Jointness, Defense Transformation, and the Need for a New JointWarfare Profession

Abstract

Skilled officers, like all other professional men, are products of continuous and laborious study, training, and experience. There is no shortcut the peculiar type of knowledge and ability they must possess. Trained officers constitute the most vitally essential element in modern war, and the only one that under no circumstance can be improvised or extemporized. --Douglas MacArthur, May 1932 How can I be a professional, if there is no profession? --A field grade officer, 2001 This article reviews the evolution toward jointness since the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986, (1) relates that progress the newer initiative of defense transformation, and derives a need for a new joint warfare profession. What has been meant by jointness, however, is not agreed; it is not a term in the Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. In this analysis the term is used mean the integration of the combat capabilities of the services, America's warfighting professions. The evolution of this effective integration, as well as the mindset among military officers who facilitate it, has progressed unevenly since 1986. There have been clear evolutionary successes in some areas and a consistent lack of progress in others. Evolutionary success in attaining jointness has been manifested perhaps most clearly in the execution of joint warfare--America now fights wars almost solely under joint commands. Most recently and vividly this was seen by the integration of combat effects in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, there have been other, less visible successes in the global war on terrorism. There also have been less pronounced but consistent successes toward jointness made in peacetime--the steady evolution in joint doctrine and exercises, for one example. But it is also the case that jointness has failed evolve in other areas in which it was anticipated and intended by the framers of the Goldwater-Nichols Act. There are still few standing joint forces ready for joint deployment and employment. (2) Rather, forces are, by and large, still assembled only at the time of deployment. Further, there has been only glacial movement toward joint force training and experimentation and the determination of force requirements based on combatant commanders' warplans. (3) In other words, while recent decades have shown remarkable improvements in developing warfighting concepts and in planning for and executing joint warfare, they have not shown the same progression, if any at all, in creating truly ready joint forces in peacetime nor in rationalizing the services' future capabilities related joint warfighting needs. Why is this the case? Why successful evolution in some areas and evolutionary failure in others? It is certainly not because those personnel assigned command and staff positions within the Joint Staff, the combatant commands, and defense agencies are not solid military professionals deeply steeped in the doctrines and warfighting expertise of their respective services. Nor are those who have cycled through the joint assignments people of bad intent. Quite the contrary, there are today a few officers who are truly joint in mindset and practice, particularly those who have cycled into the joint arena and then stayed or returned for repetitive joint assignments, notwithstanding the bureaucratic pressures serve elsewhere. And in them we see a glimpse of the real need for the future. In this article I will suggest that the uneven evolution toward jointness is symptomatic of a deeper problem, one that is systemic--simply stated, there has been no evolution toward a joint warfare profession. Instead, such evolution has been constrained by the intent and language of the original Goldwater-Nichols Act: to establish policies, procedures and practices for the management of officers of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps on active duty who are particularly educated, trained in, and oriented toward joint matters. …