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More than 50 years ago, the U.S. Army held maneuvers in Louisiana and the Carolinas that were designed to illuminate the problems a land force would face if committed to the war in Europe, loday, officers at Fort Monroe, Virginia, are developing a joint-warfare doctrine that increasingly considers sea power—including carriers like the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69), named for an officer who rose to prominence during the original Louisiana Maneuvers.
lose by Fort Monroe, Virginia, home to Head quarters
U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, lies Yorktown, site of our nation’s decisive battle in the Revolutionary War and a superb example of teamwork in both joint and combined warfare. Just across Hampton Roads from Fort Monroe is Norfolk, home of the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Fleet and the Marine
Corps’ Fleet Marine Force Atlantic. As I watch carriers, amphibious ships, and submarines sail through these historic waters, I have come to realize that their relation to the Army and to joint warfare is much different than it was during the Cold War.
The Cold War ended as the armed forces of the United States capped the 45-year-old conflict, not with military
victory in Central Europe, but with a brilliant performance in the deserts, seas, air, and space of Southwest Asia. Historians will see these 20th-century watershed events, which occurred over a span of only 18 months, as examples of toe rapid rate and the total unpredictability of change in today’s world. But the way the U.S. armed forces react to these changes also will be judged.
In their book Military Misfortunes, historians Eliot Cohen and John Gooch remind us that military failure is rooted in failures to learn, anticipate, and adapt in light °f change. The changes that have taken place over the Past several years are exactly the type Cohen and Gooch insist we cannot afford to ignore—and we have not. In fact, the collapse of the Soviet Union, declining resources, and—from a purely predictive military perspective—Operations Just Cause in Panama and Desert Storm resulted in a wholesale reassessment of America’s global interests. The new national security strategy was designed to protect and secure those interests.
In the transition, however, the United States military tost a familiar strategic guidepost—the Soviet-Warsaw Pact—and found itself forced to define its strategy in far ntore uncertain and ambiguous terms. The services now express their needs and priorities in the form of required capabilities, as opposed to quid-pro-quo escalatory requirements based on Soviet military and technical advances. What makes the transition more difficult is going through it during a period of reduced resources and an al- toost exclusively domestic political focus.
The services also have drawn their own—sometimes different—conclusions from the Gulf War. Recognizing widely varying land-combat conditions, the Army has looked at recent conflict and success on two different battlefields—Just Cause and Desert Storm—to derive guidelines that will permit the service to adapt unpredictably to operational conditions.
Various Desert Storm lessons have fueled debate among the services over future roles and missions; but considering the sweeping nature of recent change, reassessments are to be expected. The situation is by no means as severe as the identity crises experienced after World War II, but it is nonetheless significant. The debate, taken in the context of what is right for the country and what will win at least cost to our military members, can be constructive.
The most obvious post-Cold War change is that we are the world’s only military superpower. We are also no longer a forward-based, fixed-threat, alliance-driven deterrent force, but a continentally positioned, capability- based power-projection force.
Obviously, we should not underestimate this completely different set of circumstances. They have already had a major impact on the military, and their implications for the future are even greater. Moreover, for the military professional, the new national military strategy demands a fundamental intellectual change in the way we view joint operations. The strategy is redefining traditional Cold War service relationships, and a rearrangement is in order. The result will be new, more relevant joint combinations distinctly different from those of the recent past.
Since the end of the Korean War, service roles, missions, and relationships have been fairly well defined and understood, and service functions and areas of strategic interest have been easily recognized. However flawed by compromise, the National Security Acts of the late 1940s, amended in the early 1950s, legislated missions and spelled out service relationships. During the Cold War, however, ties between individual services became more or less fixed and habitual associations thrived, based mainly on operational necessities.
Throughout this period, the strategic focus was on Europe. Even with the rise of a Soviet blue-water battle fleet of submarines and surface combatants in the late 1970s and 1980s, the principal theater remained the Central European land mass. With the exception of Korea, the U.S. Army focused on its contribution to NATO. From the Army’s perspective, the Navy’s mission was straight out of Sir Julian Corbett—sweeping and securing the sea lines of communication across the North Atlantic. U.S. Marines operated on the flanks. Allied air forces attempted to establish air superiority throughout the continent. Meanwhile, all services prepared to escalate to nuclear war if ordered to do so.
A generation of soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen became accustomed to this standard scenario of war against the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. It was the cornerstone of our tactics, doctrine, and organizations. Once mastered, it required only minor refinements based on political realignments or technology-driven changes in the conduct of warfare. Officers of all services no doubt enjoyed the familiarity of the Cold War condition. It was all too easy.
Above all, it was a predictable world of distinct threats and clear-cut missions. An Army officer could return to Europe three times within a career and find little change in the war plan. Air Force officers could do the same by being assigned to the same base repetitively. Meanwhile, naval officers knew the sea lanes of the North Atlantic and the tactics of their Soviet adversaries like the back of their hands. There were no questions as to who did what, and services took justifiable pride in their mission identities.
Unsurprisingly, these Cold War missions led to close ties or habitual associations between some services at the expense of others. For example, since the end of World War II, the Army and the Air Force have worked more closely together than they have with either the Marines or the Navy. The Army’s relationship with the Air Force grew out of the mission they shared in Europe, where they were closely integrated from battalion task force to theater level. The relationship reached its peak with the emergence of the Air-Land Battle doctrine. Meanwhile, the focus of the Navy was war at sea against the Soviet fleet and contingency operations, like Lebanon, with its traditional partner, the Marine Corps.
But the weaknesses of habitual association were readily apparent in contingency operations. Although there were many joint successes, when the services were called upon to conduct joint operations outside normal Cold War operational patterns, there were often difficulties.
A New Challenge
The problem we confront today, of course, is that contingency missions will be the norm rather than the exception. Consequently, joint thought and action will be essential. The services will find themselves working in different combinations than in the past. The Army may find itself working closely with carrier air and naval surface combatants rather than with the Air Force, and Marine Corps and Army forces may find themselves in combinations like Desert Storm or the current operation in Somalia.
Compounding the challenges associated with these new combinations will be a requirement to fight as part of ad hoc coalitions or to work with traditional partners outside existing alliance lines. In addition, mission requirements will be far more complex and diverse, run-
The Air-Land-Sea Application Center sends observers and evaluators to many major joint training exercises to validate procedures, and publishes a quarterly bulletin to facilitate the flow of information among readers from all the services. While much of the information published is non directive, two ALSA products have evolved into joint- service doctrine:
► Joint suppression of enemy air defenses (J-SEAD)
>■ Joint attack of the second echelon (J-SAK)
In addition, the center is working to standardize procedures for laser designation, combat search-and-rescue, and radar-beacon operations. Among other ongoing projects are:
► Multi-service operations for forcible entry
► Multi-service communications procedures
► Integrated combat air space command and control
► Army-Air Force air base ground defense
► Tactics for high-speed air-dropped containers
ning the gamut from disaster relief, humanitarian relief, nation assistance, and peacekeeping to forced-entry operations and high-intensity armored warfare all in a single theater of operations—all at the same time.
Recent operations, including Desert Storm, Provide Comfort, and Just Cause, provide us a glimpse of the diverse combat missions we can expect to face. The military’s role in quelling disturbances in Los Angeles, aiding Flurricane Andrew and Typhoon Iniki victims, and providing help through the Provide-series of exercises and operations throughout the world, including Operation Restore Hope in Somalia, are contemporary examples of the expanding continuum of military operations other than war.
The fundamental question now facing us is: How do we answer these challenges? Paraphrasing British military historian, Michael Howard, “What needs to be done in order for us to get it about right?” How will we measure up?
What We Should Do
Joint operations have gone more smoothly recently, but much remains to be done—a fundamental intellectual change in the way we define joint relationships is in order. Simply stated, different means must be sought to make these new combinations work effectively.
These new combinations, if we work it right, will offer joint force commanders a rich choice of options to accomplish theater or regional missions. After all, what we are trying to do is to run the enemy out of options. HoW to do that? I believe we need to build on General Colin Powell’s Joint Operations (JCS Publication 1), and press on to develop a common body of operational thought called joint doctrine. This can serve as a common approach to joint warfare for all services. Neither prescriptive nor dogmatic, it should allow joint force commanders wide ranges of options in combining the strengths of the services in particular combinations.
The formulation of that doctrine will have to be based on trust, teamwork, and training. As one naval officer described the old view of jointness in a recent Proceedings article, the time for “...sneering is over; the time for learning has begun.”
Trust is an essential element in successful joint operations. In fact, it is an imperative, fostered by the recognition that each service brings to the joint battlefield its own unique capabilities and that each service has its own ethos, born of history and proud traditions. The idea that one service is more important than another, or is more decisive in modem combat, strikes at the heart of trust.
Seldom in war is there ever a single decisive factor, let alone a single service or arm. There may be a decisive event that leads to victory or defeat, but it is usually brought on by a synergism of effects, driven by a combination of factors—some physical, some psychological, and some intellectual. Within this synergism there may be a dominant player, but that is decided by the political, military, or geographic conditions of the moment. The very nature of war and its unpredictability defy a pattern of decisiveness or dominance based upon a specific battlefield function or arm of service. Consequently, there is great hazard in basing joint combat doctrine on the principle that one service or domain is more dominant or decisive than another.
It is the balance of complementary service capabilities, tailored to the circumstances of a given conflict, that ultimately prove decisive, and abstract debates over service
decisiveness are counterproductive to establishing trust.
Trust is a function of knowledge. In the future, a working knowledge of the joint team’s synergistic capabilities ntust be common to all officers, regardless of service. Today’s Army officer, for example, should be just as familiar with naval air capabilities and procedures as he is with those of the Air Force. He should be just as comfortable with a Marine unit on his flank as he was with an Army unit in his old Cold War general-defense plan.
His Navy counterpart should possess equal knowledge °f Army operations and doctrine.
Ultimately trust goes far beyond knowledge and understanding the ethos of other services and the role they Play on the team. Trust means that discussions of doctrine focus on winning decisively, with the least cost to troops. That thought should be at the heart of everything we do.
“Joint warfare is team warfare,” according to General Howell, and teamwork flows from trust. Obviously, joint doctrine, standardization of procedures and equipment, and other activities designed to increase joint effectiveness will enhance teamwork. But that is not enough, for individual service doctrine must do it as well. The Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) is ensuring that Army doctrine is equal to the challenges of future joint operations. In the process, TRADOC has been charged by the Army Chief of Staff, General Gordon Sullivan, fo lead the Army through the intellectual changes required to meet the challenges of a force-projection army employed by joint force commanders in joint and combined operations.
TRADOC’s effort is primarily, but by no means exclusively, centered on a revised version of the Army’s Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations, the manual that establishes the Army’s combat doctrine; it is the Army’s capstone manual and from it flows subsequent doctrine, tactics, and procedures.
The doctrinal focus of the new manual is on operations as a whole, rather than Air-Land Battle. As a result, joint thinking is embedded. The change does not mark the demise of the Air-Land Battle concept or a rift between the Army and the Air Force. Just the reverse, Air-Land Battle has been validated and the new theme recognizes that the new national security strategy demands increased
joint operations. In fact, as a force-projection army, joint thinking must be at the heart of everything the Army does. The publication in service journals of articles such as “Sea-Air-Land Battle Doctrine” indicates that other services are taking a similar viewpoint—or at least discussing it.
The Training and Doctrine Command, along with Air Combat Command, the Atlantic Fleet, and the Marine
Corps, also is an active player in the newly formed Air- Land-Sea Application (ALSA) Center. Known previously as the Air-Land Application Agency, a strictly Air Force and Army activity established during the Cold War in 1975, the ALSA Center will soon be staffed by officers from every service. The center is yet another example of the recognition that future U.S military operations will be more joint than those of the past—that new combinations will be employed. The ALSA Center is currently working on a number of joint issues including multiservice tactics, techniques, and procedures for forced-entry operations, and Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System concepts of operation. With the establishment of a Navy Doctrine Center in Norfolk, complementing the Marine Corps Combat Development Command’s Doctrine Division at Quantico, a multiservice doctrine center is rapidly emerging in Eastern Virginia. The ALSA Center is designed to contribute to the Joint Chiefs of Staff combat doctrine efforts.
TRADOC is the Army’s executive agent for support to combatant commanders-in-chief (the CinCs). The program provides a responsive means to work Army doctrine and training issues that affect the commanders’ joint combat team. It is designed to provide a direct link between
be different than it was in the past. 1
First, there needs to be more of it. Second, it has to be relevant to the missions and conditions under which we j < are likely to find ourselves. A few years ago the JCS 1 coined the acronym “JMETL,” for Joint Mission Essen- < tial Tasks List—those things essential for success in a 1 CinC area of responsibility. Joint training also should be < conducted at lower echelons, and exchange programs at 1 service schools should be expanded. In addition, the good i training ideas and programs of one service should be ] shared with others. Examples are the Army’s Battle Com- < mand Training Program and the Tactical Commanders De- 1 velopment Course. Both courses were instrumental in J the successful performance of Army forces during Desert 1 Storm. Current discussions between TRADOC and Lieutenant General Charles Krulak’s command at Quantico should lead to Marine Corps-Army interoperability in the i Army’s Battle Command Training Program and benefi' i
The New Louisiana Maneuvers Timetable
Reading Christopher Gabel’s account of the original Louisiana Maneuvers, The U.S. Army GHQ of 1941, General Gordon Sullivan was struck by the parallels between the challenges to the Army then and now. He established the current Louisiana Maneuvers to develop a U.S.-based force-projection Army.
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TRADOC, the Army’s doctrine, training, and May 92 leader developers, and the unified commands. This 4k linkage facilitates quick and meaningful action GAM TF and fosters joint opera- Established tions. Simply stated, it gives a CinC direct access to Army training programs and influence on Army doctrinal issues that involve the joint community.
There are more than 300 CinC Support Program actions currently being worked for nine separate CinCs and their subordinate component commands.
All these initiatives are examples of Army efforts designed to improve the joint potential of Army forces. They are also a means of resolving areas of doctrinal friction between services and assisting in the joint doctrine formulation process. Most of all, however, they are meant to enhance teamwork and facilitate training.
Joint training is the key to victory. It is based on joint mission essential tasks in particular areas of operation. It is the time we try out joint doctrine to see if we have it “about right,” or need to make adjustments. It is built upon trust and teamwork and at the same time reinforces it. During the Cold War, we often used the old axiom “train the way you will fight.” The saying remains relevant, but the meaning has changed. Joint training today must
cial training for Marine leaders and staffs.
Joint exercises should be expanded in number and scope. Advances in simulation technology have made exercises better training grounds for joint commanders and staffs. We must leverage existing and future simulation technology and facilities to create a joint battlespace with increasing fidelity and interconnectivity. Once again TRADOC, through our work in simulations at our National Simulation Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the developing Strategic Simulations Center at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, is seeking a ways to make this joint training vision a reality. TRADOC also is the executive agent for the Army Chief of Staff s Louisiana Maneuvers ini-
ie
SOUTHCOM Exercise
Service Support. These are broken down by battlefield function versus branch to facilitate horizontal integration and to begin experimentation where recent battlefield experience tells us that battle is changing. They also tap toe wisdom of our best soldiers and leaders—because our experiments will take place where we have real soldiers to real units. How and in what direction that change takes and keeping the Army ahead of that change define the battle Lab Programs mission. Nevertheless, the joint implications of these functions should be obvious.
Battle labs are now working on a number of issues involving joint operations. These include targeting, at the Depth and Simultaneous Attack Lab at Fort Sill, Okla
Native and for our own Battle Lab Program.
Louisiana Maneuvers is a program designed to develop and explore issues associated with the Army’s transition to a force-projection organization. It looks at combat requirements and at the responsibilities of the Department °f the Army, under Title 10 of the U.S. Code, to man, equip, train and sustain forces to operational CinCs. Louisiana Maneuvers also provides Army senior leaders a framework to monitor and assess the direction and Progress of the transition effort. Obviously, it offers an excellent opportunity not only for the Army, but for other services to experiment with and refine new ideas on joint warfare and to test and experiment with new combinations of forces and missions.
There are also joint training implications in TRADOC’s Battle Lab Program, which provide a means to develop capabilities for force projection. The labs are meant to toaintain the cutting edge in technology and operations that U.S. soldiers have put to use in recent battlefield successes. They encourage experimentation via simulation or Prototype equipment to determine technology insertion or lew requirements. Their activities go far beyond materiel development and experimentation; they also deal with changes to organizations and doctrine. They serve both the Army directly and the joint community through the CinC Support Program.
There are five labs: Early Entry; Battlespace; Battle Command; Depth and Simultaneous Attack; and Combat
POM
Build
May 93
4
Dragon
Hammer
homa, and total asset inventory, at the Combat Service Support Lab at Fort Lee, Virginia. The work at Fort Sill is particularly important because it signals a new view of the battlefield, one that says the preferred method is to target and attack the enemy simultaneously rather than sequentially, throughout the depth and space of the battle area.
TRADOC is also linked with the joint community through the Army’s National Simulation Center at Fort Leavenworth. The center provides support to a number of joint exercises including Ulchi Focus Lens, Reforger, and the Fuerzas Unidas series of exercises in United States Southern Command. This year the center will provide automation support to Exercise Yama Sakura, a joint-combined exercise with U.S. and Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Support includes planning assistance, joint observers, technical expertise, and training simulation assistance.
Army units are applying innovative joint planning in contingency operations scenarios at the National and Joint Readiness Training Centers. The entire focus is on joint force projection, and this new approach represents a distinct departure from the Cold War scenarios previously used by units in preparing for training rotations at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California.
The Army’s III Corps, for example, recently used a scenario of a joint task force involved in seizing an island, a scenario similar to one I Corps at Fort Lewis was conducting at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort da da pom Chaffee, Arkansas. In their
macoms 52? ‘“S? preparation for the opera-
Submit lr tion, division planners
v — must address a
number of joint concerns—including deployment considerations, air support, and port capacities—as well as incorporate joint special operations task forces, a clear lesson from Desert Storm. It is this type of imaginative training at the unit level that creates among soldiers and leaders a joint mindset and a keen awareness of the importance of joint operations under a force-projection strategy.
The nature of battle has changed and the role of the armed forces may be in the process of changing before our very eyes. No one has the clairvoyance to predict with any accuracy what the end may be. What has remained constant, however, is the requirement for the armed forces of the United States to fight and win as a joint team. The military force that emerges from this transition must be relevant to the political, military, fiscal, and environmental conditions under which it will be called upon to serve. To meet that challenge successfully, it will have to be a versatile, highly trained joint force that is ready for virtually any contingency.
The key is building a joint-doctrine basis using the trust, teamwork, and training necessary to succeed in the con-
technique and dangerous effect of masses of theory which have not been leavened by frequent troop experiences. . .
General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower described the 1941 Louisiana maneuvers as “ ... a vast laboratory experiment to prove the worth of ideas, men, weapons, and equipment.” More than 400,000 men, in two continental U.S. armies, were involved. No comparable attempt had ever been made in peacetime to deal with
Today, General Gordon R. Sullivan, Army Chief of Staff, is using a similar process to transform forces from a forward-deployed Cold War Army to a continental United States-based force projection Army. He has directed the establishment
road movements of such quantities of food, fuel, and ammunition—and the problems were enormous. But that was the purpose; General George C. Marshall and Lieutenant General Leslie J. McNair had designed the General Headquarters-level series of maneuvers in Louisiana and the Carolinas to illuminate such problems as a way of preparing the Army for World War II. As Marshall said, “I am so fed up on paper, impressive of a series of computer-assisted exercises as a latter-day counterpart to the 1941 maneuvers. The Army of the 1940s often fought single-service campaigns, though—today’s Army does not. Accordingly, the new Louisiana Maneuvers (LAM) will be integrated into existing unified command exercises to ensure that the Army trains as it will fight in a joint or combined campaign.
duct of joint operations during war—and in operations other than war. The nation deserves no less and our citizens who send us their sons and daughters rightfully expect it. They will not tolerate the divisive interservice arguments of the past and will not pay for wasteful redundancies.
One thing we cannot afford to do is rob ourselves of a future by choosing to view the present through the lenses of the past. Much has been done already in all the services and within the joint community. The Army is making its contribution, but much remains to be done. NeW combinations are required. Above all, it must be a joint team effort, based on trust and reinforced by training.
General Franks commands the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Virginia. He commanded the 1st Armored Division, and deployed and commanded VII Corps during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Colonel Griffin, a field artilleryman, heads the Future Battle Directorate under the doctrine division at TRADOC.