSC opened Okinawa Hall which houses the Congressman Owen Pickett Wargaming Center and the Congressman Ike Skelton Library, which is a specialized military library, focusing on research in joint and combined operations, military history and naval science, operational warfare, and irregular warfare.
The staff, faculty, and students are assigned by each Service to foster a joint atmosphere.
Read more about this topic: Joint Forces Staff College
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)