United States Joint Forces Command
| United States Joint Forces Command | |
|---|---|
 Emblem of United States Joint Forces Command |
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| Active | 1999-2011 |
| Country | United States |
| Type | Unified Combatant Command |
| Size | 1.16 million active and reserve soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines |
| Headquarters | Norfolk, Virginia |
| Nickname | USJFCOM |
| Commanders | |
| Combatant Commander | General Raymond T. Odierno |
United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) is one of ten Unified Combatant Commands of the United States Armed Forces. Unlike the six commands with responsibility for war plans and operations in specified portions of the world, USJFCOM is a functional command that provides specific services to the military. The current commander is Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno.
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[edit] History
USJFCOM was formed in 1999 when the old United States Atlantic Command was renamed and given a new mission: leading the transformation of the U.S. military through experimentation and education. USLANTCOM had been active from 1947 to 1993 as a primarily U.S. Navy command, focused upon the wartime defence of the Atlantic sea lanes against Soviet attack. After the end of the Cold War, a 1993 reorganization gave the Command a new acronym, USACOM, and brought United States Army Forces Command and Air Combat Command under its authority.[1]
[edit] Mission
United States Joint Forces Command is one of ten combatant commands in the United States Department of Defense, and the only combatant command focused on the transformation of U.S. military capabilities.
Among his duties, the commander of USJFCOM oversees the command's four primary roles in transformation — joint concept development and experimentation, joint training, joint interoperability and integration, and the primary conventional force provider as outlined in the Unified Command Plan approved by the President.
The Unified Command Plan designates USJFCOM as the "transformation laboratory" of the United States military to enhance the combatant commanders' capabilities to implement the president's strategy. USJFCOM develops joint operational concepts, tests these concepts through rigorous experimentation, educates joint leaders, trains joint task force commanders and staffs, and recommends joint solutions to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines to better integrate their warfighting capabilities.
The benchmark of USJFCOM's efforts is to create effects in the battlespace in support of campaigns designed and conducted by the combatant commanders in pursuit of presidentially-approved policy goals.
In doing so, USJFCOM seeks the coherent integration of military capabilities with other elements of national and allied power. The joint force concept development and experimentation focus is an inherent component of this mission. The cornerstone of this program is the development of future concepts for joint warfighting.
This work builds on and strengthens service efforts, draws on the best of industry, and flows directly from the President's National Security Strategy, the Secretary of Defense's National Defense Strategy and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's National Military Strategy.
The joint force trainer role allows USJFCOM to rapidly introduce new doctrine and receive immediate feedback from the warfighters, while preparing warfighting commanders to prepare for their missions in a realistic joint environment. USJFCOM has also led the way in developing a Joint National Training Capability that ties together existing service training sites so forces can train in a common joint environment.
As the joint force integrator, USJFCOM helps develop, evaluate, and prioritize the solutions to the interoperability problems plaguing the joint warfighter. At USJFCOM, joint interoperability and integration initiatives continue to deliver materiel and non-materiel solutions to interoperability challenges by working closely with combatant commanders, services and government agencies to identify and resolve joint warfighting deficiencies.
This work is one of the most important near-term factors required to transform the legacy forces and establish a "coherently integrated joint force."
In late 2004, U.S. Joint Forces Command assumed the role of primary conventional force provider. This landmark change assigned nearly all U.S. conventional forces to Joint Forces Command. Along with this responsibility came the task to develop a new 'risk-assessment' process that provided national leaders a world-wide perspective on force-sourcing solutions.
This process not only helps national decision makers make more informed choices on supporting ongoing and emergent operations, but also allows military commanders to foresee potential readiness problems and develop mitigation strategies, thus allowing the United States to maintain the nation's forces at the highest possible levels of readiness.
USJFCOM personnel include members from each branch of the U.S. military, civil servants, contract employees, and consultants.
Its operations and exercises have included Noble Resolve, an experimentation campaign plan to enhance homeland defense and improve military support to civil authorities in advance of and following natural and man-made disasters[2] and Empire Challenge, an annual intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) interoperability demonstration.[3]
[edit] Organization
JFCOM has four component commands, a sub-unified command (Special Operations component is SOCJFCOM and eight subordinate activities, including: Joint Warfighting Center; Joint Systems Integration Center; Joint Transformation Command for Intelligence; and Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC). JFCOM's Service components are the CONUS based commands that provide forces to other combatant commands and have primary responsibility to their services for requirements validation.
- United States Army Forces Command (FORSCOM)
- United States Fleet Forces Command (USFLTFORCOM)
- Air Combat Command (ACC)
- United States Marine Corps Forces Command (MARFORCOM)
JFCOM Special Operations
JFCOM Subcommand
- Joint Fires Integration and Interoperability Team (JFIIT)
- Joint Personnel Recovery Agency
- Joint Communications Support Element
[edit] Strategy and Policy Directorate
The Strategy and Policy Directorate is the branch of the command tasked with planning.
According to James W. Harrison Jr., the director in 2004, the Directorate's responsibilities included preparing plans to[4]:
"...directly support the DoD priorities of the global war on terrorism, joint warfighting capabilities, transforming the joint force, optimization of intelligence capabilities, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as well as DoD efforts to more effectively deal with pre-war opportunities and post-war responsibilities."
[edit] Joint Concept Development & Experimentation Directorate (J9)
Joint Concept Development and Experimentation (JCD&E)
USJFCOM JCD&E develops innovative joint concepts and capabilities providing experimentally proven solutions to the most pressing problems facing the joint force. Operationally relevant solutions are rapidly delivered to support current operations and drive DOTMLPF and policy changes to better enable the future joint force. JCD&E provides thought leadership and collaborative environments to generate innovative ideas with a range of interagency, multinational, academic and private sector partners.
JCD&E mitigates risk for DoD through rigorous evaluation of alternatives and through the development, testing and validation of joint concepts focused on specific problems identified in the Joint Operating Environment or gaps in doctrine. Joint experimentation is complementary with other elements of RDT&E and applies similar methods to those used in technology test & evaluation and field demonstration.
J9 leads and coordinates JCD&E for DoD through an enterprise approach, applying structured, disciplined and transparent processes that maximize effectiveness and efficiency.
Combatant Commands and Services define the problem set.
- Four star endorsed warfighter challenges (WFC) are the basis for JCD&E projects.
- WFC’s are prioritized by the JCD&E enterprise (COCOMs, Services, OSD, Joint Staff) based on command importance and strategic guidance within context of the Joint Operating Environment (JOE) and Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO).
- Annual JCD&E Enterprise Campaign Plan, defining and synchronizing experimentation efforts across DoD, is developed and endorsed by the Enterprise, approved by CDR USJFCOM and submitted to CJCS.
Warfighters are directly involved in developing and validating concepts and solutions.
- Customer and other stakeholder commitment to actively participate in JCD&E projects is a prerequisite to commencement. Warfighter and expert engagement is essential to ensure solutions meet their needs.
- Multiple methods of analytically rigorous experimentation (e.g., discovery, hypothesis testing, demonstration, etc.) are applied in solution focused projects to thoroughly and objectively examine potential solutions.
- Realistic, scenario-based experimentation environments are created and distributed to support operator participation in conditions that closely simulate real world operations and future challenges.
Validated solutions contribute directly to current operations and drive change across DOTMLPF and policy.
- Transition planning is fundamental to experiment design. Specific organizations that possess the authority and resources to affect change in each element of DOTMLPF and policy for the subject mission area are identified along with the products they need to support rapid change.
- Transition agents are included in experimentation early so they understand the problem, are part of the solution development and are ready to turn results into action.
[edit] Command and Control (C2) Core
C2 (Command and Control) Core is a DoD project sponsored by U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense/Network and Information Integration (OASD/NII) to develop an open standard-supporting, extensible markup language (XML)-based command and control (C2) data exchange.
C2 Core represents the first major implementation of the Universal Core v2.0, a federal information sharing initiative. It supports the DoD Net Centric Data Strategy by enabling data to be visible, accessible, understandable, trustworthy and interoperable. The overarching goal of this project is to support national and coalition warfighters by improving joint interoperability at the data and information layer.
Accomplishing these strategic goals within the C2 community involves publishing and evolving agreed-upon standards that exchange partners (services and, down the line, combatant commands and agencies) can use to share data more broadly, efficiently and effectively.
The C2 Core standards also link C2 design guidance emerging at both the DoD enterprise level and within multiple C2-related communities of interest and programs of record to support the broadest range of interoperability requirements possible.
Current C2 Core development efforts focus on three major components:
- A joint C2 conceptual model and vocabulary
- Standard XML-based data exchange framework
- Reusable components
Over time, exchange partners who leverage C2 Core will benefit from faster time to market, reduced mediation and lower development costs for creating new information exchanges.
[edit] Future
On August 9, 2010 Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that Joint Forces Command has been slated for elimination as a budget-saving measure.[5][6] General Ray Odierno will be given the task of winding down JFCOM.[7]
[edit] Commanders
- Admiral Harold Gehman, USN (1999–2000)
- General William F. Kernan, USA (2000–2002)
- Admiral Edmund P. Giambastiani, USN (2002–2005)
- General Lance L. Smith, USAF (2005–2007)
- General James N. Mattis, USMC (2007–2010)
- Lieutenant-General Keith M. Huber, USA (2010) (acting)
- General Raymond T. Odierno, USA (2010-2011)
[edit] References
- ^ Find Article: U.S. Atlantic Command, Now USACOM, Assumes New Role US Navy Press Releases
- ^ USJFCOM information on Noble Resolve
- ^ Empire Challenge 09
- ^ Jon Cupp, Megan Walsh (January 9, 2004). "USJFCOM to continue shaping the future of joint warfighting in 2004". United States Joint Forces Command. Archived from the original on 2007-11-10. http://web.archive.org/web/20071110104832/http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2004/pa010904a.htm. Retrieved 2008-01-09.
- ^ Find Article: Officials: Belt-tightening will cut major command Associated Press report
- ^ Tilghman, Andrew (August 9, 2010). "Gates to kill JFCOM, cut general officer billets". Marine Corps Times. http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2010/08/military_gates_cuts_080910w/. Retrieved 10 August 2010.
- ^ Find Article: Gates to shut down USJFCOM in 2011 US Defense Secretary Press Release
[edit] External links
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