Colin L. Powell Joint Warfighting Essay Contest, 1st Honorable Mention
The synergistic effect of coordinated air operations requires a level of training and procedures standardization sorely lacking so far in U.S. Navy-Air Force joint operations. Future contingencies are not likely to feature the same extended workup period to eliminate interservice rough spots so kindly granted the Allies by Saddam Hussein; therefore, the services must address them beforehand.
The 1986 Defense Reorganization Act, commonly known as the Goldwater-Nichols Act, ushered in a “bright new era” of interservice cooperation and integration that culminated in the unparalleled successes of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Jointness—according to the Pentagon-fostered public perception—was the key to a revamped military system that was the best in the world. Unfortunately, at least on some levels, interservice collaboration is nearly as bumpy today as it was when Goldwater-Nichols was enacted nearly a decade ago, and many of the problems that induced its passage remain: specifically, a lack of uniform tactics, techniques, and procedures for conducting joint operations and a training system that places little real emphasis on joint interoperability. Tactical aviation, a key component of our defense capability, provides an important case study in the successes and failures of jointness.1
Among the Goldwater-Nichols provisions was a requirement for all candidates for flag rank to receive joint professional military education and subsequently serve in a designated joint billet. By developing a trained and experienced cadre of officers steeped in jointness, Congress hoped to overcome the lack of interservice cooperation and coordination that had produced the shortcomings so evident in the Iranian hostage rescue attempt and the Grenada invasion. It did, in fact, force the services to funnel their best and brightest into joint billets, thereby increasing the expertise of the unified commands and other designated joint staffs, and not without positive results. Therein lay a problem, however: Joint expertise was primarily relegated to staff matters, and little focus or emphasis was placed on actual operations and tactics. The result was that although joint operations increased in frequency and complexity, they remained largely ad hoc affairs at the tactical level. The details that ensure successful completion of tactical missions often remained within the province of single service preference, with little in the way of permanent coordination. This was true in Desert Storm and, to a large extent, remains true today.
Personal experience in Operations Southern Watch, Deny Flight, and Desert Shield corresponds with recollections of contemporaries and published accounts2 of operations and exercises over the last few years. High value unit (HVU) support procedures, suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) tactics, large-scale tanking evolutions, etc., have all suffered from a lack of common tactics and procedures when these evolutions moved into the joint arena.3 The severity of these shortcomings depends on the circumstances, but the differences with similar single-service operations are worth noting. Identified weaknesses in joint operations have not been ignored altogether, but very little of it involves tactics or procedures. In contrast, hardware mismatches and shortfalls, especially those identified in the immediate aftermath of Desert Storm, have received high-priority attention and adequate funding. For example, precision-guided munitions for hardened targets are now available for embarked air wings, and electronic receipt of air tasking orders on board the carrier is routine.
New requirements and the necessity for change
Joint interoperability is essential in the dramatically downsized post-Desert Storm U.S. military. The strategic requirement to prosecute two simultaneous (or near-simultaneous) medium-sized regional contingencies (MRCs) will impose a necessity for the rapid integration and employment of joint forces. Whether the two-MRC requirement remains, it is certainly prudent to maintain the capability to employ military force on short notice without the benefit of extended preparation. Absent the advantages of prolonged buildup and made-to-order infrastructure, the importance of rapidly integrated tactical airpower is magnified. Tactics and procedures not in place and trained for will have to be developed in the heat of combat.
Significant tactical capabilities now reside with only one service, a trend that has not seen its completion. Electronic countermeasures, SEAD, and large-scale inflight refueling capabilities reside with either the Navy/Marine Corps or the Air Force but not both. Optimum joint utilization of these capabilities on a regular basis has yet to be realized. A significant example is the effective joint use of electronic countermeasures and suppression of enemy air defense assets. The Navy, with its come-as-you-are requirement for contingency operations, has developed this area of air combat operations into a particular strength. Joint employment of this capability, however, falls far short of the utility achieved during Navy-only operations and exercises. A reticence, borne out of the not-invented- here syndrome (which is by no means unique to any one service) has encumbered long-term collaboration. Nevertheless, such interaction will soon increase, because the Air Force, for fiscal reasons and others, has chosen to divest itself of its own tactical electronic-countermeasures platform, the EF-111 Raven, and rely on Navy EA-6B Prowlers to fulfill its requirements. The outcome of this initiative will go a long way toward advancing—or alternatively impeding—joint interoperability between Navy and Air Force tactical aviation.
Whither joint doctrine and tactics?
A Naval Doctrine Command analyst, Dr. James Tritten, asserts that “in the chaos of combat, doctrine has a cohesive effect on our forces. It promotes mutually understood terminology, relationships, responsibilities, and processes, thus freeing the commander to focus on the central conduct of combat.”4 Joint doctrine and the tactics, techniques, and procedures that support and promote it cannot be adequately developed without some level of permanent and institutionalized joint interaction at the tactical level. When that interaction is limited to joint exercises that are independent of any permanent operational relationship, the result is imperfect and its effects short-lived.
Tactics that work well in a single-service setting do not automatically fit successfully into a joint framework, and no systematic effort has been made to identify the modifications needed to secure success in that environment. Tactical lessons learned are not routinely funneled back into the formal training system for review and analysis. Consequently, tactical adjustments are not codified in doctrine or tactics, virtually ensuring future shortcomings.
From a single-service perspective, the Naval Strike Warfare Center does an outstanding job of updating tactics and procedures based on lessons learned from operations, exercises, and air wing weapons detachments. By providing a central forum for tactics development and training, it helps ensure that individual air wing tactical procedures are routinely updated. However, joint training at Strike U is generally limited to descriptions of Air Force capabilities rather than determining how best to operate in a joint environment through experience and experimentation.
Is there a better way to do business?
Why has so little been done to effect the goal of true interoperability? Like any large bureaucracy, the military took the path of least resistance in implementing the requirements mandated by Goldwater-Nichols. It superimposed the joint professional military education and joint service requirements upon existing structures that were modified to fit the broad guidelines of the legislation. The system of intermediate- and senior-level officer education—the war colleges—was given a joint flavor. The extensive array of joint officer billets—the Joint Staff, the unified command staffs, and various defense agencies— were encapsulated in the newly designated Joint Duty Assignment List (JDAL). The new joint bureaucracy produced an amalgam of bureaucratic prerequisites for an officer to qualify as a Joint Specialist Officer (JSO), the now mandatory stepping-stone to flag rank. There are even numerous exceptions and waivers to the requirements, designed to preserve extant programs (foreign war colleges, etc.). Nowhere in this system, however, is there an incentive or opportunity for an officer to gain joint tactical experience.
That the process evolved in this manner is not at all surprising; to introduce a tactical element would intrude unacceptably upon the traditional service mission to “train, equip, and organize.” As part of an iterative process, the joint integration achieved thus far has been marginally adequate. The drawdown of forces following the Cold War and accompanying shift in requirements and missions mandates that the next logical steps be taken to further integrate complementary tactical capabilities. This need has become acute because of single-service monopolies of what are, in effect, joint warfighting assets. The services are well past the point of being able to conduct sustained combat operations independently. Concrete steps to integrate tactical capabilities are essential to maximizing U.S. defense capabilities in the post-Cold War era and fulfilling the military’s role as an effective instrument of national policy. Such steps should include, but not be limited to:
- Placing a single unified commander in charge of a restructured joint tactical training regime
- Establishing standing joint task forces to define permanently operational relationships between units
- Including tactical billets on the Joint Duty Assignment List and modifying Joint Specialty Officer requirements to permit such tours either prior to or after Joint Professional Military Education.
These changes would greatly help provide the necessary institutional incentive for an increased level of joint interoperability, without which significant change cannot occur.
Joint Training Responsibility
All responsibility (and the concurrent authority) for nondeployed joint training should be transferred to U.S. Atlantic Command (USACOM), including those West Coast units currently assigned to U.S. Pacific Command. A command with a vested interest in achieving joint interoperability, with the requisite authority to establish and enforce realistic training standards would give the necessary permanence to joint training issues that has long been lacking. The aviation “type commanders”—Commander Naval Air Force, Pacific (COMNAVAIRPAC), Commander Naval Air Force, Atlantic (COM- NAVAIRLANT), and the Air Combat Command (ACC)—would be responsible to U.S. Atlantic Command for achieving interoperability standards. A Joint Strike Warfare Center should be established to develop and teach joint tactics and procedures. Since no substantive standards currently exist, experimentation and innovation would be integral to developing realistic joint training standards and supporting curricula.
Some preemption of the services’ traditional mission to “train, organize, and equip” is inevitable and already is being seen in the efforts of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council to establish a much greater level of commonality in munitions.5 The same concept also can be employed profitably in joint tactical training.
Restructuring joint command relationships
The establishment of permanent joint operational relationships between units likely to be utilized together in a combat situation is a necessity. Complementary assets should deploy and operate as a unit as much as possible—an ideal often impractical when dealing with supporting forces with many overlapping requirements. However, the achievement of some level of permanence would encourage the establishment of unit and personal relationships, which when absent makes coordination more difficult.
Each deployable unit should be part of a standing joint task group centered around a carrier group or numbered air force commander and staff. Depending on the size of the conflict or contingency, multiple joint task groups would be assigned. At some point in the training cycle, the task group would be tasked to demonstrate joint capabilities; one- or two-week deployments to the Joint Strike Warfare Center could be used for this purpose. Joint classroom and planning sessions should be included, similar to the three-day air wing Strike Leaders Attack Training Syllabus that precedes air wing weapons detachments at the Naval Strike Warfare Center. Although operational commitments may preclude some units from participating in all training events and exercises, they would still receive pertinent tactical correspondence, including post-service messages and lessons learned as well as all standing tactical guidance.
Conduct of campaign or even contingency operations °n a single-service basis is no longer possible. The Air Force is obviously the lead service for large-scale air campaign operations; however, their capability to do so depends on significant Navy support. The reverse is even more true. The dependence upon unique service capabilities makes the establishment of permanent, rather than ad hoc, operational relationships an absolute necessity. This previously rigid separation will have to be replaced by a new flexibility in assigning units under joint commanders’ operational control.
Creating joint warfighters
The focus of the Joint Duty Assignment List should be adjusted so that roughly 10-20% is reserved for officers in tactical billets. This would permit officers in exchange tours in operational units to get joint credit, which they would receive whether they completed these tours prior to, or after, JPME. Senior joint tactical billets should be established for officers with ongoing joint responsibilities (e.g., carrier air wing and composite wing commanders).
There is a dire need for warfighters with joint experience. Assignment of a fair share of the best and brightest to joint tactical billets is the best way to redress an ill- advised preference for only staff assignments in training joint officers. Possible joint tactical billets in tactical aviation include:
- Assistant air wing operations officer (e.g., Air Force F-15E pilot (O-4) as assistant carrier air wing operations officer flying F-18s, with similar situation in Air Force composite wing)
- Six to seven strike, fighter, AWACS, tactical ECM air crew per wing (0-3/4)
- Five to ten instructors at the Naval Strike Warfare Center and Red Flag (0-3/4/5)
- All instructors at Joint Strike Warfare Center (0-3 to 0-6)
Introducing such a shift—even in the modest proportions necessary to effect change in the expertise of the joint officer corps—will be anything but easy. Joint commands and agencies will be reluctant to surrender even a small percentage of their talent base. The consequences of maintaining this staff monopoly on talent, however, are less desirable than enduring a temporary controversy over new assignment priorities.
Permitting some officers to complete a joint tour prior to JPME would actually enhance the level of joint training at the war colleges. It would permit the modification of the syllabus covering joint matters and provide realistic and focused input on recent joint tactical trends.
What is the payback?
The evolution of the Joint Force Air Component Commander (JFACC) concept, has accelerated rapidly following its first extensive combat test during the Gulf War. The Air Tasking Order, its administrative underpinning, is now used universally in joint operations and exercises and is included in the Naval Strike Warfare Center’s air wing training syllabus. The JFACC concept has matured more rapidly than the joint tactical expertise of the forces executing it. Its optimum implementation requires a level of coordination several steps beyond what is common today. Thus, restructured joint training, permanent joint operational relationships, and a nucleus of officers with joint tactical experience and training can maximize the potential of this concept.
Meaningful reform will not be easy. Progress toward increased interoperability is being pursued informally at the junior officer level; however, despite Goldwater- Nichols, service parochialism remains entrenched at the more senior levels. This system will not reform itself without institutional incentives.
Goldwater-Nichols, as currently structured, is only a partial stimulus that does not and cannot achieve the overall goal of joint interoperability. The services need to stop regarding each other with suspicion and focus on coordinated effort. After all, reform instituted from within the military will be more palatable than change mandated from without.
The luxury of a prolonged buildup for an air campaign that existed in the Persian Gulf will not likely be replicated in future conflicts, in which the transition from contingency to extended conflict will be much more rapid, requiring a dramatically higher level of coordination. Anticipating this transition with targeted peacetime training and planning will do much to ensure peak operational and tactical flexibility during actual combat operations.
1 The primary focus of this discussion will be the interface of Navy and Air Force tactical aviation. The points and illustrations also can apply to Marine aviation in the joint arena. Several suggestions for improvements in joint operations are based on successful Navy/Marine initiatives of the last few years.
2 Daniel E. Moore, “Bosnia, Tanks, and . . . ‘From the Sea’,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, December 1994, pp. 42-45.
3 The Air Force term for High Value Unit is High Value Airborne Asset (HVAA). Of note, the Navy pronunciation of SEAD is “SEE-ADD,” while the Air Force pronunciation is “SEED.” The functional definitions of these terms also differ to some degree.
4 James J. Tritten, “What is This Doctrine Stuff?,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January 1995, p. 78.
5 Bradley Graham, “Military Services to Propose More Standardized Munitions,” The Washington Post, 22 March 1995, p. A13: 1-3.
Commander Quigley is an EA-6B electronic countermeasures officer. He is currently a Federal Executive fellow at Boston University’s Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy.