The military’s top officer is preparing to update Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the status of an influential general’s ideas for institutionalizing irregular warfare as a core competency, according to internal documents reviewed by Inside the Pentagon.
Marine Gen. James Mattis, the head of U.S. Joint Forces Command, proposed seven “anchor points” for institutionalizing irregular warfare (IW) in a March 11 memo to Gates. During a meeting in February, Gates asked Mattis for thoughts on how to accomplish the goal while “maintaining a balance with other required capabilities and without negating our conventional and nuclear superiority,” the memo notes. Mattis -- who Gates described during a hearing last week as one of the military’s most “creative and thoughtful” minds -- kept the list short to avoid the appearance of going overboard.
Now the office of Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is drafting a memo to update Gates on the issues raised by Mattis. The unsigned draft -- which is subject to change -- says Mullen will form an IW working group to monitor these issues and provide Gates with periodic updates. But a military official said the group has not been created yet and that the Pentagon is exploring whether it might piggyback on an existing IW group of some kind, rather than establish a new organization.
In accordance with the DOD directive on irregular warfare, JFCOM has the overall responsibility for exploring new concepts and capabilities so that the U.S. armed forces are as effective in IW as they are in traditional warfare, recommending mechanisms and capabilities for increasing interoperability and integration in IW-related activities, and leading the collaborative development of joint standards for IW relevant training and readiness for individuals and units of the general purpose forces, said Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Almarah Belk.
Mattis’ first idea calls for establishing a National Center for Small Unit Excellence to ensure IW superiority. The general argues in his memo this is the “first critical step” in ensuring the lessons of the battlefield are not lost at the tactical level, but rather that they are expanded and built upon as fundamental competencies of the armed forces.
“Innovative, adaptive leadership at the lowest levels is necessary to successfully conduct irregular warfare,” Mattis writes. “The Department of Defense lacks a comprehensive, interagency or joint approach to integrate and coordinate small unit excellence.” The center would integrate and leverage joint, service, interagency and academic initiatives for improving the ground combat performance of small unit leaders and units, including Army, Marine Corps and special operations troops, according to the general.
In its draft response, the Joint Staff notes the National Center for Small Unit Excellence is funded in the Defense Department’s fiscal year 2010 budget request. DOD budgeted $21.7 million for the center in FY-10 and $145.2 million across the future years defense plan. The under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness was tasked with developing a DOD instruction by Sept. 1 addressing the roles, responsibilities and authorities of the components of the center, which is in the process of being stood up by JFCOM.
JFCOM also established the Joint Irregular Warfare Center last June to proactively coordinate, prioritize and provide subject matter expertise and partner on all IW matters. The JIWC integrates IW activities across DOD, multinational and interagency partners for joint IW concept development and experimentation, training, doctrines and capability development. It also executes JFCOM’s responsibilities as the DOD executive agent for joint urban operations. In FY-09, the center has $7.8 million in operations accounts and $5 million in research and development; in FY-10 it is slated to receive $9 million in operations funding and $5.2 million in R&D.
As ITP reported last week, Mattis’ memo also calls for the outside review of the classified, country-specific defense planning scenarios to advocate the “appropriate inclusion of hybrid, complex threats.” The external “red team” review would ensure the “refinement” of defense planning scenarios if they are “too simplistic, or lacking in IW or hybrid aspects, or otherwise insufficient,” according to the memo. He suggested the outside team report directly to Gates or Pentagon policy chief Michèle Flournoy. The red team, he wrote, should be “directed to consider adding the Afghan Campaign as a stand-alone DPS -- it appears we will fight it for years, why not discipline the Department to include it in our DPS?”
At a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Gates said he created the red team to review not only the defense planning scenarios but also the QDR as a whole.
The Joint Staff’s draft says upon the completion of the QDR the Pentagon’s policy directorate will begin the development of a new lineup of DPS scenarios, noting, this “inclusive process” will feature a review of the existing library by both DOD and outside experts, and will “ensure the family of scenarios is appropriately balanced to address the future threat environment,” according to the Joint Staff.
Mattis also urges Gates to direct the Defense Intelligence Agency to produce an annual, unclassified update on the IW/hybrid threat akin to the Cold War-era “Soviet Military Power” booklet that helped broaden understanding of the Soviet threat throughout “our force and other interested parties at home and abroad.” The complexity of today’s transnational threat requires DOD to define enemies with clear, straightforward language in such a document, according to the general. “There is still too much confusion in our ranks,” he writes. The Joint Staff, JFCOM and DIA are working to define the handbook’s scope.
The general’s fourth proposal calls for DOD to run an IW/hybrid war game for the State Department and other agencies. “If we keep trying to incorporate the interagency into DOD war games, we continue to send the message that we (DOD) are in the lead,” he writes. “The other Departments do not have our wargaming capability, but if we offered to host and support their war game, we would reinforce the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor’s ongoing efforts to build the interagency effort without assuming DOD would always lead.”
The Joint Staff’s draft update says its J-8 directorate will contact JFCOM and determine through discussion the relevant State and interagency organizations that would benefit from an IW/hybrid warfare war game offering. Based on this assessment, the J-8 office and the Pentagon’s policy shop will research wargaming requirements and provide a recommendation on how to best represent those capabilities to the relevant State and interagency organizations in order to allow for these organizations to take the lead in the execution of such an effort.
Mattis also presses Gates to use the professional military education (PME) program as a strategic asset by directing each service to expand seats available for Gates to include foreign students of U.S. paid tuition assistance. The idea is to permit Gates to focus on select countries, offering additional seats to non-commissioned officers and junior, field-grade and senior officers from those priority countries. The general’s memo notes former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani rooted out corruption in the city’s police force with significant infusions of retrained personnel.
“If we want to turn, for example, Pakistan’s officer corps more rapidly to a different footing, significantly increased numbers of their students may be a way for the Department to use targeted PME to our strategic advantage,” Mattis writes. “The selected countries would be your priorities and the seats, with free tuition, would be a strong inducement. We have the best military PME in the world but are too parsimonious with seats for foreign officers to gate full effect of gaining mil-to-mil ties.”
According to the Joint Staff, however, Mullen approved a five-year Pakistan PME plan last December, which not only increased Pakistani participation but also directed an annual determination of countries of emphasis to attend senior service schools. The Joint Staff’s J-5 and J-7 directorates are slated to host a meeting this month for National Defense University and service stakeholders to develop a holistic view of capability, capacity and constraints and to develop a process for prioritized invitations for the 2010 to 2011 academic year. A synchronized invitation plan would be developed for approval by July 30, according to the draft update.
In addition, Mattis urges Gates to direct officials to fix shortfalls with high-demand, low-density forces identified by JFCOM by making changes in organizational and personnel policies. “This is broadly stated on purpose, to permit the Chairman to prioritize and balance the organizational adaptations,” the general writes. “Bottom line would be for the Joint Staff and JFCOM to identify deficiencies in military specialties and organizations for the Chairman to direct a timeline for resolutions.”
The Joint Staff maintains its J-8 office leads the ongoing “force sufficiency” effort as part of the global force management process, developing recommendations to resolve capability shortfalls identified during the global force management “force sourcing process.” This effort follows the annual submission of the combatant command request for forces (RFFs) to meet rotational requirements, including requirements in support of IW activities, and joint force provider actions to satisfy those requests with the allocation of forces.
Those RFFs left “unsourced” are reviewed in the force sufficiency effort and, following an assessment of each capability, recommendations are developed to address the shortfalls, according to the Joint Staff. Recommendations may include programmatic changes to increase inventory, identification of “in-lieu of” options, changes in active component/Reserve component mix and accepting risk in a particular area, among other options.
The QDR process will “look at” irregular warfare and specifically at developing options to increase joint force capability in historically high-demand, low-density force areas, according to the Joint Staff.
The final recommendation in Mattis’ missive calls for DOD to launch a fully resourced effort to immediately develop first-class simulators for IW training. “We currently enjoy the best aviation and maritime training simulations in the world for our air and sea forces,” he writes. “Only the lack of focus and resources prevent our [special operations forces], Army and Marine ground units from gaining the same advantages in simulating tactical and ethical decision-making in ground combat. Simulators using gaming technology currently available can be resourced to replicate the close combat where we take most of our casualties under the most ethically bruising conditions. Casualty reduction, fewer ethical missteps, [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder] reduction and enhanced mission success rates can be expected.”
According to the Joint Staff, the services have a number of fielded programs and ongoing initiatives to improve IW training. A JFCOM-led technology demonstration also fuses service requirements for better IW training. Recognizing the work already done in this area, the Joint Staff’s J-7 directorate plans to work with the services and combatant commands to update the survey of existing and planned IW training simulators and identify any persistent gaps this month. J-7 also plans to work with JFCOM to establish an IW training simulation working group. -- Christopher J. Castelli