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A foreign area officer (FAO) is a commissioned officer from any of the four branches of the United States Armed Forces who is a regionally focused expert in political-military operations. Such officers possess a unique combination of strategic focus and regional expertise, with political, cultural, sociological, economic, and geographic awareness. Foreign language proficiency is necessary in at least one of the dominant languages in their specified region. A FAO will typically serve overseas tours as a defense attaché, a security assistance officer, or as a political-military planner in a service's headquarters, Joint Staff, Major Commands, Unified Combatant Commands, or in agencies of the Department of Defense. They also serve as arms control specialists, country desk officers, liaison officers, and Military Personnel Exchange Program (MPEP) officer to host nation or coalition allies. Recently, increasing numbers of FAOs are serving as political and cultural advisors to combatant staffs in support of the Iraq War and War in Afghanistan. Presently, there are just over 2,200 FAOs in active operational capacities, while roughly 25 percent are still in training. The services plan to recruit and train more than 170 a year, with almost 1,100 new FAOs entering the program by 2014.〔Department of Defense. “Defense Language Transformation Roadmap” 2005.〕 Roles and responsibilities of FAOs are extensive and varied. They advise senior leaders on political-military operations and relations with other nations, provide cultural expertise to forward-deployed commands conducting military operations, build and maintain long-term relationships with foreign leaders, develop and coordinate security cooperation, execute security assistance programs with host nations, and develop reports on diplomatic, information, military, and economic activities. ==Army== The Army Foreign Area Officer Program is a single-track FAO program managed by G-35, SSF, which is the Strategic Leadership Division. It is by far the largest and oldest FAO program of the Services. The Proponent Office is responsible for establishing policy guidance and FAO career field development as well as establishing specific programs focused on the accession, training, education, distribution, utilization, deployment, and separation of FAOs. Currently, there are 1,257 Army FAOs either in training or fully qualified. Army FAOs are categorized by areas of concentration that correspond with their respective military occupational specialty, further grouped in scope by functional areas. Army FAOs are divided into nine categories of regional areas of expertise and language skills: * 48B - Latin America * 48C – Europe * 48D – South Asia * 48E – Eurasia * 48F – China * 48G – Middle East * 48H – Northeast Asia * 48I – Southeast Asia * 48J – Africa, south of the Sahara 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Foreign area officer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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