Training with Greek Warriors
By Captain Christopher R. Davis, U.S. Navy Reserve
The Hellenic Navy's establishment of the NATO Maritime Interdiction Operations Training Center (NMIOTC) in Souda Bay, Crete, represents a significant national investment by Greece and the
addition of a state-of-the-art facility to NATO's training arsenal. It is precisely the sort of partner capability lauded in the U.S. Navy's Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.
The center's mission is to conduct the combined training necessary for NATO and partner forces to improve execution of surface, subsurface, aerial surveillance, and special operations in support of sanctioned maritime interdiction operations. It accomplishes this though various programs that refine the tactical proficiency, interoperability, and command and control of participating naval units. The maritime-interdiction capability is critical to combating piracy, terrorism, and illegal trafficking that threatens our globalized world.
The center's charter also calls for it to serve as the hub for developing alliance tactical maritime doctrine, training directives, and manuals-in addition to conducting research, experimentation, and modeling and simulation in support of global maritime interception operations. Greece funded the NMIOTC construction, and the Hellenic Navy covers ongoing operation and maintenance costs.
Collaborative from the Beginning
Established by a memorandum of understanding between NATO and the Hellenic Republic signed in November 2005, the center is a NATO education and training facility fully accredited by the alliance. Associated with NATO's Allied Command Transformation headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, the center complements other accredited NATO facilities. It will coordinate with the Allied Command Transformation to establish links with sub-entities, in particular the Joint Warfare Center, Joint Analysis Lessons Learned Center, and Joint Force Training Center.
The NMIOTC will also support Allied Command Operations' subordinate maritime component commands, providing unit-level training in maritime domain awareness, planning, boarding, and special-operations aspects of maritime interdiction operations. The goal is to improve the expertise and interoperability of maritime forces. The vision is for the center to become the recognized alliance expert in maritime interdiction operations training-not only for the navies of NATO and the Partnership for Peace, but also for those of the greater Middle East, including NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative maritime forces.
Getting Straight to Business
In early April 2008, the center offered its pilot course in vessel boarding search and seizure. In addition to classroom instruction, students spent time on tactical simulators to refine their skills. The facility includes a 50-foot fast rope and rappel tower for simulating helicopter operations, as well as the former Hellenic training ship Aris (a merchant vessel mockup permanently berthed close to the center) for afloat training.
Also that month, the center hosted the in-port training phase of exercise Phoenix Express 08, with 175 boarding teams from 19 countries participating. To improve maritime interoperability in future joint and combined operations, in July 2008 the NMIOTC hosted NATO's Maritime Operational Language Seminar. This brought together 18 officers from 11 nations Azerbaijan, Croatia, Greece, Georgia, Jordan, Kuwait, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, and the Ukraine-for English-language instruction in NATO maritime terminology, Alliance operational procedures, and multinational communications. In previous years, Surface Warfare Schools Command in Newport, Rhode Island, had hosted the Maritime Operational Language Seminar.
Dynamic Mission, International Crossroads
Commanded by a Hellenic Navy flag officer, a combined staff of military and civilian personnel operates this multinational military organization. In addition to Greece, participating countries now include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Turkey. Others are also exploring the benefits that the center offers. When fully manned, a staff of just over 100 will support one of three branches that carry out the mission:
- Education and Training: This branch has the primary goal of improving the ability of warship crews to perform maritime interdiction operations.
- Training Support: Managing the center's contribution to experimentation, simulation, modeling, research, and interoperability programs is this branch's responsibility.
- Headquarters Support: This branch plans, directs, coordinates, integrates, and executes logistics, personnel, financial, security and any support required from Greece.
- The NMIOTC's command tactical training simulator promises to become the cornerstone of warship crew training, from commanding officers to individual boarding-team members. The center can provide practical instruction in international container inspection, small arms, crew control, suspect crew handling, small-boat handling, boarding-team tactical sweeps, rigid-hull-inflatable-boat insertion, fast rope insertion, and operations under multiple-threat conditions.
The center has integrated, interoperable command and control and communication information system capabilities, including both NATO and national CIS infrastructure. The center can also field mobile training teams. Services and products that the NMIOTC provides to the alliance are generally free of charge. There are exceptions, and certain restrictions apply. For example, the center requires reimbursement for expenditures of ammunition and helicopter operating costs if not provided by the unit undergoing training.
The facility is ideally located at the crossroads of a major international maritime highway. More than 30 percent of the world's maritime traffic passes through the Mediterranean waters adjacent to the NMIOTC, including 27 percent of oil shipments. With Greece's long tradition as a seafaring nation, the center is a natural extension of its maritime expertise, including its considerable experience in commercial shipping and port security.
Moreover, it capitalizes on the maritime-security experience gained through Greece's hosting of the 2004 Olympics. The island of Crete hosts Operation Active Endeavor, the ongoing Mediterranean maritime-security and intercept operation. And Euro-Atlantic naval vessels en-route to Combined Task Force 152 (responsible for maritime security in the central and southern Persian Gulf) transit the waters adjacent to the NMIOTC. All this makes the center ideally situated for en-route workups or refresher training for individual warships or task groups.
Tap into the Global Network
Maritime-interception operations are the cornerstone of maritime security, a core sea power mission outlined in the Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. Executing irregular-warfare missions, including counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, requires a strong maritime-interdiction-operations capability. Yet the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard are not fully leveraging the Hellenic Navy's investment. They are missing this opportunity to tap into the global network of capabilities that can promote understanding and trust through common training and tactical standards.
The NMIOTC provides an untapped forum for economically enhancing international cooperation with countries that share our interest in regulating the global commons and responding rapidly to deter aggression. Using the center to train and exercise alliance and coalition capabilities will build the partnerships and enhance the interoperability necessary to execute our maritime strategy and ensure regional security.
The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard should continue to actively engage with the NMIOTC, using it as a center for training and doctrine excellence. In addition, several officers with maritime-interdiction-operations experience should serve on its staff, to further international collaboration. Junior officers can provide valuable service as course directors, instructors, experimenters, or modelers-gaining as well as passing on knowledge-while post-command senior officers provide constructive direction in the development of doctrine and training directives, providing valuable reach-back.
Our maritime services need to make a critical assessment of the center's capabilities and potential. They should determine what role it can play in training an d doctrine development in our own maritime force. A minimal U.S. investment in NMIOTC has the potential to yield significant benefits to our Navy and Coast Guard. NATO and the Hellenic Navy would surely welcome the collaboration.
Volunteer First!
By Commander Eric Johnson, U.S. Navy
When service members select a Global War on Terrorism support assignment (GSA), reasons range from wanting to do one's part to earning more pay. But several months after volunteering for duty in Afghanistan, I questioned whether my choice was best for my family and career. In the end, I realized that as a military professional, taking a GSA, the permanent change of station equivalent to individual augmentation (IA) orders, was the right thing to do. My reasons may help you decide whether volunteering is the right choice for you.
Better Than Being Told
Choosing to volunteer conditions your mind and allows you to plan for a time that's right for you. If you are up for orders, chances are you're going to be the priority to fill a GSA billet. And if you haven't been on a recent GSA/IA assignment, you may be chosen to go. However, in most cases volunteering early gives you a greater choice of billet, location, and deployment month. This can greatly affect the duration of your assignment, what command you'll go to, the living conditions, and the quality of life. And you'll be able to negotiate for a follow-on assignment before you leave.
Regardless of whether you get GSA/IA orders or not, the act of choosing to volunteer can help guarantee a successful deployment, because you have preconditioned the outcome. Those who want to do something, whether supporting global efforts against terrorism through GSA/IA orders, going to sea, or stepping into that hard-to-fill billet overseas, are better prepared. Increasingly, people are calling their detailers early and requesting GSA and IA assignments. First come, first served!
There can never be a perfect time to be away from your family. However, some times are better than others. Volunteering for an assignment now is better than having to go at the "wrong" time later. Choose the time best for you and your family.
Volunteering Marks a Professional
We are paid to perform missions that are essential to our national interests. We project force overseas and fight wars. This is what separates us from other professionals in the civilian population. By volunteering for GSA orders, some maintain that you put yourself in a situation that you may have been able to avoid altogether. However, this is an opportunity to do what you were trained for. It's why you joined the military.
Professionals do not wait to be told. They act and represent themselves in a way that ensures they maintain the integrity of their status. This means they are responsible, do what they are supposed to do when they are supposed to it, and understand that to be challenged, they must move out of their comfort zone.
People generally want to do what's comfortable. But to be successful in any profession, we need experience. Sailors understand going to sea: it's what we do. But as a military, we are now a joint force. Increasingly, GSA/IA assignments are becoming a required career milestone. Similarly to serving on board a ship or in a squadron, if we haven't been there and checked off the box, we'll be left out professionally.
However understandable it may be to not want to go on a GSA/IA deployment, that attitude goes against our commissioning and enlistment oaths. There are a few reasons that people can't go on a GSA/IA assignment (like not being medically qualified), but for the most part, far more reasons exist for which people don't want to go than for why they can't.
Camaraderie Is About Relationships
The Navy gives us the opportunity to develop a spirit of familiarity and closeness, whether these relationships form during sea deployments, serving in a particular community or on board a ship, or volunteering for a GSA/IA assignment overseas. Less than 10 percent of the entire Navy has served in these latter assignments and experienced the accompanying esprit de corps.
A unique camaraderie is developed while serving in a war zone with a group of highly trained professionals. The people with whom we serve daily become our friends, our confidants, our critical stress debriefers, and our extended family. Often they also become conduits to other career-enhancing opportunities because of a common foundation of shared experience. Just having the shared knowledge that accompanies a GSA/IA assignment is enough to start a dialogue, promote credibility, and open the door to new opportunities.
Promotion Opportunities
Board members consider many factors during the selection process. Among these is whether you have or are currently serving a GSA/IA assignment. As the Navy Promotion Board Precept stipulates, the service considers such time "vital to the successful Joint prosecution of the Global War on Terror." But having warfighting skills from service in Iraq or Afghanistan does not guarantee promotion. And completing a GSA/IA assignment is not a substitute for sustained superior performance at sea or completing other community-specific milestones.
But it may enhance the Navy Promotion Board's "best and fully qualified selection standard." In essence, completing a GSA/IA assignment can only help. It shows the board that you are a well-rounded professional who can succeed in any situation: at sea, ashore, or in a combat zone.
Pay, Benefits, and the Final Decision
GSA and IA assignments come with increased pay, entitlements, and other benefits such as tax-free bonuses and tax-deferred thrift savings plan contributions. Depending on their location, billet assignment, and marital status, most service members receive some or all of the following (for specifics, elaboration, and explanations, see www.dfas.mil or www.tsp.gov):
- Combat zone tax exclusion (CZTE): Tax-free earnings up to $7,143.30 (based on 2009 pay table)
- Family separation housing: $250 per month
- Hostile fire pay/imminent danger pay: $225 per month
- Hardship duty pay: $100 per month
- Incidental expenses: $3.50 per day, depending on location and assignment
- Saving deposit program: Amounts up to $10,000 may be deposited, earning 10 percent interest per annum
- Tax-free bonuses if reenlisting in combat zone: Variable by rate and location
- Tax-deferred thrift savings plan contributions: up to $49,000 per year
- Combat leave: Leave accrued while in a CZTE area is tax free when it is taken.
I decided that choosing a GSA or IA assignment was the right thing to do. Volunteering is hazardous, requires sacrifice, and takes you away from your family. But professionally, there is probably no better choice you can make. Whether or not you agree with the reasons, the fact remains that we are a nation at war, and we have a responsibility to do our part. As military professionals, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations overseas in support of the global war on terrorism is what our country is asking us all to do.
Use the Navy Reserve for Civil Support
By Commander Christopher Siegle, U.S. Navy
The latticework of the military's involvement in disaster response is complicated. Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA) operations civil-support missions follow terrorist attacks and natural disasters. If the required response overwhelms local, tribal, or state resources, the Department of Homeland Security or other federal agency can request Department of Defense capabilities. This is the point at which the Navy Reserve component needs to step up and offer direct contributions to DSCA.
Working through a Complicated System
Typically, a Defense coordinating officer forwards a request for assistance, or mission assignment, for Title 10 force capabilities (meaning federal military forces). After approval by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and America's Security Affairs, as well as the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Director of Military Support fills the request. Available Title 10 active and reserve forces provide the capabilities, assigned by U.S. Joint Forces Command or to U. S. Northern Command.
In certain events, military assistance is scripted to come from specialized units such as the U.S. Marine Corps' Chemical Biological Immediate Reaction Force or one of the Chemical Biological Nuclear Radiological or High-Yield Explosive Consequence Management Response Force packages, which became assigned forces of U.S. Northern Command in October 2008. But who responds if the disaster is more localized and not a chemical or biological event?
We are familiar with seeing the Army National Guard respond in most crisis situations, such as the flooding that occurred in the Midwest in spring 2009. In many ways the National Guard is perfectly aligned for this work. Every state has one, and the Guard operates in one of three legal statuses: state active duty, Title 32, or Title 10. In the first two situations, the Guard is exempt from many of the legal constraints that apply to active and reserve armed forces under Title 10. But the state governor, not the Secretary of Defense, controls the force in these cases. The National Guard is now reporting stress because of Title 10 commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, where certain units are on their second or third rotations.
Simplifying Matters
The Navy is becoming increasingly involved in coastal and other maritime responses. For example, in 2005 the USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) demonstrated its ability to provide a floating medical center in a DSCA response following Hurricane Katrina. Navy aviation assets have been used effectively in hurricane response and wildland firefighting, and Navy salvage divers from Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 2, from Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, assisted in Minneapolis in 2007 following the I-35W bridge collapse.
In areas other than the coast, the Navy Reserve component can be used most effectively as an operational reserve. The Commission on the National Guard and Reserve recommended in its January 2008 report that state governors control federal responders, including reserves. It further suggested that the Secretary of the Navy could mobilize Reserve Navy Sailors for 60 to 120 days annually for response to imminent or manmade disasters. These measures would lead to required readiness standards.
The Navy operates a network of Navy Operational Support Centers (NOSCs), formerly known as Reserve Centers. At least one of these-and usually several-is in each state. NOSCs are staffed by full-time active and reserve Sailors focused on mobilization readiness and Navy programs.
If the NOSC staff were trained as responders or Navy headquarters elements for DSCA response, Navy assets could be employed more efficiently. NOSCs could draw on the Reserve Sailors in the area and coordinate localized Title 10 responders to conduct DSCA operations. The NOSC staff would need DSCA training, and command and communications equipment would have to be augmented to operate an emergency operations center.
The officers and enlisted Sailors assigned to the NOSC staff would have to be considered operators, not administrators. But the staff should be very familiar with the Reserve units and personnel assigned to that NOSC. The NOSC staff has systems tracking qualifications, readiness, even civilian skills and employment. For example, the naval hospital organization, which is staffed with Reserve medical professionals, can augment or operate a field hospital or a civilian hospital that is overwhelmed with casualties. Such victims can arise from any number of situations, including explosions, chemical leaks, and flooding or other natural catastrophes.
Reserve Construction Battalion personnel can build emergency temporary shelters, storage facilities, or air fields, using some of the equipment at NOSCs. Other units can provide liaison or command and control. In these and other ways, Reserve activities can contribute to response in areas other than the coasts.
NOSCs exist in every state. Get them involved in civil support and make them operational. Use the Navy Reserve component as local Title 10 responders.