Embracing the Joint Training Enterprise

We are engaged on a nonlinear battlefield that demands resources beyond traditional Cold War era air-land battle planning and “combined arms” operations. We are challenged to plan and execute timely joint operations. Our conventional ground and supporting 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 should carry out innovative and realistic predeployment training that includes joint training objectives. By Colonel L. Ross Roberts, U.S. Marine Corps and Dr. William M. Rierson, Joint Fires Integration and Interoperability Team, USJFCOM

We are clearly fighting an adversary that resorts to asymmetric warfare. Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan know they cannot defeat the U.S. 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 economic, political and societal landscapes which impact combat operations.

Time can also be our enemy. The Vietnamese fought for 30 years. The Sandinistas fought for 18 years. Patience is the one virtue for which the modern insurgent has ample reserve and potential advantage over our conventional forces. In opposition to that advantage, our own political and domestic environments require us to quickly find a means to defeat the insurgency 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 U.S. 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, like those we have in Iraq and Afghanistan, must be able to efficiently gather and rapidly share information 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 and 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 traditional Cold War era air-land battle planning and “combined arms” operations. We are challenged to plan and execute 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 supporting 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 should carry out innovative and realistic predeployment training that includes joint training objectives.
Joint Training and Mission Rehearsals

The old Army cliché used during the Cold War era is still applicable: “Train the way you fight.” A new, interdependent joint force training model is required to take advantage of all the combat multipliers available to the warfighter, 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 the supporting firepower needed 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 alleviate engaging in close combat or delivering a kinetic response? Removing insurgent threats without high risk close combat action or destructive power (that increases potential of collateral damage) requires collaboration and interdependency of intelligence resources. When a passive solution is not possible and a kinetic response is required, or organic weaponry is not adequate or appropriate, the maneuver commander should be able to consistently rely 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 for the supporting assets: the tactical aircraft pilots, intelligence analysts, ground surveillance radar operators and/or the coordinating staffs. Synchronized tactical training scenarios should not only permit joint force participation, but require it for units to be able to accomplish their missions. Establishing a persistent, combined arms-interdependent joint training model should become the standard, not the exception, for all service combat training centers (CTCs), 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.
BCT A-GI Training Concept

A potential joint solution template is the ongoing Brigade Combat Team Air-Ground Integration (BCT A-GI) training concept. The BCT A-GI is a collaborative Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) and Air Force Air Combat Command (ACC) initiative supported by U.S. Joint Forces Command’s (USJFCOM) Joint Fires Integration and Interoperability Team (JFIIT) (http://www.jfcom.mil/about/com_jfiit.htm), Eglin AFB. It is a direct response by the services to U.S. Central Command’s (USCENTCOM) request to reduce proficiency gaps in operational planning and using joint air-ground resources.

Predominately, the desired result is for BCTs to better leverage joint close air support and joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (JISR) assets from the national level on down to help prosecute the tactical fight. The BCT A-GI emphasizes individual skills training and predeployment training during home station collective training events, culminating in a mission readiness exercise at the CTC. At each step along the way, the service training coordinators and force providers include joint context, where appropriate, through synchronizing not only training scenarios, but also resources.

JFIIT’s role is to conduct assessments of each training event. These assessments will occur during home station training and CTC rotations. The assessments will focus primarily on the ability to create a realistic joint training environment. Additionally, the assessments will 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 (CALL) during training and in-theater combat operations, the JFIIT will write a collaborative report chronicling the entire concept. This final report will not detail the participants’ strengths and weaknesses, but will determine whether the BCT A-GI concept was successful at creating a joint training environment and, if it increased, participant abilities to conduct joint air-to-ground operations.

The BCT A-GI training initiative and other synergistic initiatives, such as the JISR 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 termed by Army Major General Jason Kamiya, director, Joint Training (J7), and commander, Joint Warfighting Center at USJFCOM. These collaborative efforts involve the USJFCOM J7/J8, TRADOC, ACC, Forces Command (FORSCOM), Fleet Forces Command (FFC) and Marine Forces Command (MARFORCOM).

Rather than occurring as an anomaly, a persistent joint training routine will help the maneuver and air power commanders coordinate the full application of joint combat power and intelligence gathering capabilities to facilitate a successful counterinsurgency within the current operational environment. This same joint training capability “template” could be applied to any home station, CTC, or collective training event to provide a viable joint solution to joint air-ground gaps identified in the CALL “Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational [JIIM] Lessons Learned Report-2007, Joint Context Training and Knowledge Gaps,” March 16, 2007.

To achieve trained, integrated, interdependent Joint forces, commanders at the major service and joint command levels should formally mandate joint training take place and create opportunities for the services to exercise joint tasks. Service training venues should 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 and not as optional, the services and subordinate tactical level commanders at the street-fighting level will continue to focus on the 25-meter (82 foot) targets of individual and unit collective training. They perceive their plates as full with no room for another task and, for most, this is an accurate perception. There is only so much time within the regeneration process. The end result is they often ignore joint training until they are in theater and then should conduct on-the-job training while under fire.