By Ann Roosevelt
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.–U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) June 1 created an Irregular Warfare Center (IWC), expected to be fully operational late summer or early fall, with 30 to 40 people, a command official said.
“Irregular warfare applies across the entire spectrum,” Rear Adm. John Richardson, JFCOM J5, director, Strategy and Policy Directorate, said at the Joint Warfighting 2008 conference cosponsored by the Armed Forces Communication Electronics Association International and the U.S. Naval Institute in coordination with JFCOM here.
The IWC will leverage existing resources, not look for new money or billets, he said. Internal reprioritizing will achieve the purpose.
The IWC focuses on general-purpose forces to ensure those provided to the combatant commanders are proficient in irregular warfare.
“Our lane is to make sure the general purpose force is appropriately trained” and will work closely with Special Operations Command to see what capabilities can migrate to those forces.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has spoken about the need for more “SOF-like” capabilities due to the nature of current conflict. So has Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen. In fact, since 2003, the Army has been looking to leverage SOF skills under the initial direction of then Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker.
Richardson said IWC wants to maintain dialogue with the services, which have their Title 10 responsibilities. “We will focus our effort on the joint operational level of war,” on conventional forces where the center of gravity is the joint operational level.
JFCOM had been talking about setting up such a center in support of the joint commander, Richardson said, as part of what the command does–developing jointness through concept development and experimentation, refining ideas and then ensuring military systems talk to each other, then training joint forces, providing deployable joint teams, and then as joint force provider: providing the right mix of forces and equipment to “get the job done.”
Irregular warfare needs to fit across the spectrum of conflict, and new concepts have to be interoperable, forces must be trained to have deployed forces with competencies in irregular warfare.
JFCOM Commander Marine Gen. James Mattis provided the irregular warfare focus and guidance “to make Irregular Warfare a command core competency,” Richardson said.
Mattis directs the IWC will “ensure that the General Purpose and Expeditionary Forces provided to the COCOMs are proficient in IW through an integrated approach to concept development and experimentation, capabilities development and fielding, doctrine development and training,” Richardson said.
The IWC will be “synchronized with other elements within DoD and outside DoD,” he said. Those other elements include the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, Combatant Commands, all the services, and SOCOM.
“Absolutely synchronized with SOCOM,” he said. And in no way taking over or encroaching on SOCOM’s missions.
Collaboration with the multinational community will provide “a lot of perspective and experience”–a need to ensure such partners are part of the discussion and solutions so forces are more survivable and robust. Additionally, multinational partners will allow IWC to incorporate other perspectives, and internally will “uncover any blind spots,” he said.
IWC is command-wide, Richardson said. There is no intention to make it a stovepipe within the command, thus its work will be synchronizing irregular warfare inside the command. IWC is the proponent for IW in the command.
Externally, as irregular concepts and discussion are addressed in DoD and elsewhere, IWC will be the point of contact, ensuring there’s a unified voice outside the command.
IWC leverages the JFCOM Joint Urban Operations Office, and its senior advisory committee of 20 or so senior leaders at the two-star-type level.
IWC will become the bridge to SOCJFCOM, the multinational community and NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT), also commanded by Mattis and located adjacent to JFCOM.
Resident in the command or at NATO ACT are liaisons from SOCOM and U.S. Northern Command so it will make it easier for IWC to synchronize its work and be more transparent.
At this point, IWC lacks only a director, and the selection process is under way, Richardson said. “By and large,” IWC is up and running with two deputy commanders in place– one for SOF, who is the commander of SOCJFCOM, the other deputy, for general purpose forces coming from the Urban Operations Office.
The IWC will ensure the harvesting of all lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan, Richardson said, because “we want to be as dominant in this area as we are in other areas.”
Dialogue is key, considering that the target of irregular warfare is legitimacy in the eyes of the host population, he said.
IWC recognizes that irregular warfare goes beyond the military and will work to bring in other parts of the government and multinational partners from the beginning, Richardson said.