This paper describes the results of a first-time, graduate-level course on “Strategic Weather” presented at the Air War College during the 2002-2003 academic year using a “hybrid” method of instruction. The course was developed to educate senior military and civilian leaders about the importance of factoring the effects and impacts of terrestrial and space weather/climate into planning and executing air and space operations at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of warfare. Throughout the course, weather and climate were treated as integral parts of “information-in-warfare” along with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Students were taught that weather and climate are two among many factors that interact both with military functions such as logistics and communications, as well as political factors such as rules of engagement, collateral damage, civilian casualties, etc.

The course was developed and delivered as a hybrid course in which carefully selected portions were taught in the classroom while others were conducted online. The first five sessions were taught using a traditional, classroom format to give the students a baseline of understanding about weather, climate, and their effects on weapon system performance and theater-scale operations. During this period, students were introduced to the online aspect of the course by conducting a threaded email discussion on a HQ USAF position paper entitled, “The All-Weather Air Force.”

The second portion of the course required each student to choose an historical case study in which weather or climate had an impact at the strategic level of conflict, then analyze it and write a short paper. Students were paired, and each read the summary and analysis of his partner; then the student reader countered with “comeback” questions to which his partner responded through threaded email discussion. The email dialogue was conducted between each student pair with courtesy copy to the instructor. After a classroom session to review the results of this exercise, the students returned online for the final portion of the course.

In this final segment, the students stayed with their original partners and built group presentations to be given in the classroom during the last week of the course. Each student group had the option of picking a new topic area or continuing to study the topic from the writing assignment. Student groups were also given the option of choosing outside collaborators to work with them on the project as long as their names and affiliations were provided to the instructor for approval. Final versions of the presentations were posted to a course folder on the local area network for all students to access. These two online exercises gave the students the opportunity to analyze, synthesize, and present their ideas on how the natural environment influenced events at the strategic level, and discern lessons learned for application to modern military operations.

The end result of the course was a better understanding of strategic-level consideration of the natural environment in planning and executing Joint and Combined military operations. The student evaluations for this first-time course were very encouraging. The students appreciated the opportunity to do their own research and communicate with each other and the instructor using an online format, which allowed a degree of flexibility not attainable in a traditional classroom-only course. Consequently, the class experience was enhanced because the outside work forced the students to prepare better than they would have had to do in a traditional course. These results are consistent with, and supportive of the experiences of faculty members at other colleges and universities who have attempted this course delivery method.