While the Joint Staff has taken great strides toward getting the combatant commands more involved in the requirements process, the mechanism that turns those requests from the field into actual capabilities continues to lag behind those integration efforts, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.
Two years after Congress mandated that the Joint Staff’s Joint Requirements Oversight Council increasingly “seek and consider input” from field commanders to help the Pentagon close critical capability gaps, key vulnerabilities persist in ongoing combat operations.
The main hang-up, according to the report released yesterday, was the cumbersome and unresponsive nature of the process the Joint Staff uses to develop warfighing requirements- -the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS).
The results of the GAO-conducted survey of the military COCOMs found that commanders “reported mixed satisfaction with JCIDS” with one major combatant command telling GAO auditors that his organization was “not at all satisfied” with the system’s performance.
“While noting the importance of their participation in the development of joint requirements, [COCOMs] question the value of what they describe as a resource-intensive and time consuming process that does not assure their capability gaps will be filled in a timely manner,” the report states.
The time it takes for a requirements request, from either the COCOMs or the services, to move through the multiple review and validation steps and allowed to process into capability development is roughly two years, according to the GAO report.
The inherent problem with the JCIDS process, COCOM commanders say, is its long-term, service-centric focus that is geared toward addressing capability concerns that have yet to emerge. On the other hand, critical needs sent in from the field continually languish within the JCIDS system.
To help mitigate that time gap and remain responsive to time-sensitive warfighter requirements, the Pentagon did establish the Joint Urgent Operational Needs (JUON) system, a faster-paced parallel system to the JCIDS, specifically designed to meet short-term shortfalls in requirements.
However, even with both systems in place, COCOM chiefs still are not getting what they need, from either the JCIDS or JUON system. The problem with the JUON process, the report states, is that it categorizes near-term needs as those that should be delivered within two years or less.
While a majority of critical warfighting capabilities do fall into that time frame, the others that do not are subjected to the lengthy JCIDS system, despite the fact that those requirements are needed “to prevent mission failure or loss of life,” the report states.
While the GAO review noted the inefficiencies cited by the COCOMs have been “a long standing concern” the Joint Staff and DoD are taking steps to remedy the situation. The results of a broad-based review, initiated by Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. James Cartwright, of the JCIDS process is due next month.
“The review is intended to, among other things, streamline the joint capabilities development process to improve its efficiency and responsiveness to users’ needs,” according to the GAO report. The review will likely address how to respond to capability gaps that do not meet the criteria for being addressed as urgent needs…but may need to be addressed more quickly” than the current JCIDS process.
Defense Department officials reviewed the GAO report, but did not submit a formal response to the findings regarding the COCOMs’ concerns with the JCIDS and JUON processes.