By Ann Roosevelt
U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) trainers this month are in Djibouti to assess the effectiveness of pre-deployment training for the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (CJTF HOA) headquarters staff, and where improvements could be made, officials said.
“In every evolution that we do and each turnover we have of staffs and so on we find some things to make the next unit even better as they come in here,” retired Marine Lt. Gen. Emil Bedard, senior mentor supporting JFCOM’s Joint Warfighting Center, in a telephone roundtable with reporters from Djibouti this week.
CJTF HOA Commander Rear Adm. Anthony Kurta said there was no gap in the training, but the training gave them a leg up on the mission. The day they arrived they were assigned an operational planning task and were able to do it successfully. That was because the training dealt with working with embassies, cultural awareness and situational and political awareness, all of which came from the training. “We have continually been able to perform the mission…[a] testament to the training received at JFCOM.”
The 26-member assessment team is always looking to improve the “solid and sound” program.
Marine Col. Douglas Stilwell, JFCOM J7, the Joint Training Directorate, said the joint and interagency team has the benefit of year-round traveling as deployed training teams observing the best practices and gathering insights from every joint command in existence. What they glean is relayed to those they are training at the moment–in this case, CJTF HOA.
What the team learns during the assessment will be provided in an after action report and a commander’s summary report.
One thing the team is considering is how to provide more in-depth cultural awareness training and as early as possible, Bedard said. Here is where industry could help by providing more experts or tools an individual could use for the training. Another area of examination is the relationships between the command and U.S. Africa Command, which has replaced U.S. Central Command in the chain of authority. Training must ensure that the relationships and how they work are properly understood.
Jan. 10-16 the CJTF HOA headquarters staff wrapped up their period of training with a mission rehearsal exercise (Defense Daily, Jan. 15). The goal of JFCOM’s training was to provide realistic scenarios for the staff as they prepared to deploy.
Kurta said, “Our mission here is to deal with problem areas before they become areas of the world where more kinetic solutions might be called for.”
The command uses a whole of government approach, working through the ambassador and country team in each nation in its purview to counter “violent, extremist, organizations” using an indirect approach called 3-D: development, defense and diplomacy, Kurta said.
For example, CJTF HOA Deputy Commander Brig. Gen. Christopher Leins said this non-kinetic, indirect approach means things such as the impact of the dozen or so NCOs working with Uganda to develop an NCO academy. The troops influenced the academy culture and became part of the local community. The troops used their own money to buy and plant more than 600 fruit trees, while training soldier skills. On the walls of the academy can be seen the Ugandan soldier ‘s creed, much of which has been pulled directly from the U.S. Army’s creed.
Bedard noted the differences over the past years. The “Black Hawk down” incident occurred in October 1993. Just a few days later he was put on a joint task force in Somalia. He met other task force members at the airport, received their orders and were joined piecemeal by other staff over the next month.
“We have climbed the mountain in terms of how far we’ve come,” he said.
Kurta said: “the training never stops.”