School of Advanced Military Studies

School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS)
The School of Advanced Military Studies Crest
Active	1981–present
Country	United States
Allegiance	Federal
Garrison/HQ	Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
Motto(s)	The mind is the key to victory
Commanders
Current commander	James Markert
Notable commanders	Wass de Czege

The School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) is one of four United States Army schools that make up the United States Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This "enormously rigorous" graduate school comprises two programs: the larger Advanced Military Studies Program (AMSP), and the Advanced Operational Art Studies Fellowship (AOASF), which more senior officers attend. The student body is small but diverse and comprises members of each of the U.S. armed forces, various U.S. Government agencies, and allied military forces. Graduates are colloquially known as "Jedi Knights".

The school educates the future leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces, its Allies, and the Interagency at the graduate level to be agile and adaptive leaders who think critically at the strategic and operational levels to solve complex ambiguous problems.

SAMS graduates are innovative leaders, willing to accept risk and to experiment. They are adaptive leaders who excel at the art of command and anticipate the future operational environment by applying critical & creative thinking skills in order to solve complex problems. All graduates demonstrate mastery of Operational Art and Doctrine and are able to synthesize the elements of US national power in Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental and Multinational (JIIM) operations.

The school issues a masters degree in Military Art and Science, and provides its graduates with the skills to deal with the disparate challenges encountered in contemporary military and government operations. The modern course produces "leaders with the flexibility of mind to solve complex operational and strategic problems in peace, conflict, and war". Various senior military leaders have recognized the contributions of SAMS graduates in supporting global contingency operations.

The first class began at the school in mid-1983 and 13 students graduated the following year. Due to increasing requirements for SAMS graduates in the U.S. military, the army expanded the school in the 1990s, and in 2010 over 120 students graduated. Since the school's inception, SAMS planners have supported every major U.S. military campaign, providing the army "with many of its top campaign planners for the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries".

The SAMS course was designed to fill a gap in U.S. military education between the CGSC's focus on tactics and the War College's focus on grand strategy and national security policy. In 1981, Colonel Huba Wass de Czege convinced Fort Leavenworth's Lieutenant General William R. Richardson, who served as Commander of the Combined Arms Center and Commandant of the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth from 1979 to 1981, that a second year of military education was needed for select officers. After receiving final approval, Wass de Czege helped plan and develop the school, which would open in mid-1983. Although there was some disagreement about the purpose of the course, army leaders and the course designers settled on a plan to provide officers with a "broad, deep military education in the science and art of war."