Foreign area officer


A foreign area officer is a commissioned officer from any of the five branches of the United States Armed Forces who is a regionally focused expert in political-military operations. Such officers possess a unique combination of strategic focus and regional expertise, with political, cultural, sociological, economic, and geographic awareness. Foreign language proficiency is necessary in at least one of the dominant languages in their specified region.
A FAO will typically serve overseas tours as a defense attaché, a security assistance officer, or as a political-military planner in a service's headquarters, Joint Staff, Major Commands, Unified Combatant Commands, or in agencies of the Department of Defense. They also serve as arms control specialists, country desk officers, liaison officers, and Military Personnel Exchange Program officer to host nation or coalition allies. Recently, increasing numbers of FAOs are serving as political and cultural advisors to combatant staffs in support of the Iraq War and War in Afghanistan. Presently, there are just over 2,200 FAOs in active operational capacities, while roughly 25 percent are still in training. The services plan to recruit and train more than 170 a year, with almost 1,100 new FAOs entering the program by 2014.
Roles and responsibilities of FAOs are extensive and varied. They advise senior leaders on political-military operations and relations with other nations, provide cultural expertise to forward-deployed commands conducting military operations, build and maintain long-term relationships with foreign leaders, develop and coordinate security cooperation, execute security assistance programs with host nations, and develop reports on diplomatic, information, military, and economic activities.

Army

The Army Foreign Area Officer Program is a single-track FAO program managed by G-35, SSF, which is the Strategic Leadership Division. It is by far the largest and oldest FAO program of the Services. The Proponent Office is responsible for establishing policy guidance and FAO career field development as well as establishing specific programs focused on the accession, training, education, distribution, utilization, deployment, and separation of FAOs. Currently, there are 1,257 Army FAOs either in training or fully qualified.
Army FAOs are categorized by areas of concentration that correspond with their respective military occupational specialty, further grouped in scope by functional areas. Army FAOs are divided into nine categories of regional areas of expertise and language skills:
The Army Reserve has a small corps of FAOs who mostly serve in operational and back-up roles at the Defense Attaché Service as Reserve A/ARMAs, and at the Geographical Combatant Commands as Pol-Mil Officers and Country Desk Officers. Selection for the is highly selective, with new accessions only chosen to fill identified vacancies at semi-annual selection panels held by Army Human Resources Command with the RC FAO Proponent.

Marine Corps

The International Affairs Officer Program replaced the FAO and International Relations Officer Program in the Marine Corps in 2000, which is an umbrella program that governs two separate, but interrelated military occupational specialty: the Foreign Area Officer and the Regional Affairs Officer designations. Much like the USAF dual-track system, RAOs are basically FAOs without local language skills. There are approximately 280 FAOs and 80 RAOs in the Marine Corps, distributed amongst the following specialties:
The Navy FAO Branch is a restricted line community of the Navy. The Navy has approximately 350 FAOs either fully qualified or in training. The community is expected to achieve 400 officers by 2019. As with the Army, the Navy has a single-track system, where officers from other Navy communities transfer over to Foreign Area Officer permanently. Navy FAOs are assigned the 1710 designator.
Navy FAOs are apportioned amongst the five regional Unified Combatant Commands:
The International Affairs Specialist Program is the Air Force component, and encompasses two officer types: the Foreign Area Officer and Political-Military Affairs Strategist. Both tracks remain under the Air Force Specialty Code 16: 16F for FAO and 16P for PAS. PAS development begins in conjunction with Intermediate Developmental Education, at around 10–12 years of commissioned service, and officers serve in similar positions as FAO officers do, but perform duties that require a broad knowledge of political-military affairs rather than regional expertise with foreign language skills. FAO officers require language skills and follow a more intensive, regionally focused pipeline with the following subcategories:
FAOs start their training earlier due to their more intensive training pipeline, typically between 7–10 years of commissioned service, and will serve in alternating FAO and primary career field positions for the remainder of their career. PAS officers will only serve one tour as a PAS before moving back to their primary AFSC. FAOs are required to maintain their language skills at or above a minimum level for the remainder of their career.

Accession and training

Acceptance into the FAO programs typically requires at least 7–10 years of commissioned service, since most FAO positions are designated for that of a field-grade officer. Generally speaking, applicants must have at a minimum the following:
FAO training varies amongst all four DoD branches, but usually takes a minimum of 3–5 years before FAOs can utilize their skills in an operational capacity, depending upon the qualifications of the candidate at the time of selection.
Due to FAO officer supply greatly exceeding demand and most FAO candidates being non-native English-speakers and immigrants serving in the U.S. military as a "path to citizenship" as well as an "up or out" career path once a candidate leaves the "command track" of active-duty uniformed military service on U.S. soil to serve "abroad", an extensive career-detrimental "qualification process" exists between promotion to 0-3 rank, FAO eligibility and the officer's selection of the FAO career path. It takes between 3–5 years of training, education and "trainee" performance before FAO trainees are ever even considered for full designation and qualification as an FAO.
Since the primary duty of an FAO is to serve as an interpreter/translator; full "designation" as an FAO is dependent on the availability of a "post" requiring a candidate's specific language skills as well as other primarily political and diplomatic and cultural factors, all of which are subject to U.S. foreign policy as determined by the President of the United States.
Standard requirements of fully qualified FAOs generally include the following:
Fluency in spoken and written "American English" as well as "exotic" foreign languages not typically taught in the U.S. "public" education system as true "second languages".
* Regional Expertise at a level 3 or above, per Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Instruction 3126.01.
Unlike its Active Component counterpart the Army RC FAO Program only selects branch-qualified officers who already possess 2/2 or better language qualifications with matching regional experience, Master's degrees, and at least Phase 2 their common core of Intermediate Level Education completed. As such, these officers tend to have had substantial international experience in their civilian careers that augments the military backgrounds of their AC FAO colleagues.
The Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness is the proponent for FAO programs for the DoD. He or she establishes DoD accession, education, and utilization policy for Foreign Area Officers. FAO guidance, directives, and standards for all military branch FAO programs are promulgated by DoD Directive 1315.17. The Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence oversees FAO capabilities, needs, and utilization in the DoD Agencies that they respectively supervise. For combat support activities, such oversight is conducted in conjunction with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Defense Language Office ensures a strategic focus on meeting present and future requirements for language and regional expertise, among military and civilian employees. This office's main responsibilities are to oversee and manage the implementation of a comprehensive Department-wide Language Transformation Roadmap; identify policy, procedural, and resource needs associated with providing needed language capability; oversee policy regarding the development, management, and utilization of civilian employees and members of the Armed Forces; and conduct research and analyze studies, reports, and lessons learned from the Global War on Terrorism and current military operations as they pertain to language and regional area expertise.

Leadership

While promotion levels vary between the branches, retention rates of FAOs are higher than service averages. The bulk of the FAO community is primarily composed of field grade officers, though general and flag officers include General John Abizaid, Lieutenant General Christopher G. Cavoli, Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, Lieutenant General Charles Hooper, Major General Robin Fontes, Brigadier General Richard M. Lake, Brigadier General Henry Nowak, Brigadier General Mark O’Neill, Brigadier General Kevin Ryan, Brigadier General John Adams, and Rear Admiral Douglas Venlet.