DISTRIBUTION A:
Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Document created: 1 September 2008
Air & Space Power Journal - Fall 2008

Embracing the Joint-Training Enterprise

Dr. William M. Rierson*

How does our predominantly conventional military defeat an unconventional enemy who willingly accepts huge losses and constantly adjusts tactics to counter or avoid our strengths? Clearly, we are fighting an adversary who resorts to asymmetric warfare; insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan know they cannot defeat the US military on the conventional battlefield. To overcome an innate lack of collaborative supporting arms, the irregular soldier merely resorts to the most basic of warfare tactics: small-unit, decentralized, hit-and-run tactics; ambush; assassination; and simple sabotage. He looks for and attacks our weaknesses. He blends into the civilian population and uses it for cover and concealment. He manipulates information or generates misinformation that can alter the economic, political, and societal landscapes which affect combat operations.

Time can also become our enemy. The Vietnamese fought for 30 years; the Sandinistas for 18. Modern insurgents have an ample reserve of patience, thus giving them a potential advantage over our conventional forces. In opposition to that advantage, our own political and domestic environments require us to find a means to defeat the insurgency quickly or, at a minimum, create conditions that permit the host nation to assume the military lead of the counterinsurgency fight.

Countering our adversary’s advantages and unconventional tactics means that US and coalition ground-maneuver units must leverage the joint application of service resources to bring to bear all available combat power in a full and coordinated response. Widely distributed forces, such as those we have in Iraq and Afghanistan, must be able to gather information efficiently and share it rapidly via a secure network at all levels of command and across boundaries. This information superiority, in turn, increases speed of command and opportunities for coordination across the battle­space. It provides our forces the ability to get inside our enemy’s abbreviated decision cycle and mitigate the advantages of hide-strike-hide insurgent tactics as well as ad hoc command and control architectures. It sets the stage to defeat the enemy piecemeal: cell by cell, leader by leader.

We are engaged on a nonlinear battlefield that demands resources beyond the traditional Cold War–era air-land battle planning and “combined-arms” operations. We face the challenge of planning and executing timely joint operations. Failure to provide and disseminate timely intelligence that supports surgical, effects-based operations will result in our inability to counter a sophisticated insurgent threat. Our conventional ground and air forces must arrive in-theater prepared for this new asymmetric fight. To do so, units down to the brigade-combat-team and squadron levels must carry out innovative and realistic predeployment training that includes joint-training objectives.

The military cliché used during the Cold War era still applies: “train the way you fight.” We need a new, interdependent joint-force training model to take advantage of all the combat multipliers available to the war fighter, even down to the individual trooper. How does a 21-year-old infantry sergeant leading a combat patrol gain immediate access to joint assets that can provide him the supporting firepower he may need to engage an immediate threat? Even more importantly, how does that sergeant’s commander gain the actionable intelligence provided by those same joint resources that may obviate engaging in close combat or delivering a kinetic response? Removing insurgent threats without high-risk, close-combat action or destructive power (which increases the potential for collateral damage) requires collaboration and interdependency of intelligence resources. When we have no passive solution and need a kinetic response, or when organic weaponry proves inadequate or inappropriate, the maneuver commander should be able to rely consistently on immediate and effective nonorganic “joint” fire support. Such a capability dictates binding service partnerships and integration of service resources to provide joint-training opportunities.

Joint training and realistic mission rehearsals are the key—not only for that sergeant and his commander but also for the supporting assets: the fighter pilots, intelligence analysts, ground-surveillance radar operators, or coordinating staffs. In order for units to accomplish their missions, synchronized tactical-training scenarios should both permit and require joint-force participation. Establishing a persistent, combined-arms, inter­dependent joint-training model must become the standard, not the exception, for all service combat training centers (CTC); equivalents; and home-station, collective-training events. Innovative training must transcend traditional service-training norms and leverage joint-force capabilities throughout the depth of the battlespace.

We have a potential joint-solution template in the form of the ongoing Brigade Combat Team Air-Ground Integration (BCT A-GI) training concept, a collaborative Army Training and Doctrine Command and Air Force Air Combat Command initiative supported by US Joint Forces Command’s (USJFCOM) Joint Fires Integration and Interoperability Team (JFIIT). It is a direct response by the services to US Central Command’s request to reduce proficiency gaps in operational planning and to use joint air-ground resources. Hopefully, BCTs would better leverage joint close air support and joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets from the national level on down to help prosecute the tactical fight. The BCT A-GI emphasizes training in both individual skills and predeployment activities during home-station, collective-training events, culminating in a mission-readiness exercise at a CTC. At each step along the way, the services’ training coordinators and force providers include joint context, where appropriate, by synchronizing not only training scenarios but also resources.

The JFIIT conducts assessments of each training event, including home-station training and CTC rotations, focusing primarily on the ability to create a realistic joint-training environment. Additionally, the assessments measure the unit’s improvement in air-ground integration to determine the efficacy of the training. Based on assessment results and feedback collected by the Center for Army Lessons Learned during training and in the theater of combat operations, the JFIIT writes a collaborative report chronicling the entire concept. Rather than detailing the participants’ strengths and weaknesses, this final report determines whether the BCT A-GI concept successfully created a joint-training environment and whether it increased the participants’ abilities to conduct joint air-to-ground operations.

The BCT A-GI training initiative and other synergistic initiatives, such as the joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance integration for the Western Range Complex, are equal parts of a holistic solution to import a joint-training capability to the services—the “Joint Training Enterprise,” as coined by the Army’s Maj Gen Jason Kamiya, director of joint training (J-7) and commander of the Joint Warfighting Center at USJFCOM. These collaborative efforts involve the USJFCOM J-7, USJFCOM Joint Capability Development Directorate (J-8), Training and Doctrine Command, Air Combat Command, Army Forces Command, Fleet Forces Command, and Marine Forces Command. Rather than occurring as an anomaly, a persistent joint-training routine will help the maneuver and airpower commanders coordinate the full application of joint combat power and intelligence-gathering capabilities to facilitate a successful counter­insurgency within the current operational environment. We could apply this same joint-training-capability “template” to any home station, CTC, or collective-training event to provide a viable joint solution to joint air-ground gaps identified in the Center for Army Lessons Learned’s Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational Lessons Learned Report-2007, Joint Context Training and Knowledge Gaps, 16 March 2007.

To produce trained, integrated, and interdependent joint forces, commanders at the major service and joint command levels must formally mandate that joint training take place and must create opportunities for the services to exercise joint tasks. Service training venues must embed joint training as part of the predeployment training sequence—not simply offer or program it into occasional joint-training exercises. Until senior leaders dictate joint training as a requirement rather than an option, the services and subordinate tactical-level commanders at the street-fighting level will continue to focus on the immediate needs of individual and unit collective training. They perceive their plates as full, with no room for another task—for most, an accurate perception. There is only so much time for training between deployments. Consequently, commanders will often ignore joint training until they find themselves in-theater and then must conduct on-the-job training under fire. Embedding joint-training tasks within currently existing service training is the only real option—and BCT A-GI offers a start.

*The author is lead analyst for the Joint Fires Division, Joint Fires Integration and Interoperability Team, US Joint Forces Command, Norfolk, Virginia.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University

[ Home Page| Feedback? Email the Editor ]