Norwich University’s campus is nestled in the Green Mountains of central Vermont. Montpelier, the state capital, is about a half-hour drive from the college. Boston, New York, and Montreal are just a few hours’ drive away, but the Northfield campus is small, safe, and community oriented. Norwich is one of few Vermont colleges that attract students from 40 states and 29 foreign countries who come to call the campus home.

Colleges and Schools of Norwich University

• Architecture + Art
• Business & Management
• Engineering
• Graduate & Continuing Studies (online)
• Humanities
• Mathematics & Sciences
• Social Sciences
• National Services

Tuition Assistance for Military Veterans & Active Duty Members

Veterans:

• The Bachelor of Science in Strategic Studies and Defense Analysis (SSDA)
• post-9/11 GI Bill
• GI Bill benefit
• Veterans Educational Assistance Program

Active Duty 

• Montgomery GI Bill
• post-9/11 GI Bill

Norwich University News

• Video: Writing class prompts soldiers, veterans to examine military life - Fri, 17 Feb 2012
  Class offers supportive environment to veterans and active soldiers

• Ambition and missed opportunity: Researcher explores expo fairgrounds - Fri, 10 Feb 2012
  Architecture student visits exposition sites in Europe

• Student-designed footbridge to make hiking trail safer, more beautiful - Fri, 03 Feb 2012
  Schoolwork forms foundation for $1 million project

• Video: Engineering students stage show that puts theory into motion - Fri, 27 Jan 2012
  Intro to Engineering class makes comedic debut

• Slideshow: Fifty-mile Legacy March on the road to becoming a tradition - Fri, 20 Jan 2012
  Game football joins journey from Norwich's origins

• Video: Norwich’s theater company provides welcome break from studies - Fri, 13 Jan 2012
  Pegasus Players work on A Festival of Shorts

• Video: Autumn brings a sense of urgency to Norwich’s campus - Fri, 23 Dec 2011
  Fourth in series of four videos: Seasons of Norwich

• Civil engineering students help design replacement for storm-damaged bridge - Fri, 16 Dec 2011
  Service project opens students' minds to challenges of planning

• Video: Programming pioneer challenges computer students’ beliefs on freedom - Fri, 02 Dec 2011
  Software freedom advocate presents philosophy at Norwich

• Honors program plots an enriching four-year academic path for freshmen - Fri, 11 Nov 2011
  Program will follow students through four years of college

Q1. What is Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance (SGLI)?

The Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance (SGLI) is a program of the Veterans Affairs Department aimed at providing low cost group insurance policy to members of the armed forces. Members of the National Guard, Commissioned Corps of the National Oceanic, Atmospheric Administration, Public Health Service, Reserve Officer Training Corps, cadets and midshipmen of the 4 service academies and personnel on active duty are entitled to receive the benefits of SGLI.

Q2. What Type of Insurance does SGLI Provide?

SGLI offers a group term policy which means that in case of death of the insured person, the money will be paid to the people as set by the insured person. But remember that as SGLI is a term policy so cash and loans are not available and no dividends are paid.

Q3.  How to get SGLI Coverage?

The SGLI coverage automatically begins from the first day of active duty and the maximum coverage amounts to $400,000, although one may choose to opt out or reduce the coverage. If the service member is on active duty for less than thirty-one days then he/she will be covered under part-time coverage. If wants to designate a beneficiary then one has to fill out a VA Form SGLV-8286

Q4. How to reduce or cancel the coverage?

If one wants to reduce the insurance coverage or cancel it then one has to fill out a form SGLV 8286 and submit it. If it is done on the first day of duty then your selection comes into effect immediately. In case of married military people spouses will be notified by DoD of the selection.

Q5. Regarding any questions whom to contact?

If you are looking for information on SGLI then the first place to contact is the Veterans Affairs website (http://www.insurance.va.gov/sgliSite/SGLI/sgliFaq.htm#8). In case you do not get what you are looking for then visit http://www.insurance.va.gov/sgliSite/SGLI/sgliFaq.htm#contact  and find out the point of contact you need.

1. Travel Expenses

Travel expenses can be deducted if they are unreimbursed and are incurred while traveling away from home. If you are a member of the U.S. Armed Forces on a permanent duty assignment, your home is considered your duty station. To be deductible, your travel expenses must be work related. You cannot deduct any expenses for personal travel, such as visits to family on leave. If you are a part of the Reserves, unreimbursed travel expenses for traveling more than 100 miles away from home to perform your reserve duties are eligible for deduction. You do not have to itemize deductions since eligible expenses are deducted as an adjustment to income. The standard mileage rate for 2010 is 50 cents (51 cents for 2011).

2. Moving Expenses

U.S. Armed Forces and their surviving spouses who move because of a permanent change of station. Deductible expenses include unreimbursed costs of moving, travel, storing and insuring household goods and personal items.

3. 401(k) or 403(b)

Distributions from an IRA, 401(k), or 403(b) plans which were made after the date of the order or call to active duty and before the close of the active duty period are subject to special rules and may not be subject to the 10% penalty tax on early distributions. Such distributions are also eligible to be repaid to the plan if paid back within two years after active duty ends.

4. Uniform Purchase or Clean Up Cost

Uniform purchase cost and future dry cleaning cost may be deductibility depends on whether or not the uniform can be worn when off duty. If you are allowed to wear the uniform when you are off duty, you cannot deduct any cost. However, if the uniform is prohibited from being worn when off duty, you can deduct the cost associated with that particular uniform.

5. First Time Homebuyer Credit for Members of the Military and Certain Other Federal Employees:

Members of the military and certain other federal employees serving outside the U.S. have additional time to buy a principal residence in the U.S. and qualify for the credit until 2011

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said today he will stress during this week’s NATO defense ministers conference that ongoing coalition commitment is essential to success in Afghanistan.

“One of the pillars of our strategy is to build on successful partnerships, and NATO is, without question, one of the most successful military alliances in history,” the secretary told reporters traveling with him to Brussels.

Panetta said ministers will discuss key issues such as funding for Afghanistan’s army and police forces, as well as carrying through the strategy agreed upon at the alliance’s November 2010 summit in Lisbon, Portugal. The strategy calls for leading up to security transition to Afghan forces in 2014 and then consolidating the Afghan lead for security responsibility.

As the strategy outlines, Panetta said, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan will shift during the final phase of transition to Afghan lead in mid-to-late 2013 from a primarily combat mission to a training and advisory role as Afghan forces take responsibility for security there.

“We’ve got to stick to the Lisbon strategy,” Panetta said. “The United States has a very strong commitment to Lisbon and to the strategy that was laid out there. What we want is for all of our partners to adhere to that strategy.”

Panetta said he understands French President Nikolas Sarkozy’s recent statement that he would remove French combat troops from Afghanistan after an Afghan soldier killed four French troops Jan. 20. While he was saddened at the loss of life, Panetta added, his understanding is that the French government still plans to contribute to ISAF, possibly with trainers.

“My hope is that at this ministerial, we can discuss this decision and hopefully bring [France] back into the Lisbon strategy so that we can all walk forward together,” he said.

ISAF efforts turned a corner in 2011, the secretary said, with lower levels of violence, a sustained ISAF effort targeting Taliban leaders and an Afghan army that “stepped up to the challenge” of assuming security in parts of the country.

“About 50 percent of the population of Afghanistan will now be under Afghan governance and security,” he said. “That’s an important step.”

Next year will be even more critical, Panetta noted, as Afghan forces take responsibility for the final, tougher areas in Afghanistan, while 2014 will involve “consolidating the transition, making sure those gains are, in fact, held.”

Panetta said President Barack Obama has made clear that U.S. troops will have an enduring presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014 — in counterterrorism and “train, advise and assist” roles, for example. No final decisions have been made about exact numbers or missions after 2014, he added.

The secretary said he will seek 1 billion euros in funding for Afghan army and police forces in discussions with his fellow defense ministers, and that he would like to expand the current funding pool to include more nations, such as Arab countries, Japan and South Korea.

“The key is to have a sufficient and sustainable [Afghan] force that can be there for the future,” Panetta said. “One of the things we’ll be discussing is the size that force should be, but a lot of that is going to be dependent on the funds.”

The secretary said another key message he brings to the ministerial conference is the strong and continuing U.S. commitment to Europe and to NATO. He added he hopes to encourage the alliance to adopt a strategy-based approach to future defense needs, as the United States did.

The recently released U.S. defense strategic guidance informs Defense Department planning for the military up to 2020, the secretary said, and “in many ways … NATO has to go through the same process, of looking forward and deciding what kind of force” it wants by the end of the decade.

DOD’s Joint Operational Access Concept, also released in recent weeks, stresses that U.S. forces must in the future operate and deploy quickly, across services and domains, and with an integrated attention to cyber and space threats along with sea, land and air operations.

In September, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen outlined his vision for NATO moving forward. “We must prioritize, we must specialize, and we must seek multinational solutions,” he said. “Taken together, this is what I call ‘smart defense.’”

Panetta acknowledged that budget pressures argue for combining defense capabilities within the alliance, but he told reporters that shedding vital programs can be risky. “What I don’t want to see is ‘smart defense’ used as an excuse for not maintaining core capabilities,” the secretary said.

The danger in future crises is that a nation that opts out of the situation “could take an important capability with it that NATO may need,” he added.

Panetta said he also hopes to discuss future European engagement between U.S. and other NATO troops. Even after the Defense Department removes two of the Army’s brigade combat teams from Europe, he said, the region will host the world’s largest U.S. military presence, which will then be 37,000 troops.

A senior defense official said Panetta will meet tomorrow before the formal ministerial conference with representatives from ISAF troop-contributing nations, including non-NATO members Australia and Georgia. During the ministerial sessions, the secretary will confer with NATO ISAF member nations’ ministers, and will meet Feb. 3 with representatives of all 50 troop-contributing nations, the official said.

Ministers also will discuss operations in Kosovo, where Kosovo-Serbian clashes sparked through late last year, the official said.

“The ministers are going to review strategy and force posture … [and] make sure that we maintain sufficient capabilities there to deal with any renewed flare-up in tensions,” the official said.
 

Check out our latest list of military friendly schools.

The Defense Department needs another round of base realignments and closures if the military is to retain its balance, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said here yesterday.

Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey told the Reserve Officers Association that as the military cuts $487 billion over the next 10 years, infrastructure must change accordingly.

“When we talk about balancing the force and our investment in balance, there’s manpower costs, there’s modernization and equipment costs, there’s training and maintenance costs, and then there’s this thing called infrastructure — just those things involved with turning the lights on and off,” he said.

The options for cutting are limited, the chairman said. “If we don’t affect those ‘bins’ equally — or at least somewhat equally,” he added, “we will then have to harvest most of the reductions we are looking for disproportionally out of one of those other bins.”

Though some say infrastructure — bases — cannot be touched, Dempsey said, the money has to come from somewhere. He acknowledged that the necessary choices ahead won’t be easy, but noted that defense leaders have to make them.

“By the way, I didn’t pass the Budget Control Act,” he said. “I didn’t say, ‘Hey how about hitting me with a bill for $500 billion?’”

So, Dempsey told the group, Pentagon officials face finding cuts across the Defense Department as proportionally as possible. “We’re going to need to get our infrastructure under control,” he said.

At some level, Dempsey said, the department has to run like a business. “That’s why manpower costs have to be on the table, just like infrastructure,” he added.

Members of Congress may tell the Defense Department another round of base realignments and closures won’t happen, the chairman said.

“But we’ve got to make it clear [to Congress],” he added, “if you withhold my ability to balance this thing, you could create some problems you don’t want to face downstream.”
 

Check out our latest list of military friendly schools.

Service members now will receive imminent danger pay only for days they actually spend in hazardous areas, Pentagon officials said here today.

The change, which took effect yesterday, was included in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law Dec. 31.

“Members will see the prorated amount in their Feb. 15 pay records,” Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. John Kirby said.

The act called for DOD to pay service members imminent danger pay only for the time they spend in areas that qualify for the pay. In the past, service members received $225 per month if they spent any time that month in an area where the pay was authorized. “This is a more targeted way of handling that pay,” Kirby said.

Now, service members will receive $7.50 a day for days spent in these areas. Personnel who travel to the designated areas for periods less than 30 days should keep track of the number of days they are in the area to verify that they are paid for the correct number of days, officials said.

The military services are working to waive or remit debts for members who may have been overpaid for January, officials said. The services can waive this “when there is no indication of fraud, fault, misrepresentation, or when members were unaware they were overpaid,” Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said.

Proration is based on a 30-day month, which translates into a rate of $7.50 per day. It does not matter if the month is 28 or 31 days long, officials explained; if service members serve in affected areas for the complete month, they will receive the full rate of $225 per month.

The Defense Department defines imminent danger pay areas as places where members are subject to the threat of physical harm or imminent danger because of civil insurrection, civil war, terrorism or wartime conditions.

Service members who come under fire, regardless of location, will receive the full monthly hostile-fire pay amount of $225.

Service members will receive notification of the change via emails, on the MyPay system, on social media sites and via the chain of command.
 

Check out our latest list of military friendly schools.

As the U.S. military faces a constrained budget environment in the years ahead, it will build on experience gained in expansions and contractions throughout its history, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said here today.

Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey told the audience at a Reserve Officers Association national security symposium that change is nothing new for the nation’s armed forces.

However, he noted, all but the most senior service members have known only a military that has been growing — one that always has had all of the resources it could possibly need, and in some cases even more than needed.

“Well, that’s going to change here,” Dempsey said.

The new economic reality means less money will be available for defense, the chairman added, but he expressed confidence that the military will remain strong. “We will figure it out if we can maintain our sense of trust with each other,” he said.

Dempsey cited Air Force Master Sgt. Roger Sparks of the Alaska Air National Guard as an example. Sparks rescued 12 soldiers off the side of a mountain in the Hindu Kush area of Afghanistan. Under tremendous fire, he lowered himself via cable from a helicopter 12 times to rescue the soldiers. Twice, the cable was hit by gunfire. Eight soldiers survived, and four died in the sergeant’s arms, Dempsey said.

“I asked him, ‘What were you thinking of when you lowered yourself time after time after time?’” the general said. “And he told me, ‘Truthfully, I didn’t have time to think about it. I just knew they really needed me.’”

That sort of trust and sacrifice is who people are in the military, Dempsey said.

“And as we go through changes – changes in strategy, changes in resourcing, changes in structure, missioning, remissioning, expansion, contraction – as long as we keep [the attitude Sparks demonstrated], we’ll be all right,” he added.

The chairman said he faces three principal transitions during his term as the military’s top officer. The first, he said, will be as the United States transitions from war to peace.

“The surge, counterinsurgency, that will all be transitioned over to the responsibility of the Afghans,” he said. “They want it, we want it, that’s the way these things end, and we’ve got to get there on my watch.”

That means a military that has deployed frequently for 10 years will deploy at a much reduced level, the chairman said, and deployments will be for training, and not for combat.

“So the mindset of our youngsters will have to adapt to that,” Dempsey said. “They will have to understand what it will be like to be in a military that trains to fight as hard as it has fought. We can’t underestimate how challenging that transition will be for a generation.”

Second, Dempsey said, he will be the chairman as military budgets reduce. “We will have to figure out how we operate with less resources than we had before,” he said. And meanwhile, he added, people should just get to work. He quoted retired Army Gen. Fred Franks, who served in Vietnam and the Gulf War: “It’s literally impossible to wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.”

Finally, many soldiers and Marines will transition to civilian life, Dempsey noted, because the force will get smaller. Some will move into the reserve components. Others will go straight to civilian life. In either case, he said, the military needs figure how to keep the right people in the right numbers to maintain itself.

“Right now, we’re focused on ‘What’s our force structure going to be? What’s our budget going to be?’” Dempsey said. “But pretty quickly, we are going to have to focus on ‘How do we do it?’ We need to do what’s right for the nation, our institutions and the individuals.”

A long-range budgeting plan is essential for the military, Dempsey said, likening incremental budgeting to “death by a thousand cuts.” Defense leaders have looked ahead to fiscal 2020 in seeking to build a joint force the nation will need in that year, he said.

Dempsey said that the military will keep faith with those serving and who have served, but he emphasized it is about more than just money.

“We keep faith with the men and women who serve if we make sure they are disciplined, if we make sure they are well-trained, if we make sure they are well-equipped,” he said.

“In some circles,” he continued, “it is only tied to how much money we get to them. That’s part of it, of course, but never forget that when someone says you have to keep faith with service members, it also means keeping faith with them to make sure they are the best-trained, best-led, best-equipped force on the face of the planet.”
 

Check out our latest list of military friendly schools.

From the nightclub waitress you meet on deployment to the young man who launders your uniform at the drycleaners back home, Defense Department officials are warning military members and civilians to be on the lookout for possible victims of human trafficking.

The request for vigilance is part of an effort throughout the federal government to stop human trafficking, a form of modern slavery that forces millions of men, women and children from every country of the world into forced labor, prostitution, involuntary servitude and debt bondage, according to DOD and State Department officials. Some 2 million children are believed to move through the global sex trade each year, according to the State Department’s annual assessment on human trafficking.

The United Nations, the United States and other governments in the past decade have passed stricter laws and allocated more resources in the fight against human trafficking, and President Barack Obama declared January as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

In the government’s interagency approach toward prevention, prosecution and protection involving human trafficking, the Defense Department’s role is one of prevention, according to John F. Awtrey, DOD’s director of law enforcement policy and support, part of the department’s personnel and readiness office.

Human trafficking is a worldwide phenomenon — No. 3 behind drugs and weapons, Awtrey said in a Jan. 31 interview with the Pentagon Channel and American Forces Press Service.

“While traffic victims generally come from the poor places in the world, their destination … is all over the world,” Awtrey said. “A lot of countries where our service members are deployed have evidence of a lot of trafficking, and it’s here in the United States as well.”

DOD’s role primarily is of prevention and, specifically, education so that service members and civilian employees can report suspicious activity, Awtrey said.

“We don’t want our service members to be inadvertent supporters of trafficking,” he said. “It’s a crime; it’s a criminal business enterprise. And the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who say, ‘Well, I just go there to get some drinks,’ if it’s a place where the women working in there have been trafficked and are being held against their will, then you’re supporting that business.”

The Defense Department began training all service members and civilians on indicators of human trafficking after some service members were found in 2004 to be patronizing businesses in Korea involved in trafficking women from Russia and the Philippines, Awtrey said.

Since then, the Uniform Code of Military Justice has made it illegal for service members to visit brothels — the main business involved in human trafficking, Awtrey said. Other businesses common to human trafficking are nightclubs and bars, restaurants, spas, nail salons and dry cleaners, as well as domestic work in people’s homes.

Evidence of human trafficking can be hard to spot, Awtrey acknowledged. “It takes people using their sixth sense to say ‘Something isn’t right here,’” he said.

A high turnover of young workers and an inordinate amount of private security are indications, he added.

“If you see something that’s odd, … if there seems to be too much security, … if you’re in the middle of America or you’re downtown in Germany … and there are people [in a restaurant] that look like guards, those guards are there to keep the workers from talking to you about something they shouldn’t, or from escaping,” Awtrey said.

It was that kind of vigilance from an employee at Fort Campbell, Ky., that allowed the FBI to break up a human trafficking ring in the surrounding community, Awtrey said. The worker frequented a Chinese restaurant off base in Tennessee about once a month and noticed every time he was there, the staff — all young — was new. His hunch was right.

“That’s part of trafficking — that they never keep people in the same place for long,” Awtrey said. “In human trafficking, unlike with drugs and weapons, people can be sold over and over again. They are a reusable commodity, unfortunately.”

Human trafficking usually occurs not on military installations, but in the surrounding communities. The exception has been overseas, where it was found among subcontractors in Iraq who brought in foreign workers, confiscated their passports, and paid them far below what they were promised, Awtrey said. “We came down hard in Iraq” to correct the problem, he said, but it requires constant vigilance.

“It sounds simple enough sitting around a room at the Pentagon, but making sure it happens on the ground [in theater] is another story,” he said.

Suspected human trafficking should be reported up the military chain of command, to local authorities, or to the nonprofit National Human Trafficking Resource Center at 1-888-3737-888.
 

Check out our latest list of military friendly schools.

Agreements signed last week in the Canadian capital of Ottawa set up a roadmap for U.S. and Canadian officials to work together in the event of a natural disaster or attack, the director of strategy, policy and plans at the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command said this week.

Army Maj. Gen. Fran Mahon said the agreements allow the two countries’ militaries to work more closely together and to plan for support to civilian agencies.

U.S. Army Gen. Charles H. Jacoby Jr., commander of NORAD and Northcom, and Lt. Gen. Walter Semianiw of the Canadian army, commander of Canada Command, signed the documents Jan. 25.

One is a combined defense plan that lays down a planning framework for defense cooperation following a natural or man-made disaster or attack. The military leaders also signed a continuation of the civil assistance plan that allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.

“We have a long-standing relationship with Canada,” Mahon said in an interview. “We’ve been partners for more than 70 years in a very close sense. The agreements really enhance our relationship and improve the process of coordinating our combined military resources in a time of crisis or emergency.”

While the civil assistance plan provides a framework for the military forces of each nation to support those of another nation, the general said, it’s really about providing military assistance to civilian authorities. This will facilitate cooperation on man-made or natural disasters or the response to large-scale planned events, he explained.

“The initial civil assistance program was approved in February 2008, and since then, Canada Command and Northern Command have worked together to provide support for each other in short-notice events and planning for major events,” Mahon said. “It really recognizes the role of each nation’s lead federal agency for emergency preparedness. In the United States, that is the Department of Homeland Security, and in Canada, it is the Department of Public Safety.”

The civil defense plan looks at the combined defense of Canada and the United States, Mahon said. “It facilitates our planning and operations for bilateral defense effort and provides guidance leading to interoperability, and thus [promotes] better integration at the operational level,” he added.

The operations under the plan could occur in multiple domains and could be executed when there is a common perceived threat or when one or both nations come under attack.

The United States and Canada cooperated on the Olympic Games in Vancouver in 2010 and during hurricane season, Mahon noted.

“We’ve captured some of the lessons learned from the Games and from other experiences and put it in the plan,” Mahon said. “Now for the next event, whether it be a crisis or a planned event, we’ll have a bit smoother execution.”

Sharing information between the United States and Canada should be even easier than in the past, the general said, and both sides understand how to work within each other’s bureaucracies.

Northern Command and Canada Command will exercise through the year to “roll these new documents into play,” Mahon said. “We will undoubtedly learn more from these exercises, and again, we will work on smoothing the rough spots.”
 

Check out our latest list of military friendly schools.

The same budget constraints that are helping to produce a smaller, more agile and technologically enabled joint force by 2020 also will drive the growth of innovation in the Defense Department, a senior Pentagon official said today.

“We have objectives for the United States as a leader in the international environment that are aggressive,” said Kathleen Hicks, deputy undersecretary of defense for strategy, plans and forces, in an interview with the Pentagon Channel and American Forces Press Service.

To achieve such objectives, U.S. forces and other instruments of national power must think through innovative approaches for executing their mission, Hicks said. “I think you’ll see an era of real innovation — a transformation, we would have called it maybe 20 years ago in the U.S. military,” she said.

Innovations, she said, are under way in the cyber domain and in space, as well as in the Navy-Air Force air-sea battle concept, in which air and naval forces integrate capabilities across domains. They’re also taking place in missile defense, and in leveraging advantages in undersea warfare and in prompt global strike — an effort to develop a system that can deliver a precision conventional weapon strike anywhere in the world within an hour, she added.

Other new approaches acknowledge realities of the recent defense budget preview delivered Jan. 26 at the Pentagon by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The preview provided a first-order representation of the hard choices involved in implementing President Barack Obama’s defense strategy guidance, she said, including cutting force structure, drawing down ground forces, maintaining the current focus in the Middle East and increasing the commitment in Asia.

Partnerships and smaller footprints will take up the slack for the Defense Department in places such as Africa and Latin America, where the Budget Control Act has curtailed growth in military capacity building, Hicks said.

“The net effect on an area like Africa should be relatively minimal,” she added. “The strategy clearly calls for the United States military to continue to engage with nations throughout the world — like-minded nations that have common values and can help us partner in areas like counterpiracy and counterterrorism and humanitarian and disaster relief — and certainly that applies in regions such as Africa … and Latin America.”

In those regions, Hicks said, the Defense Department “will continue to ensure that combatant commanders are resourced so they can engage effectively.”

The strategy, she added, calls for defense leaders to think about low-cost, small-footprint approaches to doing that. “And frankly,” she added, in both [U.S. Southern Command and the U.S. Africa Command], we already undertake a lot of innovative, small-footprint approaches, and we’ll continue to explore new ways to do that.”

In areas of increasing importance, such as Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region, DOD is seeking new ways to partner, Hicks said. In Australia, she noted, there will be a rotational deployment of U.S. service members part of the year, and growing opportunities to operate and train with an ally.

“That will really be the hallmark of our approach going forward,” Hicks said. An agreement with Singapore, she added, will base four U.S. littoral combat ships there.

“These seemingly small investments are incredibly beneficial in terms of what we get and what the partners get in terms of engagement and stability,” Hicks said.
 

Check out our latest list of military friendly schools.