Streamlining Joint Operations

Streamlining Joint Operations by Empowering Commanders at Streamlining Joint Operations by Empowering Commanders at Operational and Tactical Levels by MAJ Joseph LaBarbera sive battlefield, we can’t employ assets efficiently in support of combined-arms warfare.

One thing the generals of history had was autonomous control of their forces and unity of command. An optimal example is the Roman Empire’s military –Rome maintained the longest span of military victories and a more dominant military than any other in history. What personified the Roman commander was his control over all assets he needed to fight and complete ownership of the tactics, training and personnel of his legions. Victorious generals of the early Roman Republic usually had this.2 In contrast, when Rome sent its generals to war having to answer to the Senate, and when two consuls commanded the same force to satisfy political anxieties, the results were poor. A case in point was the Battle of Cannae, where a micromanaging Senate interfered with the two consul-commanders, who had to make tactical decisions through consensus. They were defeated by a weaker force under Hannibal Barca, a commander who undoubtedly had unity of command and answered to no one.3 Learning from this, Roman commanders such as Fabius, Marcellus, Scipio Africanus, Aemilius Paullus, Scipio Aemilianus, Caius Marius, Serto-rius, Pompey, Germanicus, Corbulo, Ti-tus, Trajan, Julian the Apostate and Belisarius all had either autonomy and unity of command or stipulated it as a requirement.4 Asset mismanagement In contrast to the Romans’ efficiency, our current system mismanages assets. We have in the current U.S. military hierarchy a pseudo-joint infrastructure that’s hostile to maneuver forces’ lower echelons. The word “hostile” is appropriate because that’s the result of these units’ current organization, which inhibits them from having the capabilities needed for combined-arms warfare, both conventional and irregular.

In contrast, a Marine Corps battalion landing team, as part of a Marine expeditionary unit, is an example of an effective combined-arms unit that employs joint forces. Its form is only seen in two U.S. Army units: 75th Ranger Regiment and 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. These units, like the MEU, have organic fire-support liaisons for not only surface-delivered munitions but close-air support as well, and they have organic aviation units that train with and deploy with the unit. Also, they maintain a healthy influence over the personnel system, in which they can control the influx and rotation of their troops and leaders. No conventional Army brigade has this ability but instead relies on support from command-and-staff sections echelons above them to maintain a stable personnel turnover and supply them special-skills operatives with whom they coordinate their combined-arms support. Also, other Army units at brigade/regiment level generally don’t see their supporting-arms units or train with them until immediately before a deployment. This is because the framework of the combatant command gets in the way. With such a powerful and absorbing entity like a combatant command (and other commands set up by the Goldwater-Nichols Act), much institutional attention caters to those commands’ needs (which sometimes conflict with the needs of lower-level units); the result is a hesitancy to commit to a mission set so that actual operational units don’t get the time and training they need. The current campaign in Afghanistan exemplifies this dilemma.5 So much is wasted in the form of time and resources by these commands and the climate they create that combat effectiveness is severely downgraded. Until this is streamlined, combined-arms warfare, applied efficiently, won’t be a reality. I note that with so many higher commands and staffs, the appearance of efficiency will be creatively demonstrated in the form of PowerPoint briefings.

Excessive staff culture Streamlined effectively by autonomous and unified commands, maneuver units can deploy jointly to fight conventional and irregular conflicts without having to alter or change their task organization. The key in doing this is in autonomous leadership, but to accomplish this requires shedding an excessive staff culture. In name a command may be autonomous, but if a battalion commander finds himself subject to the whims and machinations of higher staffs, he truly isn’t a commander but is merely a manager.

The Goldwater-Nichols Act created this excessive staff culture by establishing many robust higher commands, which inadvertently influence the “raising” of staff officers vice future commanders. Burdened by this staff culture, U.S. military joint operations have not been flexible and reactive enough to defeat asymmetric enemies. Also, it’s arguable that the U.S. military may have difficulty with conventional enemies as well – two victories against Saddam’s Iraq were more because of failures on Saddam’s part rather than because of virtues on our generals’ parts.6 This may be because of the staff-centric culture in our Army standing between the Army’s leaders and operational and tactical units. As a result, the Army officer advancement system often installs syco-phantic staff officers as tactical leaders as opposed to real, effective ones.7 The system of multiple commands holding sway over units’ operations indicates why brigades have difficulty operating. Too often the brigade has to “sell” a plan to not only its Army commanding general but to the Air Force command, theater-sustainment command, training command, etc. This becomes exacerbated as each of these commands’ staffs copy this relationship and, as a result, salesman-ship and systems manipulation become the officers’ predominant virtues instead of leadership and tactical prowess. The predominance of staff culture that the Goldwater-Nichols Act inadvertently induced resulted in the lack of the commander’s autonomy, degrading the principle of unity of command. This is the greatest inhibitor of joint operations. Our ability to defeat enemy forces is constrained by the combatant commands’ heavy reliance on other components for resources and small influence on the organization, training and character of their fighting units. Further, multiple limitations on command authority are instilled in doctrine, obviously influenced by the Goldwater-Nichols Act. For example, as the Army’s operations manual, Field Manual 3.0, in Paragraph B-23 states, “Coordinating authority is the authority delegated to a commander or individual for coordinating specific functions or activities involving forces of two or more military departments, two or more joint-force components, or two or more forces of the same [s]ervice. The commander or individual granted coordinating authority can require consultation between the agencies involved but does not have the authority to compel agreement. In the event that essential agreement cannot be obtained, the matter shall be referred to the appointing authority.”

This way of hamstringing commanders permeates to the lowest levels in a dysfunctional fashion. By the time a tactical Army unit meets its enemy, it has been through a cauldron of interference from so many commands and influences that it is operating under the illusion of a cohesive unit and is, in fact, an ad hoc organization.8 The unit now finds that its primary requirement isn’t to get results on the battlefield but to appease the requirements of higher staffs. This is exacerbated as fourth-generation warfare theorist William Lind describes: “All those headquarters’ officers are continually looking for something to do, and for some scrap of information that will give them 30 seconds of face time in the endless PowerPoint briefings that are American headquarters’ main business. The result is that they impose endless demands on the time and energy of subordinate units. One Army battalion last year told me they had to submit 64 reports to their division every day.”9 Affiliation issues Adding to this drain of energy and time-consuming disruption is the constant formation and reformations of brigades before they deploy. The brigade has trouble keeping its unit “corporate identity.” Consider these factors:

• In the span of one to two years, an Army brigade is formed of individuals from various commands, all who have been trained at a number of Army schools – which propose different warfighting philosophies and emphasize various specialties – and are led by officers whose military upbringing couldn’t be more schismatically diverse.

• The brigade’s soldiers are then trained by a mixture of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command and division schools with different agendas, and little time is given for collective unit training.10

• The brigade staff itself is often composed of officers with historical affiliations outside the unit and has little in common with the regimental lineages under the brigade’s command.

• The brigade is often, with less than one year’s notice, assigned outside the parent division to another division, kind of like a sub-prime mortgage sold to another mortgage company.

• The combatant commander receives the brigade after a collective-training period of two weeks at one of three training centers –each of which has a different doctrinal interpretation on how a brigade should operate.

• Throughout this time, the unit is still losing and gaining personnel in leadership positions down to platoon and squad level.

• Within months, the brigade is assigned to the combatant commander and is attached to a theater-level command; with little guidance, the brigade is often left to figure out its mission set on its own.11

• Multiple commands outside the mission the brigade is nested with control the brigade’s pay and resources.

The result is that this tactical-level unit is under the sway of multiple masters continuously and can do little more than occupy ground and conduct shaping operations. FM 3.0 portrays an example of supporting relationships: “Under joint doctrine, each joint force includes a [s] ervice component command that provides administrative and logistic support to [s]ervice forces under [operational control] of that joint force. However, Army doctrine distinguishes between the Army component of a combatant command and Army components of subordinate joint forces. Under Army doctrine, Army service component command refers to the Army component assigned to a combatant command. There is only one ASCC within a combatant command’s area of responsibility. The Army components of all other joint forces are called [Army forces].”

From this, one can infer conflict arising between the staffs of the maneuver units and support units, although Army commanders will rarely publicize their grievances. Conflict creates schism, leads to rephrasing language about mishaps in reports and other documents, and shapes a unit’s mission statement to meet the limitations of its inadequate capability. When a unit is successful, as in the invasion of Iraq and 3rd ACR’s actions in Tal-Afar, it’s because the brigade commander broke away from convention and operated on his own. However, his autonomy came at a cost to him in the form of hostility from myriad generals who expected fealty from him in respecting their turfs.12 The occasion of a brigade’s success shows that the combatant command, designed to facilitate joint operations, is being marginalized by multiple commands who have too much of a role in the brigade’s operations. The combatant command’s marginalization is exacerbated by the complexities of multiple subcommands. Creation of these commands ensures that robust staffs follow –and from this the marginalization of lower-level commands, which inhibits creativity and forestalls momentum. Commander isolation For a joint-operations culture to permeate throughout the military, the military’s table of organization and equipment must account for the personnel needed for effective joint ops. Otherwise, the current ad hoc manner of task organization will continue to throw assets at units without integration training, and this will lead to failure. Compared to a Marine battalion landing team, an Army brigade lacks enough forward air controllers, human-intelligence collectors, administrative specialists and logistical detachments at battalion level.13 Instead, the Army brigade maintains robust assets in the form of a support battalion and “special troops” battalion. These battalions, instead of providing real response to maneuver battalions, become entities of their own. Their commanders compete for recognition from the brigade commander. This is a gross conflict of interest within the brigade and divides the brigade’s teeth from its tail.

Also, as mentioned, the brigade commander is isolated from his battalion commanders through a robust filter in the form of a staff, with as many (or more) field-grade officers on the brigade staff as in all the battalions combined. A separate command can arise within the brigade in the form of a deputy brigade commander, who will take charge of a number of projects and generally get the forces he needs to accomplish them – for example, taking a military-police platoon as his personal security detachment. Combine this huge headquarters with the only real fighting elements – two maneuver battalions, a recce squadron and an artillery battalion – and what results is twofold: the battalion’s staff ends up working more for the brigade staff than for their own commanders, and battalion commanders can find themselves subordinate to the brigade staff in many ways. From the company level to the national level, command authority has to be sacrosanct and supreme. The officer career path should be much more command-centric if we want to grow great leaders and not great secretaries. The Goldwater-Nichols Act’s creation of multiple entities may facilitate more collaboration, but it detracts from streamlining and command authority.

Fighting units must be guaranteed ownership of assets compatible with their mission set, and the chain of command must be the sole authority in the military. We can achieve this by structuring the unit’s doctrinal framework to be compatible with joint operations and not attempt to specialize it for one-time missions, as the Army tries to do with its various formations.

The most effective units continue to be those that emphasize warfighting-skills basics and have the most streamlined and capable leadership. They also become the most adaptable and effective no matter what capacity they’re in, whether it’s conventional or irregular warfare. Either way, when a commander has unity of command and control of his assets, the issue of success becomes much less complicated, as it is an issue of his ability and not the complexities of the systematic machinations of doctrine or theory.

MAJ Joseph LaBarbera is a student at the Army’s Command and Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS. He has completed four Global War on Terrorism deployments totaling 44 months. He served in various command-and-staff positions in the continental United States, Iraq and Afghanistan, including rifle-company commander, 2-14 Infantry, 10th Mountain Division; armored-reconnaissance company trainer (observer-controller), National Training Center, Fort Irwin, CA; and three transition-team billets as an adviser. The adviser assignments were to an Iraqi army brigade S-3, the 4-6 Iraqi army brigade commando company commander and the 303rd Afghan Police Corps G-2 in Northern Afghanistan. He received a bachelor’s of arts degree from the City University of New York and is completing his thesis for his master’s of arts degree in national security studies at American Military University.

Notes 1Vandenbrouke, Lucien. Perilous Options: Special Operations as an Instrument of Foreign Policy. London: Oxford University Press, 1993.

2Goldsworthy, Adrian. In the Name of Rome: the Men Who Won the Roman Empire. Phoenix, AZ: Orion Press, 2005. 3Daly, Gregory. Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War. London: Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group), 2004. 4Goldsworthy.

5Hope, Ian COL. Unity of Command in Afghanistan: a Forsaken Principal of War. Accessed at http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub889.pdf. Strategic Studies Institute, November 2008. 6McGregor, Douglas. “Fire the Generals: the Failure of U.S. Military Leadership in Iraq.” Accessed at http://www.counterpunch.org/ macgregor05262006.html. Counterpunch, May 26, 2006.

7Ibid.

8Lind, William Sturgiss. “Reorganization or Reform?” Accessed at http:// www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,91380,00.html. Military.com, March 2006.

9Ibid.

10Romagnioli, Paul. “Increasing the Effectiveness in Training and Doctrine Command.” Accessed at http://www.dtic. mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc= GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA450914. School of Advanced Military Studies, academic year 05-06.

11Hope.

12McGregor.

13The table of organization and equipment for a light infantry brigade, accessible at http:// www.fas.org/man/dod-101/army/unit/ toe/07015L000.htm, shows that these billets are centralized and/or dependent on outside organizations to attach them. Also, in my experience, they are either misused or their employment is dictated by the parent unit. Many times soldiers come to a new unit jaded because of mis-leadership from the parent unit.

Acronym Quick-Scan ACR – armored cavalry regiment ASCC – Army service component command FM – field manual MEU – Marine expeditionary unit