War-gaming a future that's much like today: Army, Joint Forces Command test radical concepts that promote 'jointness'.

Army war planners project that, by 2015, the world will be deja vu all over again--trouble persists in the Middle East and throughout Asia, while terrorists threaten at home. U.S. military forces deployed around the globe continue to battle asymmetric foes and struggle with nation-building.

There is some good news, however. By 2015, the U.S. services no longer will have interoperability problems and will fight under leaner chains of command, where the customary divisions of labor--air, land and sea--become less relevant.

The weaponry that U.S. forces will employ in 2015, for the most part, will be similar to what they used in the recent war in Iraq. Future enemies, meanwhile, will have spent lots of money amassing stockpiles of "off-the-shelf" military equipment acquired from the open market--cruise missiles, night-vision sensors, robotic aircraft, GPS jammers and advanced radios.

The strategic setting just outlined served as the backdrop for Unified Quest '03, a war game that the Army and the Joint Forces Command co-sponsored in an effort to experiment with new war-fighting concepts.

Unified Quest was the first of a series of war games designed to give Joint Forces Command real power to bring about "jointness" in U.S. war fighting.

The military success seen in Iraq in large measure was attributed to the services' close cooperation in developing tactics and executing missions. But the Pentagon is still not satisfied and wants jointness to become institutionalized, keeping the services from developing any new equipment or tactics that do not take into account the "joint perspective."

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, inter-service coordination was better than it's ever been, according to experts. But the command structure nevertheless followed the traditional component-commander organization, with an Army general running the land war, a Navy admiral in charge of the maritime forces and an Air Force general overseeing air operations. The component commanders all report to the joint commander, who in Iraq was Army Gen. Tommy Franks.

War games such as Onified Quest are testing alternative approaches. The Joint Forces Command specifically was tasked to come up with viable options to the current command structure.

"There is a steady pressure from Rumsfeld to eliminate the component commanders from within the combatant command headquarters," said an industry source who works closely with the Army.

A tussle over the role of combatant commanders ensued last year after the 2002 Army Transformation war game, titled Vigilant Warriors, which concluded that combatant commanders are effective and should not be eliminated.

By co-sponsoring this year's war game with Joint Forces Command, the Army wanted to send the message that it was serious about experimenting with unconventional battle command structures, where Army generals mayor may not run the ground war.

"They'll test that, because it's something Rumsfeld won't drop," said the industry source.

One of the architects of Unified Quest is Brig. Gen (P). Michael A. Vane, the Army's deputy chief of staff for doctrine, about to become commander of the Army's Air Defense Artillery Center. Viewed by insiders as one of the brightest thinkers in the Army today, Vane believes that jointness can be improved without undermining the cultures that make each service unique.

"Each service has its culture. And there are important parts that you might want to retain," Vane said. "But there are some joint cultures that need to get established."

In the heat of the battle, when a commander must decide how best to kill a target, it should not matter whether the munitions come from tanks, Bradleys or airplanes. "Now you are starting to think joint," Vane said. "We don't all think that way."

The lessons from Unified Quest will begin to shape a new definition of joint, said Dave Ozolek, assistant director for experimentation at JFCOM. "The problem is that each service derived its own definition of what joint operations are," he said. It should not surprise anyone that "we end up with interoperability problems--both technical and conceptual."

The war game was designed to provide "a common joint context," said Ozolek. That same common context then will continue to be applied in upcoming war games, each of which will be co-sponsored by JFCOM and the services.

"Our intent is to get out of' the business of solving interoperability problems and get into the business of precluding interoperability problems," said Ozolek. "Capabilities will be born joint ... with the hooks--intellectual, conceptual, operational, right from the beginning, so they can meld with standing joint force headquarters."

Historically, he said, "we have defined joint as the cooperation of two or more services. We [now] would laugh at that definition."

In the past, "we were never able to get synergy down at the operational and tactical level. We are fixing that in this game."

Another notable departure from service-centric tradition is the decision to phase out so-called Title 10 war games, which typically had been conducted by each service to showcase their individual capabilities. That is no longer acceptable at the Pentagon. "Title 10 war games are being replaced by joint war games," said Army Maj. Gen. James M. Dubik, director of joint experimentation at JFCOM.

Retired Army Gen. Don Holder, one of the role-playing commanders in Unified Quest, said he was impressed by how much better the services understand joint operations now, compared to when he left the Army five years ago.

Echelons of Command

A growing chorus of administration officials and outside experts have been clamoring for the Army to do away with its traditional echelons of command, particularly those above brigade, namely the division and the corps.

Whether Unified Quest yielded any definitive answers on this still is uncertain.

Vane said that the Army has been studying the possible elimination of an echelon, "to achieve greater efficiencies in command and control."

Specifically, the Army has been running simulations at Fort Knox that are based on the premise that the tactical combat units--the "units of action"--would operate like today's brigades. The higher-level command and-control headquarters would not be divisions and corps, but rather a "unit of employment" that supervises the unit of action.

The UA and UE structure underpins the development of the Army's Future Combat System, a family of 18 different types of vehicles, all connected by a high-speed network.

Unified Quest marked the first time that the UA and UE were employed in a joint war game, said Ozolek.

The Army and JFCOM are trying to tighten the connection between a UE and a standing joint force headquarters, and figure out how the UE could "plug" into the Air Force's air operations center, for example, said Ozolek.

The war game investigated radical arrangements, such as deploying land forces under Air Force command. "Currently, the JFAC [joint air commander] does not have the capability to control ground forces," Ozolek said. One option probed was whether it's possible for the Army to provide "close ground support" to the Air Force.

Holder said that having units of action supervised by a unit of employment, covering largo areas, is feasible, but would likely stretch the headquarters too thin. In Unified Quest, "what we are finding is that the Army understands joint very well," but the headquarters "has so much to do that keeping up with everything is a bit of an issue."

Another proposition, Ozolek said, was whether to do away entirely with air, land and sea component commanders and replace them with "functional" commanders, such as a "strike commander, a sustainment commander of a knowledge commander."

Global Scenario

The scenario devised for Unified Quest, set in 2015, has the United States (the Blue force) engaged in a major conflict in Southwest Asia against a fictitious country called Nair (the Red Nair force). Another contingency also erupts in the Pacific area, where Islamic fundamentalist rebels (the Red Sumesia force) are trying to topple the secular U.S.-friendly government of Sumesia. All the while, terrorist threats against the United States turn into daily crises at the Department of Homeland Security.

The Blue force fighting Nair consists of three corps-size units, two Air Force expeditionary force packages, five aircraft carriers (four American and one British) and three battalions of special operations forces.

The Red Nair force is much larger, with 15-17 corps-size units. They are equipped with modern commercial communications systems and advanced weaponry purchased from other countries in the open market.

The Blue force in Sumesia consists of two Army brigades and two Marine expeditionary brigades. That adds to about 70,000 troops, including one brigade made up of Australian and New Zealand troops. The Red insurgents had 50,000 troops, many of them untrained guerrilla fighters, equipped only with small arras and portable surface-to-air missiles.

Nair's Red force in many ways was a product of the Bush administration's "preemption" policy, which calls for the United States to intervene militarily and try to prevent an attack, before such attack takes place. In the war game, Nair actually was pre-preempting the United States, which was seeking to curtail Nair's ability to threaten and intimidate its neighbors, explained Joe Greene, an Army analyst who specializes in creating Red forces in war games.

"Red looked at Blue's early positioning of ground, air and maritime forces," he said. "Red read those as an intent to act on the part of the United States. And Red chose to preempt, in an air-ground fashion, supported by theater ballistic missiles and maritime assets."

The Red force in Sumesia was designed to challenge U.S. military competence in jungle and urban warfare, specifically the capabilities of the Army's Future Combat System and other futuristic technologies, such as vertical-takeoff transport aircraft and high-speed shallow-draft ships.

The Army chose to play the scenario in 2015 because that is realistically how far ahead it can project what technologies and weapons will be available.

When one looks at the current Pentagon five-year budget blueprint, "out to 10 years, we know pretty much what we are going to have," said retired Vice Adm. Lyle Bien, who played the role of joint commander of the Sumesia Blue force.

The sobering reality, he noted, is that "about 95 percent is going to be what you have today."

Programs that are now in research and development may be operational by 2012. The employment of innovative airlift and sealift platforms in the war game is based purely on speculation, because many of those technologies have not yet been funded.

Unified Quest planners, nonetheless, wanted to be as realistic as possible. "It wasn't long ago that most of the services were doing war games out to 2025 and 2030," said Bien. The upshot was that gamers never could be certain that the systems they were playing with will ever exist. To be sure that you are fighting with forces that you actually have, most war games now don't go much further than a decade," Bien said.

Red, Blue Forces at Play

Hundreds of military officers from all services, allied countries, as well as retired officers and experts participated in Unified Quest, held in late April at the Army War College, in Carlisle, Penn.

During a Media Day scheduled during the second half of the two-week game, National Defense spoke with several members of the Red and Blue forces, as well as with JFCOM officials. Following are highlights derived from briefings and interviews.

Logistics. The war game explored ways to network each service's logistics apparatus. Among the options probed was whether it would make sense to have a joint logistics component commander within the joint task force. Another consideration was the need to possibly "sea base" functions currently done on the ground to ships off shore.

The perception is that logistics is an Army problem, but rather "it's a joint problem," said Dubik. "I think that there is great potential to impose increasing efficiency and remove duplication."

Information Warfare. Both Red and Blue were pursuing tactics of "information overload," whereby they flood each other's networks with useless stuff. Anybody can do that, said Ozolek. "The key is who can turn information into knowledge faster and implement it." In the months ahead, he said, JFCOM plans to begin analyzing the "human challenges of how to make decisions in an information-overloaded world."

Asymmetric Tactics. The Red Sumesia force employed classic guerilla-style warfare that "stressed" the joint Blue force, said retired Marine Col. Darrell Combs, who served as Red's chief of staff: "We came up with a long campaign plan to drag the fight, make it painful, because we know the Blue forces are generally casualty-adverse. They have a limited amount of infantry in their new structure. Every infantryman is precious." Red also exploited the vulnerabilities of Blue's computer networks. "We shut down the military pay system in the United States for several days."

Another Nair Blue commander, retired Army Brig. Gen. Huba Wass de Czega, concluded that asymmetric warfare is here to stay. "The potential dynamics of what we saw in 'Black Hawk Down' ate always going to be with us, wherever you go.... Things like suicide attacks will be with us for a long time."

Nation Building. The Sumesia Blue force prevailed against the insurgents, despite losing airplanes and taking casualties. It had a hard time, however, coping with the post-war environment, "the part that America historically does not do well, the war after the war," Bien said. Managing the peace was "clearly a challenge the game presented for us."

Future Comba System. With two wars unfolding simultaneously, Blue had a shortage of airlift. But the Sumesia force found that the 16-ton FCS vehicles could be transported on fast ships as efficiently as on airplanes. "We can re-embark them and move them by sea, Marine Corps-style," Bien said. "This is something very positive about the Objective Force."

Finding the Enemy. In 2015, sensors will improve, but they will be in limited supply, Bien said. That created problems for his Blue force trying to find enemy rebels hiding in the jungle. The United States has powerful surveillance aircraft that can easily find vehicle convoys, but not necessarily follow the movements of guerrillas on foot. "We overcame that by putting lots of Special Forces in the area who kept track of them," Bien said.

Justifying Budgets. It is no secret that the services routinely have used war games as vehicles to justify the procurement of new weapon systems. In Unified Quest, the Army is showcasing the Future Combat System, on which it plans to spend at least $30 billion.

Ozolek views the war game as a legitimate venue to help shore up support for FCS. "Why not?" he asked. "This type of analysis is more valid than Powerpoint consensus at the Pentagon." A joint war game, particularly, is a "far more objective way to shape a program," Ozolek said. If the FCS is helping win the war, "you will have the joint community justifying the Army programs."

Homeland Security. In 2015, relations are smooth between the Department of Homeland Security, the Northern Command and the policy makers at the Pentagon, said Coast Guard Rear Adm. Jeffrey Hathaway. In Unified Quest, "we have regional DHS administrators in place that have purview over all the federal response and capabilities. We have a more coherent federal response, We are deciding how the Defense Department melds into that.... We postulate that by 2015, all the organs within DHS will be operating off one sheet of music."

RELATED ARTICLE: Demand skyrockets for Army Knowledge Online.

Membership in the Army's Internet portal surged dramatically in the months leading to the war in Iraq and access requests to its classified-only network tripled during the conflict

Field commanders in Iraq restricted troops from logging on to non-military Internet services. That made Army Knowledge Online the only game to town, noted Maj. C.J. Wallington who manages AKO operations for the Army.

In the absence of Yahoo, MSN or AOL instant messaging, "it was AKO IM or nothing," said Wallington,

"From an OPSEC [operational security] standpoint, we were a big success." he said. Membership to the classified-only network, called AKO-S, almost tripled in the last six months, largely due to requirements associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom, Wallington said.

AKO-S stands for SIPRNET (secret internet protocol router network). Last October, AKO-S had 11,445 subscribers. By early May, it had 35,560.

The system has 128-bit encryption. "It's the best to the industry," said Wallington.

Altogether, AKO services more than 1.3 million users, including about 98 percent of the active-duty Army, and 68 percent of the Reserve and National Guard.

Many members are Army civilian employees. Family members also are entitled to AKO accounts. It is viewed as a benefit of serving in the Army.

In operation for more than two years, AKO is run out of Fort Belvoir, Va. The network is hosted on 300 Unix servers and has 70 terabytes of raw storage space. The help desk receives 11,000 calls a week.

Reservists often use AKO as a mobilization planning tool, said Wallington: "The AKO knowledge collaboration center saw a lot of use by the Guard/Reserve to help them mobilize."

A KCC is a "secure place where units can snare information," he said, "The Reserves are using this a lot.... They can put together alert rosters, drill schedules, tentative moving plans."

Guard and Reserve units, he said, "see the value of AKO as a means of reach-back to the families back borne, and as a mechanism to push information to family resource groups in a secure, controlled environment."

It costs the Army $17 million a year to run AKO. A member's account is terminated when he of she leaves the Army. Twenty-year veterans are eligible for retiree accounts.--Sandra I. Erwin

RELATED ARTICLE: War game gets high-level scrutiny.

The U.S. Joint Forces Command and the Army are cooperating in an "unprecedented way," said Adm. Ed Giambastiani, head of JFCOM. He cited the Unified Quest 2003 war game--which the Army co-sponsored with JFCOM in April--as evidence of that cooperation. The war game was not a routine event, Giambastiani told defense reporters. Proof of that was the high-level attention it received. Attending the after-action review of the war game, held May 2 at the National Defense University, were Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vernon Clark, Marine Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee and Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Robert Foglesong. "I have never in my entire career seen this level of seniority come to a game out-brief, he said. "It was quite remarkable."

Giambastiani said that Unified Quest proved the Army is "exploring in the right areas," when it comes to joint operations. "The Army is lockstep with me on this and has been," he said.

JFCOM plans to co-sponsor exercises with all the services, said Giambastiani. Earlier this month, he was scheduled to lead a group of JFCOM officials on a tour of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps simulation facilities, in Orlando, Fla. The tour is designed to help JFCOM "figure out ... what we ought to De pushing from a joint training exercise and simulation standpoint."--Sandra I. Erwin