News From USJFCOM: 2009 Year in Review


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2009 Year in Review

U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) engaged in supporting current and future warfare in 2009. Throughout the year, the command's public affairs writing staff followed the command’s major efforts and milestones and provided the latest news on the many facets of the command's mission. For this story, we linked back to what we saw as it happened.

Editor's note: As you read this review of news U.S. Joint Forces Command brought you in 2009, various hyperlinks will take you to the article as it was presented when the event occured. Other hyperlinks will take you to specific information about the subject.

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Complied by MC2 (AW) Nikki Carter
USJFCOM Public Affairs

(NORFOLK, Va., - Dec. 30, 2009) -- In 2009, U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) continued to strengthen its ties with coalition, service and interagency partners to offer the most cutting edge support to the warfighters world wide.

January

USJFCOM started the year with a mission rehearsal exercise (MRX) at the Joint Warfighting Center (JWFC) in Suffolk, Va., to prepare a joint task force headquarters to assume responsibility for operations in the Horn of Africa.

Mission and problem sets highlighted the six-day event to prepare the Standing Naval Command Element staff and augmentees as they transitioned to replace service members running Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa.

Earl Eaddy, the U.S. African Command desk lead planner at the JWFC, explained what those events would look like.

"The problem sets may include a non-evacuation operation that may occur in a developing context like the Horn of Africa, a scenario that would require forces to retrieve U.S. and third-party nationals out of a particular situation or a humanitarian assistance disaster relief problem set such as flooding in the Horn of Africa," he said.

The ability to replicate these mission and problem sets and adjust the scenarios to accommodate real-world events were critical to the overall effectiveness of the exercise.

Another command highlight in January was releasing the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO), signed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) Navy Adm. Mike Mullen Jan. 22.

USJFCOM oversaw the drafting of the CCJO that describes the chairman's vision for how joint forces circa 2016-2028 will operate in response to a wide range of security challenges.

The command later evaluated the CCJO during a June wargame with participants from both inside and outside of the government.

February

In February, USJFCOM's Joint Fires Integration and Interoperability Team (JFIIT) worked closely with the Army's Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, La., during the Air Force's Green Flag East to prepare A-10 Thunderbolt pilots for deployment.

According to GFE leaders, the opportunity for aircrew joint terminal attack controllers, and Army joint fires observers to improve the coordination, synchronization and execution of close-in air support in this near real-world environment helps the joint team accomplish its mission and put bombs on target more effectively.

"We take pride in providing the best possible pre-deployment combat training for our fighter crews and intelligence, maintenance, and logistics teams to ensure they are prepared for the asymmetric fight they will face in theater," O'Brien said. "Green Flag East strives to be a premier training venue that replicates that fight and we do it as a joint team. Working with organizations like JRTC, JFIIT and others allows us to provide the quality training that our fighter pilots and entire warfighting team needs and deserves."

March

In mid-March, USJFCOM, representatives from NATO, and more than 18 countries launched Multinational Experiment 6 (MNE 6) to finalize the campaign's design.

MNE 6 is a two-year effort to improve the capability of multinational coalitions to conduct irregular warfare operations through the application of defense, diplomatic and developmental aspects of governmental and non-governmental organizations to deal with security challenges.

"MNE 6, like all concept development and experimentation (CDE), is a starting point for solving problems facing the Defense Department," said Navy Rear Adm. Dan Davenport, USJFCOM Concept Development and Experimentation director. "What's unique about this experiment is that it consists of multinational innovation and is a focused effort to provide foundational solutions for all members of the coalition, both in terms of concepts and capabilities."

March also marked the command's first Strategic Communication Exercise and Training Support Summit in Suffolk.

The summit brought joint warfighters, trainers, exercise designers, planners and combatant command strategic communication representatives together to create an open dialogue and to explore better ways to include strategic communication training into combatant command exercises.

Navy Rear Adm. Hal Pittman, former Joint Public Affairs Support Element commander, said the participants came from the various combatant commands to learn from each other how strategic communication processes work and determine the best way to insert strategic communication into major military exercises.

At the end of March, Marine Corps. Gen. James Mattis, USJFCOM commander, released the command's irregular warfare (IW) vision.

The vision provides guidance on how USJFCOM will respond to the threats posed by irregular adversaries. It prioritizes specific efforts necessary to achieve the objectives and guidance from the Department of Defense directive on irregular warfare.

The vision outlined a timeline and expectations from directorates and subordinate commands. Throughout the year, the command focused its IW efforts in concept development and experimentation, capability development, joint integration and interoperability, training and education, joint provision and global force management, and external engagement.

April

In the beginning of April, the command's Operations, Plans, Logistics and Engineering Directorate (J3/4) sent more than 70 soldiers and six helicopters from across the United States to Grand Forks, N.D., at the request of U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and defense support for civil authorities in support of potential disaster relief operations.

USJFCOM also placed an additional six Army and Navy helicopters in a rapid response posture if needed. The J3/4's Army Col. Joe Feliciano said North Dakota rivers rose more than 22 feet above the flood stage, causing alarm and potential for a real disaster. Service members and helicopters were prepared to assist the Federal Emergency Management Agency with search and rescue operations, evacuee transport, and supply delivery.

"The NORTHCOM commander requested USJFCOM place some capabilities that were needed on a 'prepare-to-deploy' status in support of the disaster response," Feliciano said. "If it was required, they could've flown to different sectors looking for people who were stranded and pull them off the roof if they could not evacuate themselves."

May

JWFC partnered with U.S. Strategic Command's (USSTRATCOM) Joint Exercises and Training Directorate (J7) to develop a program to consolidate integrated air and missile defense training solutions across the military services.

Pat McVay, the director of USSTRATCOM J7, said this partnership will lead the effort called ATM to build on its current mission of providing global deterrence capabilities and aligning DoD efforts to combat the worldwide threat of weapons of mass destruction.

"Right now, we have a somewhat disjointed capability to train multiple mission areas: missile warning, missile defense and feeder missile warnings. Separate capabilities were developed over different periods of time," he said.

McVay emphasized that ATM is in the requirements development stage with a goal of identifying requirements and establishing a program to solidify training capability.

In December, the commands conducted a two-day proof of concept exercise on a single device that integrated all the disparate missile training systems.

The Truth Interface Unit (TIU) takes information from different systems during training events and disseminates it to others rapidly in a synchronized manner.

Exercise trainers can make changes directly into TIUs which pushes information to systems in the field such as the Aegis long-range surveillance and track, the Joint Tactical Ground Station and the Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance.
Individuals at command cells using Global Command and Control System, Command, Control, Battle Management and Communications and strategic missile training data for training are able to view updated information from their computer screens, tracking changes as they happen.

"We determined early on that we were first going to take a lot of time to identify the problem and identify what the training requirements were and not jump to solutions, which we sometimes do too early on in the process," said McVay, noting that the ultimate goal is full integration with the JLVC Federation. "I think we have identified those training requirements and we are here this week, at Joint Forces Command, to finalize those requirements."

Later in May, the annual Joint Warfighting Conference was held at the Virginia Beach Convention Center.

Mattis kicked off the conference with a keynote address, telling the audience of military, government and industry leaders his views of the future joint warfighting force and the challenges it will face.

Mattis stressed the importance of the adaptation of the joint force in today's security environment.

"In the coming years, we will not face wars that have clearly defined beginnings and clearly defined ends. Rather we are going to be in an era of persistent conflict … and this brings with it the greatest rethinking of our military mission in a century. Today we are surely defenders of a realm and that realm is not purely geographic any longer; rather, it's a realm of ideas, revolutionary ideas," he said. "We have got to adapt now."

Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn and Special Operations Command Commander Adm. Eric Olson also spoke.

June

In June, the command began its Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (CWID) in Suffolk.

CWID, an annual event directed by the CJCS and sponsored by USJFCOM, investigates and assesses command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technologies as potential solutions to near-term warfighter and agency capability gaps. USJFCOM was the host combatant command for the demonstration.

Navy Capt. Kevin Ruce, CWID host combatant command lead, said information-sharing technologies like those under in evaluation in CWID could improve decision making and operational flexibility on the battlefield and during crisis response on the home front. He said the demonstration looks for new technologies that are interoperable with both U.S. and allied militaries' current technologies.

"That's where it gets a little more tricky, because each country has their own technologies," he explained. "We'll do interoperability testing on a British technology and a U.S. technology that we may want to deploy."

Later that month, the command released results from the Small Unit Excellence Conference focused on improving the way warfighters, leaders and small units prepare to operate in today's global security environment.

"The program will exist to build upon, promote, fill knowledge gaps within, and accelerate progress in the body of existing work across the armed services, academia, behavioral sciences and private industry," the report reads. "National Program for Small Unit Excellence will serve as the connective tissue across multiple communities and disciplines so that the whole collection of work becomes something greater than the sum of the various parts."

July

The command's Intelligence Directorate (J2) dedicated much of July to the sixth annual Empire Challenge 09 (EC09) demonstration.

EC09, a live joint and coalition intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) interoperability demonstration, ran primarily at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif., with distributed locations in the Joint Intelligence Lab here, the Combined Air Operations Center-Experimental at Langley Air Force Base, Hampton, Va., service Distributed Common Ground/Surface System labs, coalition sites in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia and the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency in the Netherlands.

John Kittle, EC09 operational manager, said the exercise centered on bringing mission-critical ISR data to commanders who need the data at the "tactical edge."

"We are looking for solutions that provide a greater amount of situational awareness and battlespace awareness to the operators that have to make decisions on the battlefield: getting more of the intelligence data to them, better quality, more timely, more precision and all the methods, procedures and technologies that contribute to that," he said.

The demonstration examined questions like what gets the job done better and what still needs to be developed.

Air Force Col. George Krakie, USJFCOM Joint Intelligence Directorate military lead for EC09, identified another major objective.

"The key thing for us is to ensure that we are delivering mission-critical ISR data to the warfighter. This leader-centric approach means that we have to meet the needs of all leaders, whether they [are] a three-star general in a wired ops center or a platoon sergeant with a laptop computer in a humvee," Krakie said.

August

In August, seven service members from USJFCOM returned from a four-month humanitarian and civic assistance mission aboard the hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) in the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility.

The team, part of the Joint Communications Support Element (JCSE), one of seven joint enabling capabilities in USJFCOM's Joint Enabling Capabilities Command (JECC), provided the Comfort's medical teams with internal communications and ship-to-shore communications during each port visit.

When deployed, the JCSE provides tactical communications packages tailored to the specific needs of joint task force headquarters and to joint special operations task forces.

Also that month, the Joint Systems Integration Center recruited local warfighters familiar with high tech systems to help evaluate how well the system works and ways to improve it for users.

With assistance from sailors from the Pre-Commissioning Unit (PCU) Gravely (DDG-107), the USJFCOM subordinate command conducted an interoperability assessment on how the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency's (NGA) Image Product Library operates with the Global Command and Control System (GCCS).

GCCS-Joint is a command, control, communications, computer and intelligence (C4I) system, consisting of hardware, software, procedures, standards and interfaces to provide worldwide connectivity for information resources.

The Gravely's GCCS operators allowed JSIC to assess how operators use the system in a real-world situation and resolve any interoperability issues with the system in real time. In return, Gravely's crew members familiarized themselves with a completely up-to-date system similar to one being installed on their ship.

September

On Sept. 9, French Air Force Gen. Stéphane Abrial took command as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (ACT) in a change of command ceremony with Mattis held aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69).

With the appointment, Abrial became the first European in NATO's 60-year history to be appointed permanently as head of a strategic command. Mattis remained commander of USJFCOM.

Prior to officially passing the ACT command colors to Abrial, Mattis addressed the nearly 1,000 guests who filled the carrier's hangar bay.

"The French assumption of one of NATO's two supreme positions represents an alliance of like-minded nations willing to make new decisions that build the strength and the viability of the North Atlantic alliance in the protection of our shared values that grew out of the enlightenment with shared security interests that bind us together in the cause of freedom," he said. "Our destiny has brought us together today as comrades-in-arms on the deck of this NATO warship.

"I turn over this command to Gen. Abrial with full confidence that in him you have a superb leader able and willing to carry forward the mission assigned to him," Mattis continued. "I'm equally confident that his strategic military advice will receive full consideration from you and the North Atlantic Council. And I further pledge from my continuing position as commander of United States Joint Forces Command my enthusiastic support of Allied Command Transformation."

Just two days later, USJFCOM prepared a team of more than 20 service members to deploy to Kabul, Afghanistan, to support the establishment of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Joint Command (IJC).

The deployment was the command's first major operational use of the Ready JEC package (RJP), a team of operators and planners with specific skills who are ready to deploy and trained to establish a joint task force headquarter.

Main body members of the RJP spoke to members already in theater via video teleconference and received information on how to ease their arrival and transition into Afghanistan.

Army Col. Carl Giles, advance party team lead and mission officer-in-charge, said the operating environment for the IJC was extremely collaborative. He said the organization's small size allowed access to anyone who can provide energy to resolve a problem and that initiative is welcomed to the team.

"There is a tremendous effort and emphasis on partnership with NATO and the Afghans," he said.

October

In October, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates announced that the president nominated Navy Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward Jr., then USJFCOM deputy commander, for reappointment to the grade of vice admiral and assignment as commander of Joint Task Force 435 in Afghanistan. A few days later, Army Lt. Gen. Keith M. Huber, U.S. Army-South commander, was nominated to be USJFCOM deputy commander.

Later that month USJFCOM and U.S. Fleet Forces Command (USFFC) opened a new combined Joint Deployment Center (JDC) and Maritime Operations Center (MOC). The combined building, which was a cost-effective and operationally effective option to answer the two commands' needs, will improve connectivity between the two commands and their deployment resources.

All deploying USJFCOM personnel will report to the JDC and complete necessary training and preparations prior to leaving the U.S.

The facility covers 49,000 square feet and has a state-of-the-art data, communication and audio-visual network supported by more than 110 miles of cable. A centralized server and secured hard drives eliminate the need for desktop personal computers, optimizing work space and network security. It contains a conference center, operational areas and a crisis response center.

The facility is flexible to accommodate future mission requirements and demands, including furniture designed to be reconfigurable.

At the end of the month, the command began Bold Quest 09 (BQ09), an exercise aimed at assessing coalition combat identification systems.

John Miller, the Joint Capability Integration and Fires Division's BQ09 operational manager, said the assessment, the latest in the Bold Quest series, was driven by a need to provide tools that make warfighters more effective in engaging targets while minimizing the risk of fratricide. Past assessments focused on ground forces' ability to interact and identify each other. This time, the idea was to see whether aircrews could use those same technologies.

"Identifying your friends is about as basic as it gets," he said. "Shooters are confronted with a lot of confusion noise, dust, darkness - the technologies, techniques and procedures that we're assessing here are designed to enable them to start sorting that confusion out."

The demonstration collected both technical data on systems and subjective judgments from the warfighters using them. Demonstration analysts collected and analyzed information which will be put together as the BQ09 Coalition Military Utility Assessment.

November

With BQ09 ending Nov. 5, the command completed its final preparations for the 14th annual Salute to Veterans Concert at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk.

The concert recognized the sacrifices of veterans from "yesterday, today and tomorrow."

Air Force Maj. Gen. David M. Edgington, USJFCOM chief of staff, opened the concert by welcoming veterans, service members, guests and future brothers and sisters-in-arms.

"We at Joint Forces Command are extremely proud and extremely grateful of those who are in harm's way tonight as we pause to enjoy some music and pay tribute to those veterans who have served and are serving right now," he said.

Later in November, USJFCOM welcomed home members from the JECC who deployed in September to help establish the IJC in Kabul.

Giles said establishing the command was a joint effort with the IJC and Afghanistan National Security Force, adding that the team achieved its initial operating capability by Oct. 12.

Navy Capt. Tom Savidge, officer-in-charge for the deployment's main body, said the team played a role in developing plans and operations for the IJC that will be executed over the next 12 to 18 months.

"We are building complex plans and solutions, which is both satisfying and rewarding," he said.

The RJP members also participated in the planning and coordination of security in Kabul, key leader engagements, border security and development of a common operating picture and command and control planning.

December

Wrapping up the year, the Operations, Plans, Logistics and Engineering Directorate (J3/4) played a pivotal role in transforming the president's plan to increase troop strength in Afghanistan by 30,000 into actual boots on the ground there.

The command is the Department of Defense's joint force provider and manages the process that turns approved force requests from combatant and operational commanders into action by identifying conventional units in the continental United States and ensuring the right assets are deployed when and where they are needed.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Yates, J3/4 director, said once a combatant commander's request is validated by the Joint Staff, it is forwarded to the command, where sourcers in the Joint Deployment Center (JDC) figure out which forces will best fulfill those needs.

"I call them 'sourcer-ers,' because the magic that these guys do is mind boggling," Yates said. "They take a requirement [and] turn that into forces that will meet that requirement. Sometimes, it's exactly what was asked for. Sometimes, it is something that would provide the same capability that may not be exactly what [was] asked for but is available and will do the job."

Once USJFCOM's sourcers finish, the plan is forwarded to the Joint Staff before being briefed to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense.

In the instance of the recent administration strategy for 30,000 additional troops in Afghanistan, the joint force providers are working to source three force packages, Yates said. The force packages are detailed requirements submitted by the combatant commander to request the forces needed to implement the orders of the commander in chief.

Two units already have been announced as part of the troop increase and will be, "at the leading edge of those forces that are being deployed," Yates said.

To those who saw the president make his announcement at the beginning of December and sees Marines preparing to leave by the end of the year, the process may seem quick, almost chaotic. Yates said his staff worked to be prepared to provide whatever troops were needed immediately following the president's Dec. 2 speech.