What is the level of work in ILE Phases 2 and 3? Are they academically harder than Phase 1?

I highly suggest that you take an elective on Insurgency. There will be discussion on why insurgencies occur and how various counterinsurgencies were fought. Mao Tse Tung was an insurgency rock star as he enumerated steps to pull off a successful revolution.

He essentially said:
1. Revolutions are started by elites in society.
2. A cadre of close followers will be created.
3. The cadre will recruit people.
4. The insurgents will provide an alternative government to support the people.
5. The insurgents will use asymmetric attacks because they lack the numbers.
6. Grow a peer sized army to fight governmental forces.

We did this in our War of Independence. The North Vietnamese used this methodology against us.

It was a quite interesting course. The discussions included how the British used superior intelligence to kill IRA leaders. In Peru there was a very vicious communist insurgent group called the Shining Path. The government armed the villagers to fight the insurgents, then the military would come in and finish killing the insurgents.

It’s graduate level work. I did phase 2 on drill weekends, once a month, and spent 20-30 hours a month reading etc. Phase 3 was much easier than 2.

My experience was with in person Phase 2. It was one weekend every month for 8 or 9 months. It was time consuming - I probably spent 20+ hours a month outside of class doing the reading, papers, etc. As a 73B most of the material was brand new to me. As a FA officer, you’re probably familiar with at least some of it. Keep in mind, this was 3 years ago, was done in person, and was pre-Covid.