By THERESA HITCHENS
WASHINGTON: The current combatant command structure governing US military operations will probably have to change for the global, all-domain conflicts of the future, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein says.
The current architecture is divided between ‘geographic’ commands — such as European Command — lead warfighting campaigns — which are supported by ‘functional’ commands — such as Transportation Command. But that division of labor may not be able to cope with the enormous distances and mixed warfare the US is likely to face. Also, given the realities of how Russia and China are using tools such as information and cyber warfare, the geographic theater commanders will also need to rethink how they work together.
“This is foundational to who we are,” Goldfein stressed in an exclusive interview with me Feb. 27 during the annual Air Force Association (AFA) winter meeting in Orlando.
Helping to build that new structure and create a new doctrine at the Joint and service levels to make it real will probably take much of the next three years, Goldfein told me. The new Joint Warfighting Concept which will guide much of that doctrinal work is being hammered out now and is one of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley’s top priorities. As I reported back in November, Milley and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper have set up a Joint Cross Functional Team, with a deadline to craft a first draft by end of the year.
Vice Chief Gen. John Hyten told an AFA breakfast on Jan. 20 that the document will be “an overarching concept for how we actually fight in the future.” He added that “underneath that Joint Warfighting Concept will be capabilities and attributes that we need to be able to fight effectively in the 2030s and 2040s and beyond.” Further, he said, the new concept will “drive from the top” what requirements the Joint Requirements Oversight Council “should be pushing out to services.”
All-domain Drives New Combatant Command Structure
Perhaps the central question about the CONOPS for all-domain operations is how decisions will be made about what service-controlled force packages will be applied under what circumstances. That is, who gets to approve what actions are taken at what level to what end? For example, with the Army and Air Force both building capabilities for longer-range strike, whose weapon system will be chosen to hit any one target at any one time?
Some experts have suggested that this will require a fundamental revision of the current service roles and missions set out under the 1948 Key West agreement and the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act.
Goldfein, for his part, told me he doesn’t think all-domain operations will require such an overhaul. “I don’t right now,” he said. “I don’t think about it that way.”
On the other hand, he does believe the US military has to fundamentally rethink its concept of how combatant commands work together.
“You can’t hide very well” in space, one industry official said, “So, I think the government is going to have to get over that, and recognize space is a free place.”
Geographic combatant command map 2011, minus the new SPACECOM
“I do think that we have to think about supporting relationships differently because, doggone it, our adversary is not paying attention to our maps,” Goldfein said. “It used to be that we would immediately think of the Russia problem set as a EUCOM commander’s sole responsibility.” Now, he explained, “it’s a global challenge.”
And under Milley’s leadership, the joint chiefs are working on those issues through a series of war games, as Colin discussed last month with Hyten.Those Global Integrated Exercises started under former chairman Gen. Joe Dunford, with the strong support of Hyten when he was head of Strategic Command.
“Under the chairman’s leadership,” Goldfein told me, “we’re doing a series of global war games to think about how do you actually fight a global campaign. And the chairman laid on some exercises for us to really think through this business of a supported/supporting relationship if the conflict extends outside of the borders of a geographic combatant commander.”
“I think we’ve had some really, really rich discussions, not only with the chairman among the joint chiefs, but also with Secretary Esper,” he said.
However, reconfiguring the formal responsibilities of functional and geographic combatant commands would require a formal re-write of the Unified Command Plan, Hyten told me at the AFA breakfast in January.
That, in turn, would require changes to the basic law undergirding the current system, Goldwater-Nichols. Indeed, sources involved told me that Dunford and then-SecDef James Mattis had been quietly working on enacting such changes with the late Sen. John McCain in the 2017-2018 timeframe. McCain, as Breaking D readers may recall, was a strong advocate for a Goldwater-Nichols revamp.
“It became a political mess inside the building and nothing really happened,” Hyten said of the long-standing discussions. “It’s not going to end up … where I wanted it to be, but it’s going to end up in a good place,” he added.
In lieu of a new UCP, the combatant commanders now have reached a kind of gentleman’s agreement on the issue, Hyten said. “We just decided that we’d call each other combatant commands, and not put an adjective on the front” and not fight about who is supported and who is supporting.
This is because in future globe-spanning wars with peer competitors of the kind now envisioned, he explained, “you are going to have five supported commanders, all of whom can operated independently if not coordinated … and conduct actions, sometimes lethal actions.”
Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)
Coordinating those globe-spanning, all-domain actions in turn requires a new way of command and control (C2). And the Air Force, at Goldfein’s request, has been given the job to spearhead the C2 element of all-domain operations. Under that mandate from Milley, the Air Force is working with its sister services via a process of spiral development that will see iterations of largely — but not solely — software-enabled C2 capabilities emerging in tranches over time.
As Breaking D readers know, Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) — the capability to connect every sensor to every shooter via a military Internet of Things — is Goldfein’s number one priority as he prepares to retire early this summer.
Goldfein, who almost vibrates in his enthusiasm when speaking about JADC2, insists that it is imperative that the technical capabilities to enable that connectivity be developed now; yesterday, if possible.
“We actually don’t have the luxury of developing the C2 connectivity sequentially after we write the entire CONOPS,” he said. “If we did that, we ought to box that up, put a bow on it and send it to our adversaries. It would be the greatest gift we would ever hand them.”
Advanced Battle Management System Overview
“So, the approach we were taking is: we’re moving out at speed to develop the connectivity, knowing that at the same time the chairman is leading us through the design of the joint war fighting concept,” he added. “We know that regardless of where we land, it will rely on C2 connectivity. We’ve got to get that done and you can’t skip the step.”
For example, Goldfein said, new weapons tech such as artificial intelligence and hypersonic missiles will not be possible without first creating an underlying scaffolding of joint C2, data management and digital engineering — which, he explains, is what the Air Force is trying to do under its Advanced Battle Management System.
Goldfein said his goal for JADC2 is to see the concept take root with the services, before he retires this summer.
“We planted seeds, and the seeds have hit fertile soil and the roots are growing into the joint spaces,” he said. “So I want to make sure that … we are all working in concert to move forward on this journey we’re all going to be on for our entire tenures and beyond.”
When I asked him what would be the biggest challenge to that happening, he said: “One word, culture.”
“We’ll get it right technically,” he added. “That’s actually not the hard part. The hardest part is going to be for us to get this right culturally. … We’ve got to continue to do our mirror checks on: is our culture of having fought a certain way against a certain enemy presenting blinders, or narrowing our vision on what’s the art of the possible?”
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