Jeffrey Barker
Associate Professor
JMO Professor
Joint Military Operations
Profile
Professor Barker has been a member of the Joint Military Operations faculty for 13 of the last 16 years. He returned to the Naval War College faculty in August 1999, serving again as the Matthew Fontaine Maury Military Chair of Oceanography until his retirement from active military service in November 2004. He then joined the Joint Military Operations Department as an Associate Professor.
Much of Professor Barker's work at the Naval War College is associated with operational art. He has dedicated himself to uncovering lost references to operational art in the Naval War College archives. Admiral Spruance's papers have been an especially rich source. Additionally, the Army Historical Center has also cataloged most of the rich history of operational art in World War II; much of which has been digitized and is available on line. Also rewarding for anyone interested in the complexity of operational art are the reports of General MacArthur's staff.
As an Oceanographer, Professor Barker has also been involved in the ongoing studies of Naval Operations in Arctic. He represented the Naval War College at the initial Symposium on implications of Naval Operations in an Ice-Free Arctic. He has extensively researched the earth's climate and is involved with the Navy's Task Force Climate Change. He teaches an elective course that focuses upon how the physical environment affects the battlefield and operations at sea and in the air.
A 1976 graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, with a B.S. in Physics, he earned an M.S. in Oceanography and Meteorology from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1987 writing a thesis on The Effects of Time-Dependent Winds and Ocean Eddies on Ice Motion in a Marginal Ice Zone. In 1994 he earned an M.A. from the Naval War College in National Security Affairs and Strategic Studies.
In his initial sea tour in USS Kalamazoo (AOR-6) Professor Barker was designated a Surface Warfare Officer. After assignment at the U.S. Naval Academy, he was redesignated as Meteorology and Oceanography Officer and reported to Fleet Numerical Oceanography Center in Monterey, California. In addition to his initial Naval War College faculty tour, Meteorology and Oceanography assignments have included: A sea tour in USS Wisconsin (BB-64), and overseas tours as the Executive Officer of the Naval Oceanography Command Facility in Yokosuka, Japan, and as the Staff METOC Officer in the London headquarters of Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Naval Force Europe.