Standards must really have slipped within the military's higher education system. When I attended the National Defense Intelligence College back in the mid-80s, this accredited graduate school (obviously much lower in prestige than the National War College) required, in addition to coursework for a Master's degree, either two 30-page scholarly papers or a full-blown thesis. I did the latter over the course of a year, although it was also a classified intelligence report of considerable length, the only difference being that I footnoted the hell out of it for the version I submitted to NDIC, which is not common practice for routine intelligence studies.

Alas, my old service -- a successful 20th century organization -- is adrift in the postmodern, post-9/11 world in which we find ourselves. They need to 1) get serious about UAV operators as a distinctive career track not requiring UPT graduates, and 2) grab any manned aircraft opportunities that come along. Like this turbo-COIN machine. As some guy said a few years ago, the times they are a changin'.