United States Joint Forces Command

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United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) is one of ten Unified Combatant Commands of the United States military. Unlike the six commands with responsibility for war plans and operations in specified portions of the world, USJFCOM is a functional command that provides specific services to the military.

The current commander is U.S. Marine Corps General James N. Mattis. He relieved General Lance L. Smith on November 9, 2007, and is simultaneously Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, leading NATO's Allied Command Transformation.

USJFCOM was formed in 1999 when the old United States Atlantic Command was renamed and given a new mission: leading the transformation of the U.S. military through experimentation and education. USLANTCOM had been active from the 1950s to 1993 as a primarily U.S. Navy command, focused upon the wartime defence of the Atlantic sea lanes against Soviet attack, with the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and other subunified commands such as the Iceland Defense Force under its authority. The Navy's leading place within the command had been marked by having Commander-in-Chief U.S. Atlantic Fleet, CINCLANTFLT acting also as the Commander-in-Chief United States Atlantic Command between 1947 and 1985. CINCLANTFLT, in addition to the LANTCOM post, also held the position of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT). After the end of the Cold War, a 1993 reorganisation gave the Command a new acronym, USACOM, and brought United States Army Forces Command and Air Combat Command under its authority.[1]

Contents

[edit] Mission

United States Joint Forces Command is one of ten combatant commands in the United States Department of Defense, and the only combatant command focused on the transformation of U.S. military capabilities.

Among his duties, the commander of USJFCOM oversees the command's four primary roles in transformation - joint concept development and experimentation, joint training, joint interoperability and integration, and the primary conventional force provider as outlined in the Unified Command Plan approved by the President.

The Unified Command Plan designates USJFCOM as the "transformation laboratory" of the United States military to enhance the combatant commanders' capabilities to implement the president's strategy. USJFCOM develops joint operational concepts, tests these concepts through rigorous experimentation, educates joint leaders, trains joint task force commanders and staffs, and recommends joint solutions to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines to better integrate their warfighting capabilities.

The benchmark of USJFCOM's efforts is to create effects in the battlespace in support of campaigns designed and conducted by the combatant commanders in pursuit of presidentially-approved policy goals.

In doing so, USJFCOM seeks the coherent integration of military capabilities with other elements of national and allied power. The joint force concept development and experimentation focus is an inherent component of this mission. The cornerstone of this program is the development of future concepts for joint warfighting.

This work builds on and strengthens service efforts, draws on the best of industry, and flows directly from the President's National Security Strategy, the Secretary of Defense's National Defense Strategy and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's National Military Strategy.

The joint force trainer role allows USJFCOM to rapidly introduce new doctrine and receive immediate feedback from the warfighters, while preparing warfighting commanders to prepare for their missions in a realistic joint environment. USJFCOM has also led the way in developing a Joint National Training Capability that ties together existing service training sites so forces can train in a common joint environment.

As the joint force integrator, USJFCOM helps develop, evaluate, and prioritize the solutions to the interoperability problems plaguing the joint warfighter. At USJFCOM, joint interoperability and integration initiatives continue to deliver materiel and non-materiel solutions to interoperability challenges by working closely with combatant commanders, services and government agencies to identify and resolve joint warfighting deficiencies.

This work is one of the most important near-term factors required to transform the legacy forces and establish a "coherently integrated joint force."

In late 2004, U.S. Joint Forces Command assumed the role of primary conventional force provider. This landmark change assigned nearly all U.S. conventional forces to Joint Forces Command. Along with this responsibility came the task to develop a new 'risk-assessment' process that provided national leaders a world-wide perspective on force-sourcing solutions.

This process not only helps national decision makers make more informed choices on supporting ongoing and emergent operations, but also allows military commanders to foresee potential readiness problems and develop mitigation strategies, thus allowing the United States to maintain the nation's forces at the highest possible levels of readiness.

Headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, USJFCOM is a force of more than 1.16 million active and reserve soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, spanning USJFCOM's four service component commands and eight subordinate activities. USJFCOM personnel include members from each branch of the U.S. military, civil servants, contract employees, and consultants.

[edit] Organization

The commander of USJFCOM is U.S. Marine Corps General James N. Mattis. JFCOM has four component commands, a sub-unified command (Special Operations component is SOCJFCOM and eight subordinate activities, including: Joint Warfighting Center; Joint Systems Integration Command; Joint Transformation Command for Intelligence; and Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC). The JFCOM commander also serves as Supreme Allied Commander Transformation within NATO. JFCOM's Service components are the CONUS based commands that provide forces to other combatant commands and have primary responsibility to their services for requirements validation.

JFCOM Special Operations

  • Special Operations Command Joint Forces Command (SOCJFCOM)

JFCOM Subcommand

[edit] Joint Concept Development & Experimentation Directorate

The Directorate oversees the joint concept development and experimentation roles and responsibilities delegated to USJFCOM. These roles are outlined in the Department of Defense-issued Unified Command Plan:

“ The Directorate collaborates with the military services, combatant commanders, U.S. government agencies, multinational partners, and other to validate those concepts and to provide recommendations to the military and civilian leadership. The measure of success is improved future military capabilities in the hands of warfighters, as well as improved coalition capabilities in multinational operations. ”

[edit] Former commanders

[edit] See also

Military of the United States Portal

[edit] References

  1. ^ Find Article: U.S. Atlantic Command, Now USACOM, Assumes New Role US Navy Press Releases
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