In the years leading up to World War II, the U.S. Navy staged elaborate mock battles to train its personnel, test its resources and refine its tactics. The nearly two dozen “Fleet Problems” exercises conducted between 1923 and 1940 also provided an excellent opportunity for the Navy to incorporate new equipment into its strategic thinking, and resulted in an increased reliance on the aircraft carrier as the most dominant force at sea.
The value of these exercises proved incalculable. Less than six months after Japan’s devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, a greatly outnumbered U.S. fleet, led by three carriers, won the most important naval battle of the 20th century at Midway. That victory helped turn the tide of the war in the Pacific.
With the accelerating rate of change in military technology, the value of anticipating the next major shift in warfare has increased. Since our military services typically find themselves operating together, or jointly, it is more important than ever for them to address these challenges together.
For more than a decade, Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) has directed and overseen this futures effort. JFCOM’s work on potential changes in equipment, doctrine and force structure will have a tremendous impact on the success or failure of the next generation of military leaders.
In August, as part of ongoing efforts to promote greater efficiency, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced his intention to disband JFCOM. However, JFCOM’s “futures” mission remains too critical to ignore.
To be sure, JFCOM’s energies in recent years have largely been focused on identifying and training joint forces for deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, and not on its futures mission. Similarly, the Pentagon’s top leaders have found their attention diverted from preparing for emerging threats to countering those on our doorstep.
Moreover, it usually requires a decade or more to fully develop new forms of military operations and bring new equipment online, yet the typical tenure of recent JFCOM commanders has been only two or three years. The inevitable result is that JFCOM found itself being rebooted every couple of years as a new commander arrived on the scene.
Among the worrisome developments:
*China is fielding what the Pentagon terms anti-access/area-denial forces, including growing numbers of ballistic missiles and submarines designed to deny the United States the ability to protect its allies and interests in the Western Pacific. How should our forces best preserve a stable military balance under these circumstances?
*We are witnessing the gradual diffusion of guided rockets, artillery, mortars and missiles (known as G-RAMM) to irregular forces. For example, in 2006, Hezbollah’s use of these weapons prompted the evacuation of more than 100,000 Israelis from their homes and shutdown Israel’s oil distribution system. How should the U.S. military prepare for G-RAMM as the “next big thing” in irregular warfare?
*Defending maritime commerce against G-RAMM-armed adversaries promises to be a highly challenging proposition. This applies not only to commercial shipping, but also the trillions of dollars in economic infrastructure on the U.S. continental shelf, including offshore oil and gas rigs and wells and fiber optic cables.
In a world in which South American drug cartels now ship their illegal cargo via submersibles, which can also carry explosives, the ability to inflict major damage on the U.S. economy is increasingly within the reach of nonstate groups. How should our military respond to this growing threat?
*Our military is critically dependent upon satellites for everything from communications to target identification to payload delivery. China has demonstrated a growing ability to disable or destroy these satellites, and other countries may follow suit. How should the U.S. military adapt its space architecture? What alternatives might allow the United States to reduce its reliance on satellites for precision navigation, intelligence-gathering and long-distance communication?
These are exactly the kinds of challenges and the important questions that JFCOM was created to address. Regardless of the fate of JFCOM, there remains an urgent need to develop innovative military operations with an eye toward creating the forces and capabilities needed to present an effective counter response.
Simultaneously, we also need to identify lower priority military systems that can be responsibly curtailed or eliminated in an era of declining defense budgets.
Done well, this effort could enable our military to get out in front of emerging challenges, and discourage potential rivals from pursuing aggressive action against the United States, our friends and allies, and our global interests.
JFCOM’s overarching mission must have a home somewhere.
Equally important, JFCOM’s futures mission deserves the strongest possible support from senior Defense Department policymakers and military leaders.