Supporting the current fight is the top priority but must be balanced with a consideration of the future threat, according to the retiring commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (NATO ACT).

“We must balance our roles between current operations and future operations,” Air Force Gen. Lance Smith, who commands both JFCOM and NATO ACT, said in a final briefing before retirement.

While the number one priority is supporting current operations, “we can’t do that at the exclusion of really looking to the future…if we’re not looking at the future, nobody is,” he said.

Smith announced his retirement in August, after leading the two commands since 2005 (Defense Daily, Aug. 3). Marine Lt. Gen. James Mattis will take command Nov. 9 (Defense Daily, Sept. 12).

Part of Smith’s effort continues to be to try and improve and encourage the synergies between JFCOM and NATO ACT. JFCOM spends a considerable amount of money in areas of interest to NATO and shares findings in areas such as lessons learned, technology and training.

“What I think is the likely future is a large conventional war and irregular warfare,” he said. The danger is to focus too much on one area, such as irregular warfare because of the current fight.

Both commands are responsible for concept development and experimentation looking to the future and developing concepts for how battlefield operations should be done. Integration and interoperability are major pieces of the puzzle, but are also “extraordinarily difficult,” he said.

JFCOM, for example, works to ensure the services can operate within the joint structure. For example, Marines driving to Baghdad to the East must be able to speak to Army soldiers driving to Baghdad from the West. With as many as seven blue force trackers in place in Iraq initially that could not share a common picture, JFCOM’s role is to work out how to make them work together.

“The answer clearly is to have them born joint,” Smith said, not to fix things after the fact. This is why the command’s relationship with industry, combatant commanders and the services are so important.

JFCOM has the Joint Command and Control (JC2) Capability Portfolio, with responsibility for establishing JC2, joint net-centric operations, battlespace awareness and joint logistics.

Smith has similar responsibilities within NATO. “If you think its hard to get four services and SOF–five entities–together, just imagine what its like to get 26 nations plus partners plus all the allies out there, all to be able to go into Afghanistan and operate within the same command and control system.”

Meanwhile, about seven nations, including the United States, spend NATO’s recommended two percent or more of their national budgets on defense. These nations tend to be those with larger militaries with land, sea and air capabilities, thus able to provide a broad spectrum of capabilities to the alliance.

For other countries, NATO ACT is not encouraging them to have large ground, air and naval forces. “We are encouraging them to develop core competencies in areas where they have experience and for whatever reason have an interest,” Smith said. “We’re able to do that.”

The NATO defense planning process identifies capability gaps alliance wide, and nations can see the gaps and expand their own particular expertise, he said. For example, some former Warsaw Pact nations have expertise in chemical warfare. Italy has expertise the Alliance leverages through their military and police Carabinieri force in training Iraqi national police.

Looking at the future, Smith said military means alone will never win the kind of engagement the United States is engaged in today. “We have to do a better job of engaging with other agents of government and non-governmental organizations and indigenous peoples in various places around the world.”

“Our approach in JFCOM is to get them [interagency] in early and exercise with them and train them. We do the same thing in exercises we do in NATO with somewhat less success right now, but with the clear understanding we’re learning from NATO we have to have a comprehensive approach.

All elements of national power must work together particularly in planning before going into a crisis, perhaps to avoid a crisis altogether, he said.

JFCOM hosts exercises such as Multinational Exercise 5 coming in the future, with a primary focus on effects based approach to operations. This brings the military together with diplomats, economists, non-governmental agencies and international organizations such as the United Nations, International Red Cross and European Union, to work out how to best operate together in the future.

Looking back over a 38-year military career that includes flying A-1 Skyraiders in Vietnam, Smith said of all the things he’s had the opportunity to do, “the highlight is truly the people” he’s had to work with, and in the past two years in Norfolk, the people are “absolutely superb.”