By Ann Roosevelt
U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) Friday wrapped up a weeklong seminar wargame examining how the future joint force would operate in a complex and unpredictable 2020 environment, and what capabilities and capacities they would need.
The wargame used the JFCOM-generated Joint Operating Environment (JOE) as a basis, describing trends likely to feed the future, such as climate change, urbanization and globalization. How the joint force would operate in such an environment was then described in the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff document, the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO).
“The ultimate goal of the experiment is to inform force development decisions across DoD in order to create a balanced force to deal with those future security challenges,” Rear Adm. Dan Davenport, director of J9 Joint Concept Development & Experiment Directorate at JFCOM, told reporters Wednesday.
“The central ideas in the CCJO so far are holding up very well,” Davenport said. “What we are seeing is an appetite for deeper understanding of some elements of the CCJO, which I think will feed into future concept work consistent with our concept vision.”
Another part of the effort is to inform the work of the Quadrennial Defense Review, one of many such inputs. Work being done in the QDR also flowed to wargame planners.
The classified seminar wargame consisted of three separate scenarios involving a state competitor, a fragile or failing state, and the third dealt with globally networked non- state actors. The challenges flowed across all the domains, ground, air, space, maritime and cyber.
In late July, an unclassified final report on the May 31-June 5 wargame is expected.
The collective challenge of the scenarios to the CCJO concepts of versatility and adaptability of the future joint force are important, Davenport said (Defense Daily, May 14).
Red teams, portraying adversaries extensively, vetted the scenarios. As blue, or friendly force players worked up solutions, red players were free to throw in such concerns as loose nukes, terrorists, anthrax and electromagnetic pulse weapons and other spanners into the works.
The future joint force has to have “balance and the ability to deal with hybrid threats and irregular warfare, as well as continued capability in conventional and nuclear warfare,” JFCOM Deputy Commander Vice Adm. Robert Harward said.
The CCJO describes three broad ideas on how the future force will operate: addressing each situation on its own unique terms; using a combination of combat, security, engagement and relief and reconstruction activities in operations designed for that unique situation; and finally, continually assessing results.
This is what’s happening as the scenarios play out, Harward said. The blue force was shifting between those operations, and not necessarily in a linear fashion.
Players have been wrestling with other major issues–would the current combatant commands’ areas of responsibility be correct in the future, what is deterrence, and what happens if the network goes down.
“I will tell you that the narrative has been a very big discussion topic so far and one of the key areas of focus,” Harward said.
“Sea-basing, I can tell you, that’s been a big part of the discussions,” he said. “It’s in several of the scenarios, that has been a focal point.”
Aside from the three scenarios, there’s a higher authority panel, looking more broadly and at a different level at the combined scenario challenges, Davenport said. The panel is examining overall how forces are synchronized, the aggregate of scenario capability needs and how they are synchronized.
That work also fits into the CCJO that states: “We will need to develop new capabilities and change the capacities of existing ones.” The CCJO is expected to be the catalyst from which flow a series of operational concepts from joint and service organizations (Defense Daily, Jan. 26).
The CCJO also said the joint force must “markedly improve the ability to integrate with other U.S. agencies and other partners…”
The wargame scenarios were designed so players could identify the kinds of partnerships they would need to effectively deal with the challenges.
“The strength of the wargame is the people,” Davenport said.
Harward said there has been a “significant participation and buy-in by a wide variety of agencies and departments.” Taking part in the weeklong event were former political leaders, multinational coalition members, former combatant commanders, former ambassadors, senior officers from all the services, as well as from most of the three-letter government agencies and departments.