A USAID DART representative briefs the “Country Team”
18-20 November: Purple Solace
In the concluding week of each JCWS class, the seminar conducts a short Foreign Humanitarian Assistance (FHA) exercise. The exercise set up begins on Monday, and concludes on Wednesday afternoon, as we dedicate Thursday and Friday to administration and graduation.
More than just a planning event, the students spend time listening to a host of guest speakers, as well as reading and discussing case studies from previous FHA missions. The case studies we look at include the 2004 Indonesia Tsunami, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and the Nepal earthquake in 2015.
The FHA response to the earthquake in Haiti pulls multiple discussion points. For example, the complete disaster of how the USSOUTHCOM HQ organized its staff came to light. Pulling away from the Napoleonic J-Code system in favor of a functional staff organization was a mistake, and one that USAFRICOM would later duplicate. The J-Code system has been in place for 200 years for the simple reason that it works.
Enhancing the classroom discussion is a presentation by retired Lieutenant General Blackman, who served as the JTF 536 commander during the Indonesia Tsunami relief mission. His presentation details a plethora of considerations that leaders should consider when conducting FHA. These include the arrangement of command and control, the set up of coordination mechanisms with the host nation, other nations participating, other government agencies (USAID for example), and non-government organizations (NGOs) which may include the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders among dozens of others.
An aspect I remind the seminar to bear in mind throughout planning, is that each nation, and each organization come to the table with unique capabilities, but with their specific objectives, many of which can be self-serving, and not in the best interest of the affected nation, and at odds with the United States.
It is paramount to understand that the Department of Defense is a supporting agency in every FHA mission. USAID is the lead U.S. government agency. As such, when the students discuss their mission statement, I implore them to use the language “In Support of USAID/OFDA.”
FHA is often short duration but involves intense planning and execution. Moreover, every FHA mission has a unique flavor to it dependent on the location, the geography, and the history of the affected nation. For example, Haiti is an island, which means that it does not require overflight permissions from other nations to access the island, as opposed to Nepal, which is landlocked and has neighboring states that control their sovereign airspace. Further, an island nation is receptive to maritime response capabilities such as aircraft carriers and amphibious ships, as well as hospital ships such as the USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy. Nepal on the other hand requires more land capabilities, and the use of intermediate staging bases (ISBs) in other nations supporting the effort.
The Comfort and Mercy tease out more into the intricacies of FHA and to an extent disaster relief in the homeland. Each ship maintains a skeleton crew to operate the ship. However, the medical crew that mans the ship is not full time. Medical personnel who man the ship in crisis are either reservists who require time to mobilize, or active serving at other locations such as base hospitals and medical clinics. Either way, use of the ship will pull away medical capabilities from bases, making it more difficult for service members and families, and in the case of mobilized reservists, it takes away from the communities where they are employed. IT is not an easy decision to send hospital ships on a mission, nor should it be automatic to do so. Further, the vertical lift required to transport patients to and from the ship may not be worth the effort, if the same medical capability can occur on land.
Juxtaposed against the response in Haiti is the FHA mission in Nepal. While Haiti is half of the Iland of Hispaniola, Nepal is a landlocked country sitting at extremely high altitudes. Moreover, Haiti is in America’s backyard, while Nepal is literally half a world away. Other distinctions in the two operations include the absolute destruction of the Haitian government’s and military’s ability to respond vs how Nepal was able to maintain command and control and designate it’s own military as the lead in response.
With regards to command and control, although the U.S. will work with the host and other responding nations, we often find that a parallel C2 structure works best. This is often due to the short duration of FHA missions, as well as ensuring that the CCMD maintains its supporting role. Indeed, in each of the case studies, the U.S. military operated as a JTF, and not as a CJTF.
We split the class into two distinct teams. Half the class operates as the USAFRICOM staff, and the other as the Country Team in the affected nation. We keep the two groups separated to simulate how a planning team may not have continues and direct communication with personnel on the ground. Further, I direct that the country team will not produce any PowerPoint slides, and will conduct all communication via email and word documents. Slides are for the OPT.
Given the short duration of the exercise, the products I ask for from the OPT are a mission analysis, an operational approach, and a command and control diagram. We do not go into detailed course of action development, nor do we conduct wargaming. However, both these steps occured last week in a similar exercise (with a full week of planning).
21 November:Guest Speaker and After Action Review
We begin the day with each of the students filling out their end of course surveys, as well as their faculty evaluation surveys. We followed this with an in class after action review where we went over the desired outcomes from The Chairman’s Officer Professional Military Education Policy or OPMEP. When I arrived here, this document was part of the reading during our new faculty development instruction. We further talked about how we were able to integrate the Chairman’s special areas of emphasis. Two elements we did not get to were the electromagnetic spectrum, nor did we get into detailed analysis of space or cyberspace planning and operations.
With regards to space and cyberspace, the capabilities and actions in these two domains are difficult to integrate into planning and into the overall instruction. This is a weakness in the instruction, as most of the planning and discussion over ten weeks focused on the land, maritime, and air domains. Further, the USAFRICOM AOR planning scenario leads the students to a land-centric design and course of action. Considering the recent strategic guidance from pivots to Asia, and the call-outs of China as a competitor, a USPACOM-centric scenario that involves more actions in the maritime and air domain is something to consider. The U.S. Army Decisive Action Training Environment (DATE) offers multiple options and fictional scenarios to plan from, and I am surprised we are not looking at adapting them.
Some other notable comments were the desire to have more interaction with students from other seminars. Currently, the formal interaction takes place on the softball field (and in the winter on the volleyball court). When I attended as a student, the course had electives that would have students enrolled from various seminars, which offered the opportunity to meet other officers who are serving throughout the joint force. Figuring out a more formal way to interact with other seminars looks to be a project to work on in future courses. Finally, throughout the course, we had to taper off discussions and put the “in the parking lot” as time did not allow for the tangent conversation. But if you are going to put conversations in a parking lot, you need to visit the parking lot sometime in the future. Perhaps at the end of the day, on a Friday, or over lunchtime. If you never visit the parking lot, then in reality the conversation went to the garbage dump.
Following the after action review, the seminar hosted retired Major General Dillon. The discussion went deep into great power competition, specifically how we are preparing leaders in the joint force to think through this lens.
Graduation
22 November: Graduation
The final day of the course is graduation. General Holmes from Air Combat Command was our guest speaker, and he offered a nice anecdote about the events of 9/11, and how they still relate to what we do today. Further, he discussed the dimension of time, and how planners at the operational and strategic level need to take the long view of time in an era of competition.
We conclude by saying goodbye to our students as they head to the parking lot to drive to the airport, or back to their home. There is a “military friendship” feel as they depart. What I mean by “military friendship” is that throughout anyone’s time in the military, from basic training through the war college, we forge short term friendships with multitudes of people. This happens at schools, assignments, or any other situation where you are put in an environment with strangers who share the same goals. Moreover, military schools often occur away from the family, which has you breaking bread at lunch and dinner with people you barley know. Then at the end of 2 or 10 weeks, you say farewell, never to cross paths with them again.