On August 9, 2010, the Secretary of Defense announced a number of cost cutting recommendations to include the closure of U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, VA. As rationale for the recommendation to close U.S. Joint Forces Command, the Secretary opined “the U.S. military has largely embraced jointness as a matter of culture and practice”. The Secretary's recommendation to close the sole combatant command charged with advocating for jointness indicates either that U.S. Joint Forces Command has served its purpose and accomplished its mission; or the command has become such an expensive undertaking within the Department of Defense the closure is a consequence of financial reform. This paper will examine the recommendation to close U.S. Joint Forces Command, whether jointness has been embraced across the Services, and ultimately will challenge the decision to close U.S. Joint Forces Command.
This work discusses the ability of U.S. joint forces to conduct forcible entry operations in the future operational environment. It argues that the Joint Force of 2020 will require a significantly improved capability to conduct such operations in order to support the requirements of national military strategy and advance American interests in the world. In addition, it makes five specific recommendations for improving forcible entry capability in various areas of the Joint Force. The work begins by examining global trends, emerging threats, and evolving military approaches that will make forcible entry operations not only more challenging, but also more necessary, in the future. In so doing, it accounts for the decreasing size and changing posture of the Joint Force as it becomes smaller and more CONUS-based than at any time since 1940. It then describes the requirements of national strategy and offers four plausible vignettes set in the year 2020 in which forcible entry would most likely be needed. After comparing projected capabilities with future requirements, the thesis then outlines the most significant gaps and provides its recommendations. Unified combatant commanders are likely to require the capability for joint forcible entry in a variety of future contingencies. The Joint Staff and senior defense officials should understand these requirements so they can ensure the Services retain essential capabilities currently available and develop or expand those that will be needed in the future. In this way, the Joint Force will be able to offer feasible and acceptable options to the President and Secretary of Defense if and when conflicts arise that demand it while also ensuring the best possible capability with the least risk to the Nation.
The national security problems facing the Joint Force are increasingly ill-defined and can be characterized as “wicked problems” and that these “wicked problems” cannot be solved solely by better planning or decision support processes. The current joint definition of command and control does not adequately address changes introduced through technology trends, our understanding of the global operating environment, and capabilities offered by modern information and communications technology. The inclusion of mission command in joint doctrine as a method to synchronize the actions of tactical elements of the Joint Force is necessary if the Joint Force is to work effectively within the 21st century operational environment. A joint version of the current Army and Marine Corps concept of mission command could provide a more agile and adaptable force - a force capable of achieving unity of effort within the framework of “whole of government” approaches to challenges in the operational environment today and well into the future.
Although media and information have always influenced international and national security, the impact of information has become a dominant factor in the modern security arena. Today's Joint Force enjoys both a positive narrative and good media relations, and it is critical that the Joint Force maintains and bolsters these positive conditions. Despite this, current trends across all levels of Joint Professional Military Education (JPME) reflect a system that does not sufficiently focus, prioritize, or address sustaining the ability to deliver a timely, accurate, and tronsparent narrative through cooperative relationships with the media. Because of these shortcomings, military leaders must holistically reexamine the JPME goals and exploit current opportunities in order to provide military leaders career-spanning education focused towards sustaining the military's narrative through positive military-media relations.
Learning With Professionals: Selected Works from the Joint Military Intelligence College is a collection of writings by present or former faculty and students at the Joint Military Intelligence College. The purpose of the book is to provide an academic resource for students, teachers, and practitioners of intelligence. The growth of the field as an academic discipline has been accompanied by a growth in its body of literature, and some of the most significant writings have come from a center of excellence in the field, the Joint Military Intelligence College. Those presented here represent a cross section of subdisciplines, some with a very timely element, some timeless.This product has been reviewed by senior experts from academia and government, and has been approved for unrestricted distribution by the Directorate for Freedom of Information and Security Review, Washington Headquarters Services, Department of Defense.
The modern means of communication have turned the world into an information fishbowl and, in terms of foreign policy and national security in post-Cold War power politics, helped transform international power politics. Information operations (IO), in which time zones are as important as national boundaries, is the use of modern technology to deliver critical information and influential content in an effort to shape perceptions, manage opinions, and control behavior. Contemporary IO differs from traditional psychological operations practiced by nation-states, because the availability of low-cost high technology permits nongovernmental organizations and rogue elements, such as terrorist groups, to deliver influential content of their own as well as facilitates damaging cyber-attacks ("hactivism") on computer networks and infrastructure. As current vice president Dick Cheney once said, such technology has turned third-class powers into first-class threats. Conceived as a textbook by instructors at the Joint Command, Control, and Information Warfare School of the U.S. Joint Forces Staff College and involving IO experts from several countries, this book fills an important gap in the literature by analyzing under one cover the military, technological, and psychological aspects of information operations. The general reader will appreciate the examples taken from recent history that reflect the impact of IO on U.S. foreign policy, military operations, and government organization.
Globalization and the information age have created an environment in which small unit leaders have operational and strategic importance. The demands of the Irregular Warfare require small unit leaders within the General Purpose Forces to be more culturally aware; intellectually adaptable; seasoned in their decision-making requiring fundamental changes in the way they are educated, trained, and gain experience. This book will first address how individuals make decisions by comparing and contrasting analytical and intuitive decision-making. Second, it will address the strengths and weaknesses in current training and educational paradigms via an analysis of the Systems Approach to Training. Third will be a proposal for the inclusion of new initiatives for developing small unit leader intuition and adaptability in IW. Following this, there are recommendations for inculcating critical thinking and decision-making skills in small unit leaders by adopting methods of instruction found in Outcomes Based Training and Education and Adaptive Leaders Methodology as well as the experiential based learning that immersive training environments provide.
Since the mid 1990s, the United States military has allowed contractors to become ingrained in the sustainment fabric of our military. From realistic beginnings of building “hard-stand” shelter for Soldiers and Marines on the ground in the Balkans, the Department of Defense has allowed contracting to become the “default option” when it comes to supporting U.S. forces in combat. In spite of the fact that—per capita—there are more logisticians now in the United States military than any period in history, the contractors supporting sustainment of our forces in combat are also more numerous than any time in history, approaching a 1 to 1 ratio as compared to the military population they support. Sustainment contracting is a multi-billion dollar industry and accounts for the largest share of the Defense-related contracted business. Not only is this practice of “excessive contracting” fiscally irresponsible, but also detrimental to the development of the military's future logisticians as well as the units they will one day command.
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