New strategic guidance from the White House builds on work done by the services over the past several years on lessons learned in conflict and considerations of the future.
The armed forces are to be “agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats,” President Barack Obama said in unveiling the guidance at the Pentagon Jan. 5.
The new guidance was informed by service leaders, some of whom have been working on transforming the joint force into that “agile and flexible” force of 2020 and beyond that the White House wants, for some years.
For example, current Army Training and Doctrine Commander Gen. Robert Cone recently said “facing the uncertainties of future security challenges we must develop adaptive soldiers, leaders and units capable of accomplishing missions against hybrid threats in complex operational environments.”
Under Cone’s purview, the Army Capabilities Integration Center conducts the Army Chief of Staff’s annual Title 10 Future Study plan, Unified Quest, exploring enduring strategic and operational challenges in the future environment. This year Unified Quest has been examining how the Army can transition from today’s force to the force of 2020, with constrained resources.
Input into the new strategy came additionally from Marine Gen. James Mattis, commander of U.S. Central Command.
A speculative framework to stimulate strategic thought called the Joint Operating Environment (JOE) 2008 was created while Mattis was dual-hatted as commander of the now-dissolved U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation.
“Creativity in technological development, operational employment and conceptual framework is necessary, and it’s our intent that the JOE inspires an openness to change so urgently needed when both high- and low-intensity threats abound,” Mattis wrote in the foreword to the initial JOE.
The JOE was the bedrock for building the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen-directed Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO) document. CCJO offered the joint force ways to potentially solve problems set out in context laid out in the JOE.
The CCJO was validated through a war game and from it flowed down a library of operational concepts such as irregular warfare and conventional warfare.
While Mattis was at JFCOM, current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin Dempsey was nearby commanding the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command.
Dempsey’s goal was to build on the Army’s proven ability to adapt tactically in Iraq and Afghanistan and see the same adaptability in the institutional areas of the service, and for both to innovate.
TRADOC emphasized “balance” within the service and in capabilities for future military capability. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates emphasized “balance” to avoid over emphasizing some one type of conflict to the detriment of the others, and Dempsey believed Army efforts were consistent with that.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the new guidance is the first step in the department’s goal to build the Joint Force of 2020, a force that would be “sized and shaped differently than the military of the Cold War, the post-Cold War force of the 1990s, or the force built over the past decade to engage in large-scale ground wars.”
The U.S. strategic focus will be on Asia and the Middle East, the guidance said, and among concerns is anti-access-area denial that could impede U.S. forces.
The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review recommended creating an Air-Sea Battle Concept. That work, by Navy, Marine and Air Force personnel–to be joined by the Army–has now resulted in an office in the Pentagon for the work.
Releasing the new guidance and preparing for specifics to come, joint force leaders are all aware that war is a human endeavor. The military “must stay alert to what is changing in the world if we intend to create a military as relevant and capable as we possess today,” a combatant commander has often been heard to say. And as always, it is important to note that “the enemy has a vote.”