The word “joint,” in military usage, has three connotations.
First, there is the matter of military effort toward common objectives. It is appropriate that the military Services and the various commands conduct their operations toward joint objectives in the sense of working toward common aims. All military planning and operations should contribute to a joint political purpose and to a set of military objectives.
Second, there are certain types of combat operations, the complexities of which require completely integrated planning and control of the forces of more than one Service. Hence, there is a real need for joint planning and operations.
The third connotation is an outgrowth of the first two. It is joint organization. To achieve common objectives, and to conduct successfully those operations requiring integrated effort of the Services, requires joint organization. The difficult problem has been in determining for what operations, and at what level, the organization should be joined.
The word joint, however, like unified, has become a “good word.” It has a consoling effect on the public mind. It infers that the military Services are working together in harmony. Semantically, anything joint implies a sense of security and confidence to which the public is highly receptive. The same public approbation applies to the word unified, a first cousin of joint, and, rather oddly, to centralized, all of which have acquired a certain degree of synonymity.
But, semantics aside, it is suggested that we have become overly joint!
The defense organization of today is the outgrowth of the employment of the legally constituted military power of the United States over a period of almost two centuries. Until the last two decades, there was little change in the over-all relationship between the Army and Navy. There were internal organizational changes in each Service, but each planned and operated independently of the other. Each separately went before the Congress and presented requirements for personnel, material and monies. The idea of joint objectives, whereas not always expressed in exactly those terms, was satisfied by the constitutional authority of the President as Commander in Chief.
Prior to World War II, during periods of minor or no crises, the Navy functioned in close co-ordination with the Department of State. The Navy was the instrument of national power that could be seen or used throughout the world, either subtly or bluntly as the situation demanded. Protected by contiguous oceans, the U. S. government gave less attention to the Army until it was required in combat.
Occasionally, operations were conducted that required co-ordinated effort between the Services. In general, these were in terms of joint or common objectives, rather than in terms of integrated operations. There were few occasions for the latter, and, lacking modern means of communications, there was little capability to effect them.
During the period between World Wars I and II, two types of operations emerged which would now be regarded as joint in the sense of planning and operations. One was land/air operations in the vicinity of the battlefield. Since both the ground and air forces were Army, suitable procedures to effect the necessary integration of effort could be developed within that Service. The other area was the amphibious assault, where the requisite procedures were developed by the Marine Corps and the Navy which, although separate Services, were both in the Department of the Navy and already were integrated by virtue of the organizational status of the Fleet Marine Force.
The operations of World War II necessitated the ad hoc arrangement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the strategic direction of the armed forces. This arrangement assured provision for the connotation of joint that applies to common objectives. It was carried into the field through the establishment of theater commanders.
For the post-World War II period, the advance of technology, the advent of nuclear weapons, the acceleration of time-space factors, the magnitude of the organization required for national security, and the complexities of maintaining that organization, all presaged change.
Action in response to this situation was the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 and its ensuing amendments, including the latest legislative basis for change enacted in 1958. As a result, in two decades, the military organization for security of the United States has undergone changes many times greater than those that took place in the previous space of almost two centuries.
A great deal of the conceptual thinking underlying the Act of 1947 and subsequent organizational changes has held a distorted relationship to the true requirements for joint planning and operations, or for the semantic counterpart of joint—unified. Extending the distortion further has led to some sort of unreasonable synonymity among the words joint, unified, and centralized.
In keeping with the connotation of joint as meaning working toward common objectives, the basic Act of 1947 contained three very desirable provisions. It established a National Security Council which could formulate clear national policy objectives from which military objectives logically could be derived. It codified the already existing Joint Chiefs of Staff so that they might provide legally for the strategic direction of the armed forces. It provided for a Joint Staff, which could assist the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the preparation of plans that would ensure that Service actions were directed toward common objectives. Accordingly, the law contributed to the achievement of “joining” the activities of the Services in one area where a joint effort was in fact required- working toward common goals.
In the other area where a joint effort was needed, i.e., those operations the complexities of which required integrated planning and control of forces, the law introduced a paradox. The establishment of a separate Air Force dismembered the elements of the land/air team on the battlefield. The foregoing statement should not be construed to suggest that tactical aviation should not have been included in the Air Force. Joint effort on the battlefield was only one factor among many to be considered. It turned out that it was not overriding. The result, as enacted, however, was at variance with the underlying concept of a need for joint effort.
Thus, of the two types of warfare requiring a truly joint effort in the tactical sense, the Act of 1947 left the amphibious assault operation unimpaired, but left the door ajar to difficulty in land/air operations. This problem was highlighted in Korea and continues unresolved today. As has frequently been pointed out in public media, there is no completely accepted doctrine in land/air operations for close air support, air traffic control, battlefield reconnaissance, localized air defense, and the many other functions to be performed in the immediate vicinity of the battlefield.
The amphibious assault, on the other hand, has attained and retained status as one of the four military capabilities of the armed forces of the United States (amphibious warfare, carrier operations, at-sea replenishment, and sea-based strategic striking power) that are unmatched elsewhere in the world. It is a unique capability, for which the Navy must be accorded credit, but which has been spearheaded through the years by the U. S. Marine Corps. In this area of joint endeavor there is doctrine spelled out in precise detail. It has been tested in the most intense combat, has survived the organizational changes of the years following World War II, and has needed only mutually agreeable modification in order to adapt to improvements in weapons systems. The Army, if Army forces should be required in amphibious operations, subscribes to and is willing to conform to Navy/Marine Corps doctrine. The Air Force has not espoused it, but is ready to operate “in support of” an amphibious assault. As long as Navy/Marine air power is sufficient to handle air operations at the beachhead, and in the immediate objective area of an amphibious assault, such a support role is quite appropriate for the Air Force. Operations by the Air Force “in support” fulfill Air Force requirements for an amphibious operation, and the joint aspect in which the Air Force participates is provided for by planning at a higher level toward a common objective. If the day is ever reached when Navy/ Marine air power is insufficient to satisfy the truly integrated—joint, if you will—operation, the amphibious assault could fall into the same category as the land/air operation.
This analysis, then, leads us to one distinct and striking deficiency—the lack of agreed doctrine for land/air operations in the vicinity of the battlefield.
It would be inaccurate to attribute the centralized character of current defense organization solely to the land/air controversy. Many factors far removed from doctrine on the battlefield have played an influential part in the revolutionary organization of the Department of Defense. Nevertheless, the efforts, conscious and especially subconscious, to resolve that specific land/air problem have played a very strong part in steering the course of defense organization since—and really starting with—the misnamed “unification” act of 1947.
Certain of the resultant efforts, however sincere, have been somewhat strange. For example, the lack of doctrine for land/air operations has resulted in abortive efforts to develop some abstruse operating procedures to be known as joint doctrine or unified doctrine. It is quite apparent that this is an attempt to indicate that doctrine might apply to more than one military Service. Such an attempt is quite understandable, but it begs the issue. Surely, we do not want four doctrines dependent upon whether one, two, three, or four Services are involved.
Doctrine is doctrine, and responsibilities for development of doctrine are prescribed by law. Doctrine is a procedure for doing something, regardless of which Service or Services execute it. It is accepted or not accepted. There is not, nor can there ever be, anything joint or unified about it. There exists a doctrine for amphibious assault, sufficiently acceptable to satisfy the security of the United States in that field of endeavor. No agreed doctrine exists for land/air operations, nor will it evolve by efforts to camouflage it with such adjectives as joint or unified. Planning may be joint; operations may be joint; over-all objectives must be joint; but there is no such thing as joint doctrine.
The most recent effort to resolve the land/ air problem has been the establishment of the U. S. Strike Command, which brings under a single commander, for training and other purposes, all the CONUS-based, combat- ready forces of the Army and Air Force. This arrangement perhaps offers the greatest promise for solution of the land/air problem. Unfortunately, that command has been diverted in part from this vital issue by the assignment of unrelated geographical responsibilities which require the day-to-day attention of the commander and his staff.
The results of coping with what is basically a simple semantic problem have been interesting. The ensuing paragraphs are exemplary and descriptive, but not necessarily all inclusive and certainly not exclusive.
• The Strategic Air Command (SAC) has escaped any effort to drag it into the joint arena. It is, after all, the primary retaliatory force for a specific purpose of national security—implementation of the U. S. contribution to the nuclear holocaust. In this effort SAC is joined by Polaris submarine forces, carrier striking forces, and certain weapons systems of various commands throughout the world. The objective of this co-ordinated effort is to destroy targets. For this purpose, their potential abilities have been directed with remarkable planning precision toward a common goal. Needless to say, the Strategic Air Command is always ready to assume an immediate role of participation in operations of a more limited nature in any area of the world. In such instances, SAC would operate “in support” of whatever forces would be primarily involved. Higher authority would provide that the joint aspect of a common objective was achieved. That is all that would be necessary, and it would appear quite deleterious to the U. S. posture toward nuclear war to decimate SAC and redistribute its capabilities to a number of different commanders of unified commands for no valid reason. It is important to keep SAC, as an entity, in being.
• The Air Force as a Service has been uncommitted to joint operations. As previously indicated, the Air Force does not support the amphibious doctrine accepted by the other Services; neither has the Air Force accepted proposals for land/air doctrine. The Air Force always has been able to retain a position of operating in a support role when not performing a primary Air Force mission.
• The Army, by its very nature, normally does not operate in support of the other Services which, on the other hand, frequently support the Army. The Army is concerned with very practical matters such as determining what territory to occupy, defeating a well equipped enemy on the battlefield, and doing so as an element of an over-all objective. The Army is not in a position to operate “in support” unless we can conjure very peculiar situations. However, the Army must have definite and positive control over everything that continually takes place on that battlefield, for which the Army—and only the Army—will be held responsible. Projected efforts from areas outside that battlefield can be accommodated by support arrangements insofar as tactical objectives are not in the immediate area of the battlefield. Such support arrangements satisfy the necessity to operate in furtherance of a common aim. It is most important to note, however, that approved and agreed procedural doctrine for battlefield operations would serve the purpose of “joining” the forces of whatever Services contributed to such operations; i.e., joining them at the proper battlefield level without fragmenting—at a higher level—the sources from which they might be derived, such as SAC or carrier task groups.
• The U. S. Marine Corps wisely has forestalled all efforts to subvert the meaning of “joint” from its true sense. The Marine Corps and the Navy long ago arrived at a solution to the most complicated of what might be called “joint” operations. Despite numerous organizational changes that have resulted in superimposed higher command and managerial echelons, and which have cost the taxpayers in overhead, this relationship has been retained. The capability of the Marine Corps has not been impaired.
• The Navy, which participates in land/air operations in the support role, much as does the Strategic Air Command—and in like manner to the Air Force’s contribution to amphibious operations—has been dealt unaccountable blows. The amphibious assault doctrine is not an outstanding problem. The joint aspect of all other naval operations properly falls into the category of working toward a common aim. Yet, the Navy has been chopped up severely. A large segment has been sliced off and placed under the Pacific Command. A sizeable cut has been taken out of the Atlantic Fleet and placed within the U. S. European Command. The Middle East Force has been assigned to the Commander of the Middle East/Southern Asia, and Africa South of Sahara. During Department of Defense support of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, further segments of both Atlantic and Pacific Fleets are passed for operational control to the DOD Manager for Manned Space Flights. Even the Atlantic Fleet, although commanded by the same individual, is merely a component of the Atlantic unified command. As a result, the Navy—which depends for its effectiveness on its mobility, versatility, and flexibility, and which is designed to operate world-wide in the conduct of tasks that are in no way joint in nature—has been parcelled out to numerous commands to the detriment of the over-all fighting capability of the United States. It is indeed an interesting development that the need to reconcile the land/air joint problem—as yet unreconciled and not related to the Navy—has somehow been twisted around so that the Navy, which long since had resolved the amphibious assault problem and is not jointly involved in the land/air problem, has become fragmented in the interest of achieving a pseudo joint or unified posture.
• Through a purely semantic relationship that has sprung up by associating the words joint and centralized, a great deal of reorganization has taken place for no apparent reason other than to centralize for the purpose of centralization. There is no way, for example, to tie directly the establishment of any particular centralized agency to the lack of doctrine for land/air warfare. Nevertheless, the frustrations caused by lack of solution to the problem of land/air doctrine have spilled over into other areas, and have resulted in erratic organizational changes under the guise of unification and centralization, with that unsuspected but nefarious ghost—joint— exercising psycholinguistic command from the sidelines.
Interestingly, the British have long provided for a Joint Warfare Section in their defense organization. It is limited in its cognizance to land/air and amphibious matters, with specific responsibilities for doctrine. This pointed recognition of these matters as joint, and exclusion of anything else as joint, might well serve as a practical and realistic lesson.
We have strayed far from what is really joint in nature. At the same time it would be unsound to reach conclusions on the basis of organizational principles only, when other factors are involved. For example, it might be argued on the basis of pure military logic that tactical air functions should be reinstated as a responsibility of the Army. Such a move would involve Air Force morale, based on pride in Service, which might make such action incompatible with the over-all interests of the United States. If an adequate land/air doctrine can be established by other means, perhaps more harm than good would result by changing things, merely in order to be purists in organization.
Insofar as the Navy is concerned, the logical answer, under existing law, is to establish all naval forces as a world-wide Specified Command embracing all ocean and sea areas, and islands therein, up to coastlines of continents. Despite the logic of this solution, it would constitute a radical change, and thus far the Navy has been able to perform its peacetime tasks despite the fragmentation of its forces.
Related to the foregoing, however, are the facts that the taxpayer is providing overhead for the existence of very high level command headquarters with extensive staffing, the costs of which might be eliminated or reduced by a more reasonable adherence to functions of Services and consequent logical command relationships.
Organization is a relatively minor factor if appropriate procedures, utilizing capabilities to the maximum, can be formulated to achieve common goals. However, the contagious disease of attributing the word joint to any and all situations is more than mere organizational illiteracy. It has become a sort of mania.
Hopefully, we can look forward to the day when the United States has an acceptable land/air doctrine. Hopefully, we shall appreciate that there is very little in fact in which the Navy/Marine Corps participate, except as between themselves, that is joint in nature. Also, we trust that a direct Navy- State Department rapport, so essential to U. S. international relations, will be reinstituted. Finally, we trust that the taxpayer will be relieved of the unnecessary overhead that is occasioned him when persons in high places cry “joint”!
We should concentrate our efforts on achieving the best organization with which to achieve joint objectives when confronting potential enemies.
Let us be joint in our common aims; let us be joint on the battlefield; and, finally, let us be honest in deciding at what level and for what purposes elements of the Services must be joined.