We are taking command and control lessons learned from OIF like the capability to track Blue Forces, and running them through the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System process to help shape future systems requirements. The objective is to ensure all of the critical considerations of Doctrine, Organization, Training, Material, Leadership and Education, Personnel, and Facilities (DOTMLPF) are employed in an approach that synchronizes material and non-material solutions.
We are also improving our military war planning process. The Joint Staff has developed an Adaptive Planning process – whose key concepts are agility and speed – to reduce the time to develop and update war plans, while adding flexibility and adaptability to respond to the rapid changes in the global strategic security environment. The goal is to provide the President and SECDEF the best options possible. We have also been developing a collaborative campaign-planning tool for crisis action planning and execution. These tools should allow commanders the ability to assess multiple courses of action, rapidly compressing plan development time while increasing plan flexibility. Our warfighting effectiveness is also enhanced by our Joint Exercise Program, which provides Combatant Commanders with the means to train battle staffs and forces in joint and combined operations, evaluate their war plans, and execute security cooperation plans with our allies and Coalition partners. In order to improve joint training opportunities, JFCOM is developing a Joint National Training Capability (JNTC), which will achieve Initial Operational Capability in October 2004. JNTC will combine live and virtual play at multiple locations. The goal is to provide realistic joint combat training against an adaptive and credible opposing force, with common ground truths, and high quality exercise feedback.
Strategic airlift is available to exercises only on an as-available basis, since it is prioritized for operational needs first. Providing the personnel and assets to accomplish meaningful joint training during this period of high OPTEMPO has also been challenging. To balance these competing requirements, the Combatant Commanders are reviewing their FY04 exercise programs with a view to canceling, downsizing or postponing exercises. We must continue to balance operational and exercise requirements against OP/PERSTEMPO and available lift.
Prior to combat operations in Iraq, we established a process for adapting OIF lessons learned for future operations as rapidly as possible. JFCOM has the lead role in turning identified operational level lessons learned into required capabilities through the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System. After completing the OIF Strategic and Operational Lessons Learned reports, we are following up with a specific report to the Congressional Defense Committees, the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate, and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives. OIF Strategic Lessons Learned require additional commitment at the national-strategic level, including an improved deployment process, redistributing specialties between the Active and Reserve Components, Reserve Component readiness and mobilization, and improving the planning and transition to post conflict operations.
Planning and transition to post conflict stability operations require significant adjustments in how we plan, train, organize, and equip our forces. We can expect future adversaries to attempt to offset US military strengths through asymmetric means, to include terrorist insurgency, as combat operations transition to post conflict operations. The lessons learned process continues during stability operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Considerations and Recommendations for Goldwater-Nichols Act
For the past 18 years, joint operations have been improving under the provisions of the Goldwater-Nichols Act. The act strengthened civilian control of the military and facilitated better military advice to the President, SECDEF, NSC and Congress. Today, the Armed Forces are involved in a worldwide fight against terrorism, well beyond anything envisioned by the framers of Goldwater-Nichols. Now, it is time to consider new ideas for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the military instrument of power in today’s new security environment.
The WOT and other recent military operations have demonstrated the need for improved interagency cooperation, integration and execution of National Security Council decisions. We also need to improve how we coordinate the efforts of international, regional and non-governmental organizations. I fully support initiatives to formalize a mechanism that creates effective lines of authority and provides adequate resources to execute interagency operations. For example, designating the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the principal military advisor to the Homeland Security Council would improve homeland defense and prosecution of the WOT beyond our borders.
As new defense reform initiatives are considered, the Chairman must retain a dedicated Joint Staff, with expertise across the full range of military issues, to assist in formulating quality, independent military advice to the President, the National Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense.
Joint Officer Management codified in the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols legislation was based on the threats and force structure evident late in the Cold War. We are developing a strategic plan to shape joint officer management based on the type and quantity of officers needed to perform current and future joint missions, and the education, training, and experience joint officers require. This strategic approach will ensure future joint officers meet the needs of joint commanders.
We are already taking some initiatives to improve our Joint Professional Military Education system, with the goal of educating and training the right person for the right task at the right time. Historically, we waited until officers became majors and lieutenant colonels before we provided them with joint education. We are finding that the War on Terrorism requires noncommissioned officers and junior officers from all Services to work in the joint environment more often than they have before. We are developing courses tailored to the needs of our younger troops that expose them to joint warfighting far earlier in their careers. To improve joint officer management and education, and prepare officers for joint duty earlier in their professional careers, I request consideration to allow the Service War Colleges to teach Joint Professional Military Education (JPME) Phase Two and the authority to determine the appropriate length of the Joint Forces Staff College’s JPME Phase II course. We also have pilot programs providing joint education to Senior Noncommissioned Officers and our Reserve and Guard component members. Additionally, we are reviewing our joint general and flag officer training programs to ensure our senior officers are prepared to command joint task forces and work effectively with interagency and coalition partners.
Today, the Chairman remains well positioned to assist in providing strategic direction to the Armed Forces, assess impacts on the long-term readiness of the force, and evaluate current and potential levels of risk associated with global military activities. Already, we are in the process of transforming our internal processes to make them more responsive in the current dynamic environment. In a similar vein, I request we also reevaluate and streamline our current reporting requirements to Congress, many of which seem of questionable utility. I propose the formulation of a working group composed of members from the HASC, SASC, HAC, SAC, OSD, OMB and Joint Staff to identify the best means and frequency of communications to meet Congressional oversight needs. TRANSFORMATION OF THE US ARMED FORCES
We cannot focus solely on the threats we face today and assume there are not other, perhaps even more challenging threats on the horizon. Maintaining our unchallenged military superiority requires investment to ensure the current readiness of deployed forces while continuing to transform military capabilities for the future. Our adversaries will learn new lessons, adapt their capabilities, and seek to exploit perceived vulnerabilities. Therefore our military must transform, and must remain ready, even while we are engaged in war.
Before the events of September 11th, transforming the force was viewed as DOD’s greatest near-term challenge. Since then, we have had to fight battles in the mountains of Afghanistan, in the cities of Iraq, and around the world for the security of America. Putting transformation on the back burner and focusing solely on the fight at hand is simply not an option. We are fighting a war unlike any we have fought before – it demands new ways of thinking about military force, new processes to improve strategic agility, and new technologies to take the fight to the enemy. DOD continues to invest heavily in transformation, both intellectually and materially.
The draft National Military Strategy adopts an “in-stride” approach to transformation that balances transformation, modernization and recapitalization to maximize our military advantages against future challengers. In addition to describing how the Joint Force will achieve military objectives in the near term, the strategy identifies force employment concepts, attributes and capabilities that provide the foundation for the force of the future. The goal is full spectrum dominance – the ability to control any situation or defeat any adversary across the range of military operations. We must ensure our military forces possess the capabilities to rapidly conduct globally dispersed, simultaneous operations; foreclose adversary options; and if required, generate the desired effects necessary to decisively defeat adversaries.
We recently published the Joint Operations Concepts document that describes a suite of concepts of how the joint commander will fight in 2015 and beyond. Joint Operations Concepts provide a framework for developing capabilities and defining concepts to achieve full spectrum dominance. Using this document as a foundation, the Joint Staff completed development of five joint functional concepts to define how joint warfighting will be conducted across the range of military operations. These functions include force application, protection, command and control, battlespace awareness, and logistics. Meanwhile, the Combatant Commands have been working on four high-level operating concepts that include strategic deterrence, stability operations, homeland defense, and major combat operations.
Collectively, functional and operating concepts define how we want to fight in the future, and will help us transform from the threat-based force of the Cold War to a capabilities-based force postured to respond to a wide variety of threats, some of which we cannot confidently predict today. To aid the Joint Requirements Oversight Council in determining warfighting needs with a capabilities-based approach, we are developing joint integrating concepts. These concepts are far more focused than functional and operating concepts, and define specific tasks to be conducted. They are designed to bridge the gap between how we want to fight and the capabilities we need. Examples include urban operations, global strike operations, and forcible entry operations. The functional, operating and integrating concepts will continue to evolve over time. The first round of this very important concept work should be done within the year.
For each functional concept area we have established a Functional Capability Board to integrate the views of the Combatant Commands, Services, Defense Agencies, Joint Staff, and OSD. These boards comprise functional experts from across DOD who will provide the best advice possible for our planning, programming, and acquisition processes. Functional Capability Boards also support a new process called the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System, which replaces the previous Cold War-era Requirements Generation System. The new system recognizes that less expensive programs can have a significant impact on joint operations. Virtually all programs are reviewed through the JROC process for potential joint impact before they get a green light, ensuring all Service future systems are born joint.
Based on the recommendations of the Joint Defense Capabilities Study – the Aldridge Study – we established the Strategic Planning Council chaired by SECDEF, and composed of the Service Secretaries, the Joint Chiefs, Principal Under Secretaries and the Combatant Commanders. The first meeting was held 28 January 2004. To capture and disseminate this top-down strategic direction, we will produce a new Strategic Planning Guidance document as the mechanism to provide subordinates with this strategic guidance. The first Strategic Planning Guidance document was completed in March 2004. We are also developing an Enhanced Planning Process that integrates DOD-wide lessons learned, experimentation, concept development, study results, capability gap analysis, and technology development into a collaborative capabilities planning function. The goal is to offer distinct and viable alternatives to senior leadership rather than a consensus driven, single point solution, and implement their decisions into the Joint Programming Guidance document, the first of which will be issued in May 2004.
These three transformational process initiatives –
Functional Capability Boards, Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System, and the Enhanced Planning Process – work together improving our planning and programming agility for future joint capabilities. JFCOM is working with the Functional Capability Boards to incorporate lessons learned from OEF and OIF into a list of materiel and non-materiel recommendations to the Joint Requirements Oversight Council to turn lessons learned into identified capabilities needs as quickly as possible.
JFCOM is also coordinating with the Services, Combatant Commands, other US agencies, and coalition partners to ensure experimentation efforts support the warfighter. One of JFCOM’s key experimentation initiatives is the Standing Joint Force Headquarters, which will provide Combatant Commanders a rapidly deployable command and control team, along with supporting information systems and reachback capabilities, that will enable us to respond to regional conflicts with smaller and more effective joint operational headquarters. JFCOM is establishing the prototype Standing Joint Force Headquarters this year, and in FY05 we will field the communications portion known as the Deployable Joint Command and Control System to CENTCOM and PACOM. EUCOM and SOUTHCOM receive follow on systems in FY06 and FY07. The Deployable Joint Command and Control System will use state-of-the-art information technology to enhance Joint Force command and control.
Communications systems are a prime target for transformational ideas. The Joint Tactical Radio System is a software programmable radio that will provide seamless, real-time, voice, data and video networked communications for joint forces. It will be scalable allowing additional capacity (bandwidth and channels) to be added, backwards-compatible to communicate with legacy systems, able to communicate with multiple networks, and able to accommodate airborne, maritime and land based systems. It provides the tactical warfighter with net-centric capabilities and connectivity to the Global Information Grid, and is essential to meeting our 21st century joint communications warfighting requirements. Transformation also means developing multiple, persistent surveillance capabilities that will let us “watch” situations and targets by looking, smelling, feeling, and hearing with a variety of long-dwell sensors from space, air, ground, sea and underwater and integrating these capabilities into a “system of systems.” The exploitation of Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT), holds great promise. MASINT collects information from many diverse sources to detect, characterize and track a target or activity by its distinctive properties, or “signatures” that are very difficult to conceal or suppress. Last year, DIA created its Directorate for MASINT and Technical Collection to develop new forms of technical collection and integrate MASINT into collection strategies and operations.
Another example of the transformational technologies we have just fielded is the Army’s Stryker Brigade, which is centered on a new, fast, and quiet vehicle that can deliver 11 troops to the fight. This effort is far more than simply fielding a new vehicle; it is also a new way to organize a brigade, and link that brigade to a networked command and control system that shares intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance information. Our Stryker Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) are organized and trained to take advantage of this new technology. The first Stryker BCT is already proving its worth in Iraq. To reduce our vulnerability to weapons of mass destruction, we have made progress on providing missile defenses for our homeland, our deployed forces, and our friends and allies. In the coming year, we plan to deploy six ground-based interceptors in Alaska and four in California to provide an initial capability to defend the US from ballistic missile attack. The PATRIOT missile defense system and the emerging AEGIS-based SM-3 system will provide short and medium range missile defenses, as well as critical surveillance and tracking essential to our Ballistic Missile Defense System. Coupled with an upgraded launch detection capability provided by the Space Based Infrared (SBIRS) Family of Systems, our ballistic missile defenses will continue to improve significantly over the next few years.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) offers an excellent example of a system that transformed modern warfare. GPS delivers worldwide positioning, navigation and timing data that provide US and allied forces an all-weather, precision engagement capability. Over the last decade, the success of combat operations was largely due to GPS-aided precision-guided munitions. We must continue to modernize GPS, improve capabilities, protect US and allied access to reliable military positioning, navigation and timing information, and deny this information to our adversaries, while minimizing impacts to peaceful civil users. We are engaged with NATO and the European Union to resolve our concerns with the proposed Galileo system, a civil satellite system that puts at risk our programmed military enhancements to GPS. A US interagency team has made significant headway with some tough technical issues over the past year, but continued negotiations are essential to address the remaining technical, and more importantly, the political issues. Once these issues are resolved, we can confidently move forward with our vision of space superiority to support future joint and coalition operations. As recent military operations have demonstrated, space is a critical dimension of the battlespace. Lessons learned from OEF and OIF highlight our increasing reliance on space communication assets and our demand for bandwidth. Our challenge is meeting future warfighter requirements in the face of an aging satellite constellation. Despite a planned 10-fold increase in capability through Advanced EHF and Wideband Gapfiller Systems, projected capacity may not meet the growing demand. This shortfall will potentially impact our ability to maintain a technological advantage over our adversaries. Work on Transformational Satellite Communications continues, which is designed to improve communications for mobile systems, particularly those that provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Our unmanned aerial vehicles and the Army’s Future Combat System place heavy demands on bandwidth, particularly when real-time video feeds are required. The frequency spectrum is critical not only to joint warfighting, but to all federal, state and local agencies to ensure national security and public safety. Military and civilian technology is rapidly moving to a wireless medium. As pressures from commercial sources to free up more federal spectrum mount, we must ensure our long-term spectrum accessibility for our military forces.
These are just a few examples our ongoing transformation efforts. We are working hard to integrate old systems with new, in innovative ways. Interoperating between our own legacy and transformational systems is a challenge for us, but it is an even greater challenge to our coalition partners, who must participate in key decisions on how transformation will enhance combined operations in the future.
Over the past year, NATO has achieved great success in progressing toward a transformed military organization. The Alliance has developed, approved, and begun implementing a new, more streamlined command structure, which will make it viable in the 21st century global security environment. The catalyst for modernization will be the new Allied Command Transformation, which will maintain a close partnership with JFCOM. Also, on the forefront of transformation, NATO has created the NATO Response Force, a key enabler of NATO’s new operational concept. This expeditionary force is designed to be a multinational, deployable, and lethal force intended for employment either within or outside of the European AOR. It will be NATO’s first responders, able to react quickly to a crisis anywhere in the world. In a display of NATO’s new focus, on August 11, 2003, NATO assumed command of ISAF in Afghanistan, the first out of area mission in the history of the Alliance. To be an effective joint force in the future, we must ensure that our allies keep pace with our transformation efforts.
Conclusion
Responding to today’s dynamic threat environment requires our Armed Forces to be innovative, agile, and flexible. With Congress’ strong support, our military has made significant progress combating terrorism, improving our joint warfighting capabilities, and transforming our military into a 21st Century fighting force. We appreciate your efforts to help us be responsive to a changing world, and make that world a safer and better place.
