Joint Operations Cognitive Lesson Objective: • Know the concept of joint operations. Cognitive Samples of Behavior: • Describe joint operations. • Describe the joint functions. • State the range of military operations • Outline the operational joint chain of command from the President to the individual components. • Identify the joint warfare values. Affective Lesson Objectives: • Respond to the need for American military forces to conduct joint operations to accomplish US national objectives. • Respond, during class discussion, to the value of the chain of command from the President and Secretary of Defense to the unified commands and joint warfare values. Affective Sample of Behavior: • Actively participate in classroom discussion. 312 JOINT OPERATIONS iven the nature of modern warfare, the United States has little choice but to train for and conduct joint operations. The Services continue to downsize, but our Goperational requirements remain the same. If the United States is to maintain itself as the world’s true superpower, then it must be able to defeat any enemy at any time. At some point in the future, the US military may face an enemy that’s larger in numbers and equal in terms of technology. The success of the war will hinge upon training and execution. A successful joint campaign enables a smaller force to defeat a larger foe by capitalizing on the strengths of each service. This is why we must conduct joint operations. Fundamental Concepts War is socially sanctioned violence to achieve a political purpose. In its essence, war is a violent clash of wills, a complex, human undertaking that does not respond to deterministic rules. Clausewitz described it as “the continuation of politics by other means.” It is characterized by the shifting interplay of a trinity of forces (rational, non-rational, and irrational) connected by principal actors that comprise a social trinity of the people, military forces, and government. He noted that the conduct of war combines obstacles such as friction, chance, and uncertainty. The cumulative effect of these obstacles is often described as “the fog of war.” These observations remain true today, and place a burden on the commander to remain responsive, versatile, and adaptive in real time to seize opportunities and reduce vulnerabilities. This is the art of war. As a nation, the United States wages war employing all instruments of national power—diplomatic, informational, military, and economic. The President employs the Armed Forces of the United States to achieve national strategic objectives. Decisive unified action ensures unity of effort focused on those objectives and leads to the conclusion of operations on terms favorable to the United States. In the traditional paradigm, nation-states wage war for reasons as broad and varied as the array of national interests. By contrast, the context of irregular warfare (IW) is marked by a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population. Irregular warfare favors indirect and asymmetric approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capacities in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence, and will. Our enemies may be loosely organized networks or entities with no discernible hierarchical structure. Nevertheless, they have critical vulnerabilities to be exploited within their interconnected political, military, economic, social, informational, and infrastructure systems. These actors often wage protracted conflicts in an attempt to break the will of the nation-state. Military operations alone rarely resolve such conflicts. This publication will address all the instruments of national power. 312 Joint Operations 313 Nation-states have sovereign rights and a social contract with their inhabitants; therefore, they have sovereign responsibilities to combat these irregular threats. The Armed Forces of the United States conduct military operations as a joint force. “Joint” connotes activities, operations, and organizations in which elements of two or more military departments participate. Joint warfare is team warfare. The synergy that results from the operations of joint forces maximizes the capability of the force. The advantage of a joint team extends beyond the battlefield and across the range of military operations. A joint operation does not require that all forces participate in a particular operation merely because they are available. The joint force commander (JFC) has the authority and responsibility to tailor forces for the mission at hand, selecting those that most effectively and efficiently ensure success. Conducting joint operations generally involves 12 broad principles, collectively known as the “principles of joint operations”. These principles guide warfighting at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war. They combine the nine historical principles of war (present in joint doctrine since its inception) with three additional principles born out of experience across the range of military operations: restraint, perseverance, and legitimacy. Together these three with the traditional nine principles of war make up the 12 principles of joint operations. The Joint Force Over two decades after the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense (DOD) Reorganization Act of 1986 directed actions to remove the institutional barriers to jointness, the Armed Forces of the United States is a joint team. All Service components contribute their distinct capabilities to the joint campaign; however, their interdependence is critical to overall joint effectiveness. Joint interdependence is the purposeful reliance by one Service on another Service’s capabilities to maximize complementary and reinforcing effects of both; the degree of interdependence varying with specific circumstances. US military service is based on values that US military experience has proven to be vital for operational success. These values adhere to the most idealistic societal norms, are common to all the Services, and represent the essence of military professionalism. The Strategic Security Environment The security environment is extremely fluid, with continually changing coalitions, alliances, partnerships, and new national and transnational threats constantly appearing, disappearing, or in remission. The US military is well positioned to conduct operations but must also be prepared to address emerging peer competitors and irregular, catastrophic, and disruptive challenges. These challenges include irregular warfare, catastrophic terrorism employing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and disruptive threats to US ability to maintain its qualitative edge and to project power. 314 Joint operations increasingly occur in urban terrain and the information environment. The operational area often contains humanitarian crisis conditions requiring foreign humanitarian assistance. In addition to military forces and noncombatants, there may be a large number of other government agencies (OGAs), intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), regional organizations, and elements of the private sector in the operational area. Each agency and/or organization has an agenda that may complement or compete with the activities of the other’s and the overall joint operation. Political and military leaders must consider the employment of military force in operations characterized by a complex, interconnected, and global operational environment -- the composite of the conditions, circumstances, and influences that affect the employment of capabilities and bear on the decisions of the commander. Traditional war is characterized as a confrontation between nation-states or coalitions/ alliances of nation-states. This confrontation typically involves small-scale to large-scale, force-on-force military operations in which adversaries employ a variety of conventional military capabilities against each other in the air, land, maritime, and space physical domains and the information environment (which includes cyberspace). The objective is to defeat an adversary’s armed forces, destroy an adversary’s war-making capacity, or seize or retain territory in order to force a change in an adversary’s government or policies. Military operations in traditional war normally focus on an adversary’s armed forces to ultimately influence the adversary’s government. Hostile states and non-state actors in possession of WMD represent significant security challenges. Some states, including supporters of terrorism, already possess WMD and are seeking even greater capabilities, as tools of coercion and intimidation. The US homeland and other US interests are potential targets for direct and indirect attack. Rather than directly confronting US military operations, adversary attacks may focus on political and public institutions. Lines of communications, ports, airports, staging areas, civilian populations, economic centers, and regional allies and friends are likely targets. The US continues to become more dependent on cyberspace. Private, public, global, and regional information systems in cyberspace are tempting targets. Advances in information technology increase the tempo, lethality, and depth of warfare. It is imperative that we safeguard the inherent vulnerabilities of current and developing systems. Maintaining national security and managing the inevitable changes are continuous processes that often preclude simple solutions. It requires well planned and executed joint campaigns and operations