By Ann Roosevelt
The new Defense Department Irregular Warfare: Countering Irregular Threats Joint Operating Concept (IW JOC) was signed May 17 to help general purpose forces understand how they fit in the overall picture, according to the director of the Joint Irregular Warfare Center (JIWC) at U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM).
The joint world defines irregular warfare as a violent struggle for “legitimacy and influence” over the relevant population, James O’Connell said in an interview. “What do you do with that if you’re a young lieutenant or captain, who says OK, how do I help with that?”
The JOC states it is part of the effort to identify and institutionalize IW skills and capabilities–a major priority for the JIWC.
The JWIC assisted JFCOM and U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), in co-authoring the concept that was developed with the Joint Staff, the services, Combatant Commands, and agencies.
Version 1.0 of the IW JOC was circulated in 2007, and discussed as part of the Army’s Title 10 future study, Unified Quest 2007 (UQ07) that looked at protracted unconventional warfare. As it evolved, it came up again during UQ 09, cosponsored by the Army, SOCOM and U.S. Joint Forces Command.
The 2010 JOC breaks IW into five major activities: counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense, unconventional warfare, and stability operations.
It also discusses the need for an interagency, whole of government approach to implement those activities to conduct irregular warfare.
“If you’re a young lieutenant, captain or surface warfare officer out there you can take this document, read it, and say OK, this is the concept the Navy is going to operate in to conduct irregular warfare,” O’Connell said. “It’s a framework. They can go off and actually figure out the plans and the actual tasks but it tells them what their concept for doing it is.”
Specialized forces exist with specific responsibilities, such as the ballistic missile forces and SOF, he said.
“All the vast majority of the joint force in the middle needs to be relevant across the spectrum of conflict because they need to be proficient in combined arms and they also need to be proficient in counter-insurgency,” O’Connell said. “The joint operating concept helps frame what are SOF responsibilities, how the general purpose force overlaps in those responsibilities, how they can share in them, how sometimes SOF comes in and supports the general purpose force.”
It all depends on the mission, he said. The counterinsurgency mission in Iraq was primarily conducted by the services with SOF in support. But a smaller operation–like the Philippines right now–SOF has the lead with general purpose forces in support.
“The JOC helps you understand where you fit,” he said. “It emphasizes you need to understand the problem…before you start to figure out where to apply resources.”
That effort–campaign design–is a theme at JFCOM this year.
JFCOM last year released its IW Vision, seeking to institutionalize an IW capability in the general purpose force (Defense Daily, March 30, 2009). The JIWC works to collaborate and synchronize the command’s efforts (Defense Daily, May 20, 2009).
A key to GPF IW capability is professional military education, he said. JFCOM and JIWC are closely working with SOCOM, he said. “Education is the foundation of understanding the culture, understanding the language, understanding the broader picture than applying resources to influence, the relevant population.”
In September, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued officer professional military education program instruction that said IW-warfare relevant subjects are of equal importance with traditional warfare. It went to all the war colleges, command and staff colleges and professional military institutions, which institutionalize what had been individual and often ad hoc efforts.
The JIWC has changed focus a bit in this area. “We’re focusing a majority of our effort on institutionalizing the already great adaptations that the services have made,” he said. “The idea is not to default back to big combined arms movements…We have to maintain that capability but we also have to maintain that balance, to be adaptable across the range of military operations.”
There are junior officers now who have had two and three and even more deployments, he said.
“They have it right, but we need to take those things that we’ve learned and make sure that 20 years from now we still have those lessons learned and they’re still in our education and in our doctrine and in our organizations,” O’Connell said.
A big push this year, he said, is simulation, because JFCOM feels that while Defense Department “has spent literally billions of dollars on simulation for pilots, for surface warfare officers, for engineering officers of the watch, for tank drivers–but we haven’t spent an equal amount of money or even close to it on the small unit leader.”
The small unit leader pays the price in casualties. “We feel that immersive simulation capability close combat infantry immersive trainer where those small unit leaders can make the hard moral, ethical and tactical decisions in an immersive environment and take them to failure so the first time they go into battle and that shoot-no-shoot situation, they’ve already experienced that tough one in a simulator and they’re much more ready,” O’Connell said.