Military Strategic Studies Major

View course descriptions and suggested course sequence.

Your effectiveness as a military leader will be shaped by your ability to innovate and apply military strategy and doctrine to the variety of operational challenges you will face. The Military Strategic Studies program prepares you to operate and lead responsibly across the spectrum of conflict. Whether you choose to make the Air Force a career, pursue other public service, or enter the private sector, this versatile major will provide you the knowledge and mindset to compete successfully in any environment.

 The MSS major sharpens and expands upon the knowledge gained in your first MSS core course on military theory and strategy.  Building upon that foundation, you pursue courses related to the uniquely demanding context of the military profession—morality and war, contemporary military threats, formulation of military strategy, theory of military transformation, and the nature of contemporary air forces.  You will learn to think as a strategist, identifying and framing the battlespace, evaluating theories and models applicable to air, information, and space power.  You will also learn to plan and think as an operator with multiple opportunities to simulate exploitation of the air, space, and cyberspace operating environments with effects-based strategies, modern weapons technologies, and unconventional approaches.

In your second-class year, you will acquire a solid understanding of air, space, and information power theory.  In your second-class year, you will select a research topic in our research methods course and, with the help of an advisor, design what will become your senior thesis.  As a first-class cadet, you will author your senior thesis and have an opportunity to publish your findings in our Airman-Scholar Journal.  You will also take the advanced version of the final MSS core course on joint and coalition operations.

In addition to nine required major’s courses, you have the flexibility to choose one of two MSS contemporary threats courses and three of four MSS functional domain courses.  Whichever course of study you plan, the MSS major will strengthen your problem solving and decision making skills, and directly prepare you to excel in executing the Air Force mission:  to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests—to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace.