United States Joint Forces Command
If the U.S. military were a movie, United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) might be the producer, or at least the producer's executive agent. In cinema, producers pull together the writers and directors and actors and technical experts. In the U.S. military, the other Unified Combatant Commands (UCC) carry out regional or functional operations. Service-specific components provide the UCCs with trained and ready resource in that area, but no service is responsible for bringing together the joint, interagency, and multinational capabilities to meet operational needs. When a crisis breaks out in an area, or there is a new policy initiative, USJFCOM provides the "surge" planners and staff, while helping organize the mission-focused joint task force that will address the specific need. In other words, USJFCOM's is responsible for readiness to respond to the unexpected.
As DoD’s joint force provider, USJFCOM assigns nearly all conventional forces based in the continental United States, providing trained and capable forces to commanders in the field. Building a joint force requires a considerable degree of coordination with active, National Guard and reserve elements of the armed forces to ensure the deployment of a task-organized integrated team. A joint force may also include elements of the U.S. Coast Guard.[1]
It is not the UCC responsible for actual homeland defense operations; that is the role of United States Northern Command. It is the responsibility of USJFCOM to ensure that each UCC has the ability to respond to the unexpected.
The command has numerous ways to propagate ideas: unclassifed professional journals such as Joint Forces Quarterly, focused and sometimes classified position papers. It heads what is a research and educational organization, the set of joint laboratories and schools.
Mission: Transformation
With the end of the Cold War, and with fewer conventional threats facing our country, the challenge of fighting new enemies demands new ways of thinking. The realization of our transformation goals is a comprehensive effort that will:
- Protect the U.S. homeland and our forces overseas
- Project and sustain power in distant theatres
- Deny our enemies sanctuary
- Protect our own information networks from attack.
- Use information technology to link up different kinds of U.S. forces so they can fight jointly.
- Maintain unhindered access to space and protect our space capabilities from enemy attack
ur current doctrine still has us conducting operations similar to those we did in World War II and Desert Storm.
The command speaks of four mission areas, in which the first three clearly feed the fourth — and lessons learned in the fourth guide the first three. It also is the facilitator of information flow among them; it has the responsibility for integrating and finding gaps in command and control
The command’s support teams serve an important role in determining and documenting gaps in existing and planned service capabilities and recommending appropriate solutions, while also providing immediate support. USJFCOM also searches for opportunities to develop new joint enabling capabilities that can accelerate the establishment and immediate effectiveness of JTF headquarters and related joint organizations.
To meet these goals, our military periodically adopts structural changes through the promulgation of a master plan. The 2001/2002 Unified Command Plan gave USJFCOM a "laser focus" to become the incubator for new transformational concepts to build the military of the 21st century. As a result of the 2002 Unified Command Plan, the USJFCOM missions are:
Areas of responsibility
- Joint Force Provider
- Joint Force Integrator
- Joint Force Trainer
- Joint Concept Development and Experimentation
Goals
There are three goals.
Focused support
The USJCOM mission statement directs this at "winning the Global War on Terrorism", but, clearly, military challenges go beyond that. They include peace operations and stability operations in tense areas of the world. They include humanitarian actions. They include deterrence of rogue states.
Joint force provider
The command provides conventional forces, including, as of October 2006, manhaging the assignment of individual augmentees to deployed units. It also provides building blocks around which ad hoc joint task forces can form.
Developing robust joint command and control capabilities
Foundation: Standing Joint Force Headquarters – Core Element
Two SJFHQ-CE groups, Alpha and Beta, can deploy to a regional UCC, and are there to to help integrate air, land, maritime and information capabilities during the establishment of a joint task force headquarters (JTF HQ). They support, not replace, a two- or three-star headquarters, especially with joint and multinational coordination when the supported headquarters is from one service or branch.
The SJFHQ-CE elements drew in resources to set up a joint task force headquarters, and then returned to USJFCOM to await the next crisis Once the headquarters is formed, these core elements can withdraw to reconstitute and prepare for the next assignment.
Representative SJFHQ-CE deployments include:
- Joint Task Force Katrina: Sep-Oct 2005
- Multi-national Force-Iraq: May-July 2005
- Combined Disaster Assistance Center Pakistan: October-November 2005
- Multi-national Corps-Iraq: March 2005-January 2006
- Joint Task Force Lebanon: August-September 2006
- Doha Asian Games, Doha, Qatar: October-December 2006
- International Security Assistance Force, Afghanistan: June-November 2006
- Task Force Paladin: April-June 2006
- Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa: March-July 2005 and June 2006-present
- U.S. Central Command Crisis Response Alert Order: February 2007-present
- Numerous joint training exercises
Joint Communications Support Element (JCSE)
JCSE can globally deploy within hours of notification to provide command, control, communications and computers (C4) support to RCCs and U.S. Special Operations Command. JCSE provides communications packages tailored to the specific needs of a full joint task force headquarters and/or a joint special operations task force.
Joint Public Affairs Support Element (JPASE)
Public affairs is a highly visible part of information operations. In a 24/7 world news environment, getting out clear messages, and also taking responsibility for problems, is a specialist job, more functional than regional. When a crisis breaks out in a region, it may not have the teams to deal with a journalistic feeding frenzy; JPASE provide cat herders.
In 2006, they provided support for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Pakistan earthquake relief operations, and American citizen evacuation of Lebanon.
Intelligence Quick Reaction Team (I-QRT)
Joint Transformation Command for Intelligence (JTC-I), based in Norfolk, Va., supports field operations. While other forces do not have Intelligence Components, this is the role of Joint Forces Intelligence Command
QRT provide military and civilian intelligence professionals with targeting and collection management expertise to a JTF rapidly or during events leading up to crisis or contingency operations.
Joint Fires Integration and Interoperability Team
JFIIT) provided joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and close air support training to six U.S. Army brigade combat teams preparing for their mission rehearsal exercises at the National Training Center. To improve individual joint fires training capability, JFIIT provided subject matter expertise for six distance learning modules for the Joint Knowledge Development and Distribution Capability.
Joint trainer
U.S. Joint Forces Command's (USJFCOM) Joint Warfighting Center (JWFC) in Suffolk, Va. Coordinates the military's overall joint training efforts to ensure it is the most advanced and powerful force in the world.
Joint enabler
USJFCOM provides joint force commanders with deployable support teams capable of:
- Understanding the operational environment
- Planning fully integrated joint operations
- Coordinating unified actions with appropriate mission partners
- Preparing appropriate implementing directives and orders for subordinate tactical formations
- Rapidly adjusting operational-level plans based on analysis and assessment
Joint experimenter, integrator, and ...
New players or equipment must be integrated with the rest of the team. New strategies must improve existing ones in the playbook, or work with those already devised. A winning team understands that it is the combination of these elements that ensure victory.
- ↑ United States Joint Forces Command, Command mission and strategic goals