Military

STATEMENT OF
BRIGADIER GENERAL MARC ROGERS, USAF
DIRECTOR, JOINT REQUIREMENTS AND INTEGRATION DIRECTORATE, J8
UNITED STATES JOINT FORCES COMMAND

 BEFORE THE 108TH CONGRESS
HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS, AND TERRORISM

21 OCTOBER 2003
 

Mr. Chairman, distinguished Members of the Committee, I am honored to testify on U.S. Joint Forces Command's role in Joint Battle Management Command and Control.

Let me open by assuring the Committee that U.S. Joint Forces Command is focused on strengthening Department of Defense capability to execute battle management command and control for our forces engaged in joint operations world-wide.

To achieve this goal, U.S. Joint Forces Command continues to maximize the Nation's future and present military capabilities by advancing joint concept development and experimentation, identifying joint requirements, ensuring interoperability, conducting joint training, and providing ready forces and capabilities - all in support of the Combatant Commands.  Command and Control is fundamental to all of these efforts.

Joint Forces Command is a dynamic command that learns from and works with our partners throughout the Department to lead continuous evolutionary and revolutionary improvements in command and control.  These collective efforts advance U.S.  warfighting capabilities and enable continued success, including rapid, decisive military action.

In this regard, USJFCOM has received new authorities to ensure interoperability and integration of joint, coalition, and interagency capabilities in support of on-going military operations.  In January 2003, internal Pentagon documents directed expanded responsibilities for Joint Forces Command in establishing Joint Battle Management Command and Control (JBMC2) requirements, identifying system-of-systems capability requirements and ensuring the integration and interoperability of JBMC2 capabilities. In this expanded role, JFCOM will lead JBMC2 mission and capability area requirements to include: concepts, integrated architectures, systems interoperability and integration efforts, training and experimentation.  These important aspects of JBMC2 will allow us to develop the overarching framework for joint command and control capabilities which will guide our future systems acquisitions, provide a basis for interoperability and integration of our legacy system capabilities, and allow a reference for prioritizing near term solutions to capability shortfalls.

Additionally, USJFCOM has assumed oversight responsibility for the Deployable Joint Command and Control program and the Single Integrated Air Picture, with expanded responsibilities for the Family of Interoperable Operational Pictures.  This will allow Joint Forces Command to integrate programs and initiatives within the Joint Battle Management Command and Control arena and ensure joint requirements are funded and addressed on a priority basis.

In parallel with these new JBMC2 authorities, our Joint Interoperability and Integration Office (JI&I) efforts will continue to deliver solutions to interoperability challenges by working closely with Combatant Commanders, Services and Defense Agencies to identify and resolve joint warfighting deficiencies.  JI&I's current efforts support military operations by fielding:

• Interoperable capabilities between US Army and US Marine Corps ground commander Command and Control elements 

• Collaborative planning and coordination capabilities for the Combatant Commanders 

• Improvements to Joint Task Force information assurance and information management 

• Adaptive mission planning and rehearsal capabilities for the Combatant Commanders 

Additional JI&I efforts that directly support the commanders of Northern, Central, Pacific and Special Operations Commands in the near future include fielding capabilities for:

• Joint Task Force (JTF) situational awareness, a Common Operational Picture (COP), and enhanced integration of the Joint Deployment  

• Integrated joint targeting, and intelligence analysis

• Integrated Joint Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR)

• Integration of Distributed Common Ground System multi-intelligence sources

New authorities under JBMC2 provide for an expansion of JI&I's mandate to increase operational through tactical level joint integration of the following capabilities:

• Common Operational and Tactical Pictures

• Combat Identification

• Situational Awareness

• Adaptive mission planning and rehearsal

• Interoperability among service intelligence systems

• Interoperable joint fires, maneuver, and intelligence

• Integrated Joint Battle Management Command & Control

This new emphasis will bolster U.S. Joint Forces Command's ability to deliver near-term enhancements to our joint force command and control capabilities.

The need for this comprehensive approach to JBMC2 is validated by some of the command and control lessons we have learned during operation IRAQI FREEDOM.  Our preliminary insights concluded that one overarching theme summarized the results of the joint transformation since Desert Storm, which we characterize as Overmatching Power vice traditional Overwhelming Force.

As an example, in Desert Storm, our military thinking was to field Overwhelming Force to ensure victory. Certainly, this entails fielding well-trained and well-equipped forces, which is as important today as it was back then.  However, the emphasis was on numbers as befits a traditional, attrition-based campaign.  Our observations in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM tell us there is another approach to modern warfare.  We like to describe this new approach as the employment of Overmatching Power.

The emphasis is on harnessing all the capabilities that our Services and Special Operations Forces bring to the battlespace in a coherently joint way. Advances in technologies, coupled with innovative warfighting concepts joined together by a new joint culture, are enabling a level of coherent military operations that we have not been able to achieve before.  The emphasis now is on the effectiveness of joint capabilities employed at times and places of our choosing to achieve strategic effects. General Franks later remarked on this level of jointness, saying "Operation IRAQI FREEDOM was the most joint and combined operation in American history."  The insights and perspectives gained from Operation IRAQI FREEDOM emphasize and rely on a cohesive and agile joint battle management command and control capability that supports new paradigms in planning, execution, and assessment of effects.

Essential to the power of adaptive planning and execution is our ability to conduct large scale, vertical and horizontal collaboration.  This collaboration is on a scale that dwarfs any extant commercial application. In today's collaborative environment, every level of command throughout the entire force and including coalition partners is electronically linked to the Combatant Commander's decision-making process.  Subordinate commanders and staffs understand the context behind key changes across the battlespace and are fully aware of changes in the commander's intent to guide their actions during specific missions.  In short, the entire joint force is acutely sensitive to any nuances that occur in the battlespace and are highly adaptive to changes, seizing opportunities as they arise or preventing mishaps before they occur.

At the top of the areas that achieved new levels of capability are joint planning, adaptation and joint force synergy.  These capabilities are directly centered around our ability to collaborate.  We have done well in this area, but we need to do better.  Our investment in new initiatives such as the Deployable Joint Command and Control System (DJC2) and the Standing Joint Force Headquarters (SJFHQ) prototype will enable our future joint warfighting capability. Both of these initiatives are essential JBMC2 elements directly coupled under MID 912 authorities.  I emphasize that they are not simply additional information technology programs. They are new capabilities at the core of our transformational Joint Command and Control initiatives.

While General Franks and his staff achieved these successes in Joint command and control, the overall information architecture they created for Operation Iraqi Freedom was patched together during the conflict in Afghanistan and the period preceding the outbreak of conflict.  The many service and functional systems had to be linked together.  The lack of seamless architectures affected their ability to collaborate in real time and use information from various databases.  Our JBMC2 initiatives are designed to eliminate the requirement for each Combatant Commander to create such ad hoc systems on the eve of conflict.

Intelligence architectures need to address the needed fusion of information and analysis necessary at various level of command.  The overall system must enable sensors to plug and play from the strategic level to the soldier on the battlefield.  Automated data fusion is needed to help manage this onslaught of information.  Assessment of effects in a timely manner needs to be incorporated. 

Our operational systems need to integrate fires throughout the battlespace.  They need to be flexible and adaptive for on-call targets and direction from all levels of command.  They should leverage both Blue Force Tracker and Combat ID in combination to reduce friendly fire incidents.  They should incorporate dynamic airspace control.  They must be fully integrated with other information architectures like the intelligence architecture.  U.S. Joint Forces Command has conducted various studies related to horizontal integration of intelligence information, and recently the Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) has approved a strategy to integrate the various Service Distributed Common Ground Systems (DCGS) into a single interoperable capability.   

Finally, as we build our information architecture, we need the capability to integrate interagency partners from other parts of the Federal government.  Multi-level secure environments are needed to integrate coalition partners into our collaborative environment while fully protecting our US-only information and systems.  U.S. Joint Forces Command is currently working directly with the staff of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Networks and Information Integration to develop a roadmap for resolving Multi-National Information Sharing.

Clearly, improved coordination of initiatives and programs though authoritative oversight of related concepts, interoperability and integration efforts will enhance our ability to identify and implement solutions to lessons learned shortfalls.  Our new JBMC2 authorities have already been instrumental in supporting implementation of the Standing Joint Force Headquarters prototype (SJFHQ).  The SJFHQ is comprised of a small but powerfully enabled team of planners specifically trained to speed the operational employment of a larger joint task force headquarters with real-time, actionable and shared knowledge crucial to the conduct of rapid and decisive operations.  This shared understanding is enabled by what we call the Collaborative Information Environment, or "CIE," that, in our judgment, may very well change the conduct of future warfare.  This prototype is being implemented today in Pacific Command, European Command, Southern Command and Northern Command, with the target date of FY05 for the SJFHQ to be fully operational in all Regional Combatant commands.  JBMC2 authorities have enabled us to directly couple the SJFHQ Warfighter requirements to the infrastructure provided by the Deployable Joint Command and Control (DJC2) capability.  

Finally, fully networked forces supported by well defined joint battle management command and control requirements enable the creation and sharing of that knowledge needed to collaboratively plan, decide, and act quickly.  It will allow the joint force to accomplish many tasks simultaneously from distributed locations in the battlespace. Networked forces (based upon systemic, organizational, and personal links) are necessary to compress and change today's sequential, echeloned way of planning and conducting operations.  Networked forces use shared situational awareness among all elements of the joint force, to include interagency and multinational partners. This increases the speed and precision in planning, decision to act and application of power.  They allow streamlined, dynamic joint processes for the integration of information operations, fires, and maneuver elements as well as for sustainment and joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance management.  Fully networked forces are necessary to employ a coherently joint force to achieve the Overmatching Power paradigm we glimpsed in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Conclusion 

U.S. Joint Forces Command, in coordination with our Service, Defense Agency and Combatant Command partners, will continue to execute our new JBMC2 authorities and build on our Joint Interoperability and Integration responsibilities by developing the command and control processes, architectures, systems, standards, and operational concepts to be employed by the Joint Force Commander.  Our collective efforts, strengthened by the above partners, will continue to aim for an integrated, interoperable, and networked joint force that will:

• Ensure common shared situational awareness

• Provide fused, precise and actionable intelligence

• Support coherent distributed and dispersed operations, including forced entry into anti-access or area-denial environments

• Ensure decision superiority enabling more agile, more lethal, and survivable joint operations

While I have outlined our new authorities and focus for improving joint battle management command and control, I note the importance of continued Congressional support in our efforts to break paradigms and accelerate improvements in command and control. U.S. Joint Forces Command looks forward to working with the committee to provide the men and women of our Armed Forces the joint command and control capabilities they need today and the transformational capabilities they will require in the future.  Thank you.