Revised rules for close air support.

Several instances of air-to-ground friendly fire by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan were attributed to misunderstandings between operators from different services, who may not necessarily speak the same language when it comes to close air support.

Under new procedures now in plaice, all participants in close air support operations--including ground and air controllers--will be trained to follow the same protocols across all services, and will employ common terminology lot assigning targets and ordering air-to-ground strikes.

"We now have joint standards for joint close air support," said Air Force Maj. Gen. (S) Mark E. Rogers, director of requirements and integration at U.S. Joint Forces Command.

"We standardized the curriculum for how we train the tactical air controllers," Rogers told National Defense. Certified joint tactical air controllers, or JTACS, will be able to coordinate fire missions with aircraft or ground troops from any service. "We are at the point that the process is standardized enough that it should not matter what service or platform you are.... Any certified JTAC can control any platform from any service," Rogers said.

The updated doctrine for close-air support already is being executed in Iraq, but the process is not as smooth as it could be, because the units still operate older equipment--such as laser rangefinders, target designators and radios--that never was designed to interoperate with other services' systems. "One of our efforts is to define the standard package of equipment," Rogers said.

JFCOM eventually wants to see the integration of all services' weapon systems under a single command-and-control network, Rogers said.

When they want to strike a target, U.S. commanders literally have dozens of options at their disposal--radar-guided missiles fired from helicopters, cruise missiles, laser-guided and satellite-guided bombs launched from fighter jets. But with each service operating different command-and-control systems, joint commanders often do not have immediate access to those weapons. "The challenge in joint fires is to give the brigade or task force commander an ability to select from an assortment of"fires and employ them, and the command-and-control to get them," said Rogers.

U.S. forces saw a relatively sophisticated level of joint command-and-control in the Iraq conflict, but it was an ad-hoc setup. "It can be done, but it's nor integrated to the degree we want," said Rogers.

In his previous job, Rogers led a program at JFCOM to create a "standing joint force headquarters," a team of operational planners and information specialists. During day-to-day operations, or when a contingency requires the establishment of a joint task force, all or part of the standing joint force headquarters is assigned to a commander and is embedded in his staff.

The first real-world rest test the standing joint force headquarters came in late February, when U.S. Marines were sent to Haiti to help stabilize the country. The U.S. Southern Command had just finished setting up its standing joint force headquarters when the crisis erupted. "In the past, they would have had to rapidly go and find people from the services, pull them together, make them smart on the situation and turn them into the command-and-control capability," Rogers explained.

A standing joint rome headquaters is headed by a one-star or two-star officer, along with 58 personnel.