By Ann Roosevelt
Every year, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) looks at capability shortfalls, and identifies gaps that need to be filled, the commander of U.S. Central Command said.
Army Gen. David Petraeus spoke via videoteleconference from CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa Fla., last week at the 2010 Joint Warfighting Conference in Virginia Beach, Va., cosponsored by the Armed Forces Communications Electronics Association and the U.S. Naval Institute in coordination with U.S. Joint Forces Command.
Many shortfalls would seem to be familiar, but likely still needed in the future, and gaps identified today would likely have solutions in the field in five years, considering the conference question of what commanders need in five years.
Petraeus said he never met a coalition or combatant commander who wasn’t “genetically incapable” of not wanting more of everything–a list that now includes more unmanned aerial vehicles, bandwidth and fewer caveats, those national restrictions nations have in coalition operations.
Capability shortfalls were described in broad categories, due to security considerations, he said, and represent gaps that could be filled in the next few years, while yet more would be added.
Such a list gives conference attendees from industry areas to focus on.
Intelligence and human intelligence and the exploitation tools to take advantage of them in counter insurgency is one area, he said. So is persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, counter IED, integrated air and missile defense capability.
Additionally, Petraeus enumerated capabilities to counter adversary information operations and the need for U.S. forces to do their own information operations.
The CENTCOM list also contains a variety of items connected with building partnership capacitites, he said via videoteleconference. Such capacitites would enable conducting counterterrorism, counterinsurgency and foreign internal defense work.
Mine countermeasures capabilities are on the list, as is theater command and control augmentation, biometrics, and looking at how the military invests in its infrastructure.