[A-List] US military: who's in charge?

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Experimenting with command
By Michael P Noonan and Mark R Lewis

(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy Research Institute)

Asia Times: November 13 2002

As the saying goes, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." A
perfect example of this has been US combat operations in Afghanistan. While
stories (and photographs) heralded an era where special operations personnel
could call in precision-guided munitions from horseback, this close work
between ground and air forces seems to be the exception rather than the
rule.

Indications of this have recently surfaced in the comments of army
Major-General Franklin L Hagenbeck, the commander of the 10th Mountain
Division and the on-the-scene commander for last spring's Operation Anaconda
offensive in Afghanistan. In an interview for the army's Field Artillery
journal, the general hinted that operational effectiveness was limited
because close air support (particularly from the air force) was hindered by
over-reliance on precision-guided munitions, difficulty in hitting non-fixed
targets and strict targeting procedures.

Understandably, some in the air force countered that the army's last-minute
attempt at coordination and unrealistic requirements for close air support
assets effectively hamstrung the air force before the mission even began.
Are these troubles merely the result of a lack of widespread expertise on
the part of senior commanders who cannot plan and coordinate joint
operations properly, or are there organizational and cultural reasons why
certain elements of the military cannot work well together?

This essay argues that longstanding traditions of American war-making are
largely responsible and that changes in organizational structures are
necessary to wage modern war. Furthermore, as the Defense Department pursues
transformation, such reorganization is imperative to build the foundation
upon which all other transformation initiatives are based.

Segmented warfare
Throughout most of its history the United States has practiced what can be
termed "segmented warfare". Each service had a distinct role and operated
nearly independently: the navy laid claim to blue-water operations, the
Marine Corps developed itself into an expeditionary force, and the army
focused on large-scale ground warfare. With the relatively late arrival of
the air force, that service built its doctrine around the belief that
bombers could collapse the enemy's will as they collapsed his cities, and
thus strategic airpower trumped the other services, relegating them to
operations on the periphery.

As recently as World War II, many, if not most, of the battles were either
primarily land (the European campaign), primarily maritime (the Pacific
campaign), or primarily air (the Battle of Britain or the strategic bombing
of Germany's industrial centers). Historically, therefore, military
campaigns conducted along the lines of the separate services are
understandable.

Two changes, however, have affected the way US forces fight. First,
technology now allows the services to communicate and share information
quickly, enabling them to work more closely together. This, combined with
advances in munitions, has the potential to create a synergy among the
services and yield greater combat power in smaller force packages than ever
before. Secondly, as Max Boot recently pointed out in his book The Savage
Wars of Peace, the bulk of our conflicts have proven to be relatively small
(but operationally complex) wars - with or without strategic consequences -
that by their nature require the United States to employ military power with
exacting precision.

Even as changes in the strategic context began to drive the need for more
precise applications of combat power, bureaucratic struggles over budgetary
divisions, contradictory advice, and operational inefficiencies within the
Department of Defense brought about calls for "jointness". The passage of
the Goldwater-Nichols legislation of 1986 (and subsequent legislation
dealing with special operations forces) sought to change the way the
department did business. This legislation came about largely because
inter-service rivalry had hindered military effectiveness in operations such
as the Iranian hostage rescue attempt (1979) and the invasion of Grenada
(1983).

At its core, the legislation empowered regional combatant commanders with
command and control responsibility for their geographic area, strengthened
the role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and made joint
assignments a prerequisite for officers to be selected for general or flag
rank. The logic was simple enough: a strengthened warfighting chain of
command staffed by officers experienced in working with their counterparts
from the other services would increase the operational effectiveness of the
US military writ large. Reality, however, often trumps logic.

The invasion of Panama (1989) and the Persian Gulf War (1990-91) were
largely held up as exemplars of joint operations following the passage of
Goldwater-Nichols legislation. In reality, these conflicts were conducted
along service lines. The Marines operated in their sectors, the army in
other areas, and special operations forces in yet other areas. Similarly,
aviation from all four services generally had its own areas of
responsibility, with the air force usually preferring to "go downtown" to
attack strategic targets in pursuit of air-war specific objectives.
Organizational barriers continue to suboptimize the use of our forces,
limiting our ability to inflict damage on our enemies to something less than
the sum of the means available, even after 16 years of the jointness
Goldwater-Nichols was to promote.

Functional warfare
If the United States handily won those conflicts, then why is true joint
warfighting important? Principally, the answer is because the coordinated,
complementary use of cross-service capabilities in the majority of
circumstances allows for the most efficient use of force. No longer easily
segregated into land, maritime or air conflicts, the localized and intense
"small wars" nature of US military engagement of the past decade, combined
with the smaller base of troops and equipment from which to draw
capabilities, means that the services must work more closely together to
produce a synergistic effort.

The challenge today is that a majority of officers can talk "joint" but
still think "service". What is joint doctrine in name actually reinforces
the service-centric nature of our operations. At the most basic level,
planning procedures and operational concepts fundamentally constrain
regional combatant commanders to think in terms of land, maritime or air
conflicts. Indeed, combatant commanders assign subordinate commanders on
this sort of "terra-based" distinction, as joint force land, maritime, and
air component commanders, even though emerging crises are not so easily
compartmentalized. For instance, a joint force land component commander is
responsible for "the proper employment of ... land forces; planning and
coordinating land operations; or accomplishing such operational missions."
Are army forces launched from a navy ship in support of air force bombers
dropping precision-strike munitions a land, maritime, or air operation?

That the answer is not so clear is no surprise, nor is it a surprise that
such uncertainty can drive organizational confusion as well. The result can
be organizational stovepipes where a ground commander may well have to send
his request for air support up the ground forces chain of command several
echelons to the "terra-based" component commander level. There, the request
can move horizontally to the air component commander, and back down the air
component command structure to the operational level air commander, who will
actually plan and fly the mission.

With this in mind, it should be readily apparent why problems such as the
close air support difficulties in Afghanistan occur. Because the components
are split by the medium in which they operate, commanders in one component
rarely interact with their counterparts in peacetime, and since the military
insists on waiting until a crisis emerges before it forms ad hoc joint
organizations to fight the developing battle, tactical and operational-level
commanders rarely have the opportunity to develop the deep expertise in
joint operations that modern contingencies require. In the case of Operation
Anaconda, it is not clear that the conventional ground forces understood how
the air forces plan and operate. The result: ineffective coordination
between air and ground forces hampered the mission.

How can this problem be resolved? One way would be to put liaisons from each
of the services into the planning cells of the other components. But that
happens today, and we still see these sorts of coordination problems.
Clearly, the development of standing joint task forces where land, maritime,
and air component forces come together during peacetime to train and develop
the habitual relationships required to successfully prosecute complex joint
operations is another option - and one already under scrutiny by the Defense
Department. That could develop more competent joint units, but would not
necessarily remove the organizational barriers that hamper the combatant
commanders.

The answer advanced here requires a transformational approach to smashing
the existing paradigm of terra-based commands to produce a breakthrough
solution. Why does the department retain ground, maritime and air component
commands when modern operations do not lend themselves to such a neat
compartmentalization? Component commands defined along mission-oriented
functional requirements are what is required.

Today, when joint doctrine refers to "functional component commands", it is
speaking of the medium in which the force operates. But with
mission-oriented functional component commands, combatant commanders could
draw from the unique strengths of the individual services to group
complementary capabilities under a structure organized to support the
operational architecture. For instance, one way to achieve this would be to
establish a command structure organized along strike, security, support and
information operations commands. In this example:

* The joint force strike component commander would have responsibility for
those assets - ground, maritime and air - required to conduct offensive
operations against enemy forces;
* The joint force security component commander might be responsible for the
protection of the forces and lines of communication, as well as host-nation
security;
* The joint force support component commander would be responsible for
providing for the logistical, maintenance and transportation needs of the
theater; and
* The joint force information operations component commander could be
responsible for providing information systems such as intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance functions, civil-military operations, public
relations and psychological operations, while simultaneously targeting enemy
information systems.

This is just an example, but the point is that in this way the services (and
defense agencies) would provide assets to these commanders much as they do
today, but each commander would have comprehensive responsibility for a
functional - instead of environmental - slice of the battlefield.

Conclusion
Under the functional component command system proposed here, the
on-the-scene commander would have a more holistic view of his operational
area and a better appreciation of how to apply his finite resources to best
accomplish the missions assigned because most battle spaces no longer need
to be constrained by land, maritime, or air compartmentalization.

Critics of this approach may claim that the very core competencies of the
services and the expertise needed to plan and coordinate such capabilities
would not be feasible under such a joint system. But this is in no way an
attempt to dismiss the challenges of geography or minimize the unique
strengths of our service institutions and their members. To the contrary, it
is a way to apply all the right tools at the right time by approaching
three-dimensional operations in a truly unified and comprehensive manner,
while maximizing effectiveness by allowing the core competencies of our
forces to act as combat multipliers buttressing one another.

Will such reorganization from segmented, terra-based commands to a
mission-oriented functional approach eliminate all the challenges in the
conduct of military operations? Of course not - Clausewitzian friction and
fog will always have a place on the battlefield. But the reorganization
described here could eliminate seams that currently inhibit the capabilities
of our forces and it ought to be the subject of future experimentation
within the Department of Defense.

Michael P Noonan is a research fellow on US defense policy and deputy
director of the Program on National Security at the Foreign Policy Research
Institute. Mark R Lewis is a defense policy analyst for a federally funded
research and development center.