May 1, 2003

Assessment of Iraq War Will Emphasize Joint Operations

By THOM SHANKER

ASHINGTON, April 30 — The war in Iraq was fought as never before, with attacks combining the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has decided that, for the first time, the four services will not be in charge of assessing what went well and what did not in the conflict.

The important task of compiling "lessons learned" from the war was given to one of the military's more unusual commands, one that controls no tanks, jets or warships in battle and is assigned no region of the world to keep safe.

"Our area of responsibility is the future," said Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani, who leads the Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va.

If the future of the four armed services is in joint operations, then the Joint Forces Command, under Admiral Giambastiani, who previously served as Mr. Rumsfeld's senior military assistant at the Pentagon, will light the path.

Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the allied commander for Iraq, "doesn't care where he gets capability to go kill a target, to accomplish a mission or take an objective," Admiral Giambastiani said. "So whether we do it with air power, artillery, naval gunfire, naval aircraft — it doesn't make a difference. He just cares about taking care of a target."

Past wars were organized with each of the services given a specific mission or kept in a separate lane of the battlefield, with planning to assure they did not cross paths or get in each other's way.

"Essentially we'd say, `O.K., Army you go over in this quadrant, Navy you operate out here with the Marines, Air Force this is how you operate,' " Admiral Giambastiani added. "And we tried to `deconflict' those so they had different roles to play."

The goal for the war in Iraq, and for future combat, is to integrate the actions of the services, increasing combat punch through joint operations. And that effort to change military culture is shaping how the military is compiling and analyzing lessons from the war, and how the Pentagon will eventually use them to alter the military's behavior.

"I don't want to say that it would be a mistake for the services to engage in service-centric `lessons learned,' " Mr. Rumsfeld said. "But to some extent, I will say it. This was not a war fought by the Army or the Navy or the Air Force or the Marines. It was a war that's been fought by joint forces."

Maj. Gen. Gene Renuart, director of operations for the Central Command, which carried out the war in Iraq, said General Franks and Admiral Giambastiani finalized plans in January to send a sizable team from the Joint Forces Command to the combat zone to be the "lessons learned" team for the entire military.

"It was important to consolidate the process, to make it as simple as we could for the war fighters, and give the services and other agencies the access they needed to provide a meaningful product," General Renuart said. "That has turned out to be a very, very positive relationship."

It may be weeks or months before the formal "lessons learned" are disseminated and discussed, but the Joint Forces Command already influenced how the war with Iraq was carried out, as well as touched other important missions.

The command trained senior officers and their battle staffs, and helped deploy the four Joint Task Force headquarters that now command frontline missions in Afghanistan; the Horn of Africa; Guantánamo, Cuba; and the war in Iraq.

"How many days did this joint force train together before they came together on the battlefield in Iraq? Zero," said Maj. Gen. Gordon C. Nash of the Marines, who commands the Joint Warfighting Center. But the Joint Forces Command helped organize and train the Central Command forward headquarters near Iraq, "and they built a team," he said.

The command is fostering joint operations through procurement policies that would require weapons to be able to operate among all the services, rather than have radios that cannot talk to one another or ordnance that cannot be swapped.

"We want to define joint requirements up front as the different services develop the things they need," said Maj. Gen. Daniel M. Dick of the Air Force, director of requirements and integration.

The same mandate applies to how the military conducts war games and writes doctrine.

"It is no longer sufficient — in fact, it's dangerous — for the joint force to be developing concepts that may not be executable by all the services," said Dave Ozolek, the command's assistant director for joint experimentation.

The armed services will conduct individual studies to learn lessons from the war with Iraq that apply to their core capabilities and specific weapons. But, over time, the services will be stitched even tighter when they go to war.

"Do we find resistance sometimes? Sure," said Admiral Giambastiani. "Do we have to bash our way through the bureaucracy? You bet. But there is goodness in that. It's good to have give and take. But you have to make progress."