The Naval Staff Standard Course

Published: 2007 - September, Dossier

Today there is a deeply felt need to endow officers in all the Armed Forces with a wide-ranging professional culture to be grafted onto their technical operational skills for “service in the General Staff.” The evolution of the international political scenarios, and the attendant directives from political leaders have led to a different kind of involvement of the military apparatus in pursuing national and international interests than in the past.
The approval of the so-called “Law on Military Leadership” has changed the pyramid structure of the Armed Forces, introducing substantial qualitative and quantitative increases in the work of the Inter-Force General Staff, and in the General Staff Offices and Headquarters. They now require Naval Staff officers with suitable specific training. Moreover, the Naval Staff is increasingly called on to examine the same kind of issues as the other Armed Forces and various Ministries, especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Interior, but also those of Industry, Research, the Treasury, the Cultural Heritage and the Environment.
One last, far from trifling need, requiring innovative training, arises from the fact that the Armed Forces of the future will have to tackle changed tasks and unpredictable difficult situations. An officer serving in the Naval Staff will have to be capable of original thinking, flexibility and creativity in order to quickly master the new requirements for work, structures and situations in different countries, combined, however, with a knowledge of convenient methods to facilitate routine and other work.
For these reasons, therefore, the training of Naval Staff Officers must not only be wide-ranging but must also meet basically innovative criteria in the three essential sectors of programs, teaching methodology and assessment systems.

The mission
The rules governing the operation of the Institute of Maritime Military Studies are contained in the Regulations approved by the Ministry of Defense on March 31, 2003 and by the related “Implementation Measures” (SMM-35(A) –provisional edition May 2000). According to the Regulations, the Institute of Maritime Military Studies’ mission is to ensure students acquire the following skills on the Naval Staff Standard Course:
• the capacity, according to the Corps in question, to contribute to the conception, planning and conduction of Naval Staff activities concerning complex Naval Commands and central, peripheral, national and international maritime military organizations;
• the capacity required to carry out complex command functions.

The students
The Naval Staff Standard Course is compulsory for full-time Regular Officers in all the Navy Corps with the rank of Lieutenant (post-Command for the Naval Staff) or Lieutenant Commander. Others may include Special Role Officers, civil servants in the defense administration, Officers from other Armed Forces and Officers in foreign navies.
On arriving at the Institute, students are divided into work teams (Offices), each made up of four to six Officers. This is done on logistic grounds (the area for individual study consists of offices with six workstations each) and on pedagogical grounds, as a preparation for group work.
The most senior student is appointed Course Leader. The Course Leader has purely functional tasks, such as representing collective needs in the management of the courses and communicating any directives to the other students. Moreover, he or she is also responsible for compiling the daily register of attendances and activities. The most senior Italian student in each Office is appointed Office Leader. The Office Leaders support the Course Leader in his or her various functions and are responsible for the collective teaching material assigned to each Office, keeping order and locking up the Office.
Each foreign student is flanked by an Italian student who acts as a “sponsor.” The sponsor’s task is to help foreign colleagues integrate into the institution, acting as an intermediary for logistical and bureaucratic problems. It must be stressed, however, that all students are required to establish relations of friendship and camaraderie with foreign colleagues.

Course criteria
The Naval Staff Standard Course is mainly based on a progressive approach to various subjects through teaching activities consisting of the following:
• direct teaching by Institute teaching staff (25%) (the figures in parenthesis are approximate percentages of the total teaching hours);
• supplementary lectures and lessons given by leading figures from the military world (Heads of Department), and the academic and cultural worlds (15%);
• practical individual and group exercises, consisting in drafting documents and public presentations of analytical work (30%);
• visits to other Armed Forces commands and organizations, leading manufacturing companies and business enterprises (8%);
• participation in workshops and study days organized by the Institute on topics of special interest (2%).