Giambastiani: Change in Culture Key to Joint Transformation

Since Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld endorsed the term “transformation” in 2000, it has become the watch-word for the prioritization of investment in technologies and concepts of operation that enhance the military forces’ ability to act in an integrated fashion. From the battlefields of Iraq to the halls of the Pentagon, the DoD leadership gradually has clarified a vision of future military capability in which interoperability, not only of systems but of various service and agency cultures, is the key to success in coalition operations.

As the executive agent charged with ensuring the future of transformation, the U.S. Joint Forces Command at Norfolk, Va., oversees the interoperability of the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Navy. At the helm is Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr. He wears two hats as the NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Transformation, and Commander, Joint Forces Command. His mission is to lead the way for the transformation of U.S. and NATO alliance command-and-control capabilities.

Giambastiani is a submariner whose earlier commands included NR-1, the Navy’s nuclear-powered research submarine, and the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Richard B. Russell. He commanded Atlantic Fleet Submarine Force, NATO’s Submarines Allied Command Atlantic, and was Rumsfeld’s military assistant. He became the leader of Joint Forces Command in 2003.

Giambastiani recently discussed his command’s challenges and priorities with Sea Power Associate Editor Hunter C. Keeter.

Does the military develop capabilities, plan operations and carry out missions better today as a result of joint transformation?

Giambastiani: Is the military doing much better at this? The answer is, yes. Is it where we should be? The answer is, no. The reason why I say this is we keep striving to know how to better integrate our existing capabilities.

What is Joint Forces Command’s role to ensure a closer integration of capabilities?

Giambastiani: What we don’t want to do is have all the services and agencies out trying to build their own systems and then not be able to perform operational level command and control when they get together. We have been given significant authority to work with services like the Navy, for example, in management initiative decisions. That allows us oversight in programs that involve joint command and control.

Once joint command and control is working, how does it address the challenge of diverse requirements for fires?

Giambastiani: There are a lot of people and capabilities that provide fires. There are aviation fires; there are ground combat fires from artillery, rockets, missiles; and fires can come from at sea in the form of rockets, missiles and guns. The question is how do you put all that together? We are becoming more integrated with regard to joint fires, particularly in reference to the delivery of air-dropped munitions.

How do better-integrated joint aerial fires affect changes in the structure of forces that depend on those capabilities?

Giambastiani: One of the things happening is that Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker [Army chief of staff] is reducing the amount of organic artillery that he has in a number of units. He is using the personnel to, in fact, create additional military police, civil affairs and a whole series of other functions that are important. He also is using these personnel to fill out combat divisions, where they are, in fact, creating a fourth brigade in some cases. Take the 3rd Infantry Division, for example. When it fought in Operation Iraqi Freedom, it had three brigades. The next time we use it, it is going to have four brigades.

Is the trend in joint interoperability to make the uniformed services more dependent upon one another?

Giambastiani: If you make each of the services more interdependent on each other, you can, in fact, invest money or re-invest personnel in the capabilities that you need, to make this joint force better equipped to do its job in the future.

What is the next step for interservice cooperation?

Giambastiani: When you start talking about moving to a coherently integrated force, there are some very important enablers. The integrated force has got to be interdependent; it has to be capabilities-based, collaborative and network centric.

How do you create this kind of cohesiveness?

Giambastiani: You have to have the ability to conduct high-level, or large-scale, vertical and horizontal collaboration. That means up and down the chain of command and across all of your capabilities and forces. The ability to collaborate is what allows you to do command and control, plus collecting and sharing information, and then you have a better understanding of the commander’s intent.

From the perspective of your NATO role, what is the challenge of interoperability?

Giambastiani: We have coalition information sharing, not only through trading pieces of paper, but digitally, to share knowledge and do it in a manner that doesn’t create an incredible amount of fire brakes or delay the process so that you can actually work toward outcomes and end-states.

Is this a change in philosophy for both U.S. and allied forces?

Giambastiani: It is not so much a change in philosophy; but a change in culture. Culture is a very important part of being able to do anything in any organization. One must know what is the established culture and how to change that. The culture of understanding joint warfighting today is significantly advanced over what it was a few years ago. In fact, think about how far we have come with regard to joint warfighting. It is pretty remarkable.

Could joint force integration expand beyond the traditional spheres of the military?

Giambastiani: The Goldwater-Nichols Act [which reorganized the Department of Defense command structure] happened in 1986 and here we are, 18 years later, moving toward that. Guess what? Now you get the 9/11 Commission talking about having a Goldwater-Nichols for the rest of the government. This is about changing cultures to integrate. That is one of the points we make all the time. We are working on the questions of how we bring in the interagency process; how we bring in allies, nongovernmental organizations and other agencies.

What are some of the technological challenges remaining in the arena of joint warfare?

Giambastiani: Fratricide prevention is big, and that means Blue Force tracking [knowing where friendly units are on the battlefield] in addition to combat identification. Knowing these things is very important for situational awareness, not only to have a good idea of what is happening on the battlefield, but to keep from killing each other.

Are there shortfalls in today’s information management capabilities?

Giambastiani: We need technologies that allow us to do a more effects-based [long-term results] assessment that is real-time, instead of what I call attrition-based battle damage assessment. One of the findings that we put out in an unclassified testimony before the House Armed Services Committee is that our ability to do battle damage assessment is far outpaced by our ability to move on the battlefield. We were way behind this [during Operation Iraqi Freedom].

Based on lessons learned from Iraqi Freedom and other actions, what are your views on collaborative access to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities?

Giambastiani: The only way you can do ISR is to do it in a joint fashion. The questions are: how ubiquitous is the information? Is it useful? How real-time is it? And how can you help it enable quick operations? Judging the old paradigm of battle damage assessment, we are not quick enough at turning information around. We are very good at getting static looks at a battlefield or some kind of operation. What we are not good at is getting someone a picture of what is happening in real-time when we get very dynamic and everybody is moving very quickly. Through efforts like Blue Force tracking we are beginning to understand where our forces are. The question is, where are the enemy forces? From the fratricide point of view this is critical.

What are some of the tools for collecting information and how are you using these technologies today?

Giambastiani: The Air Force now has built up a pretty substantial capability within Air Combat Command to support Predator unmanned aerial vehicles. Those vehicles are in Air Combat Command, under Joint Forces Command, and we provide them to locations around the world. Many are deployed to the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility [including the Middle East]. The Predators are actually driven and controlled from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. The Air Force has a complete system there to support joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and also attack. We are doing this through reach-back [from the field to the continental United States] and this is a big deal.

What else concerns you, from your perspective on joint force technical capabilities?

Giambastiani: We are [deploying] huge numbers of forces and our ability to … do this [efficiently] today is not particularly good. We are spending a lot of time working in this area, for example with the U.S. Transportation Command, developing new ideas about joint [logistics].

Do you have a long-term vision for joint force support and sustainment capabilities?

Giambastiani: How do we deploy but logistically sustain the force in a way that makes sense, without costing the taxpayer huge bundles of money? We need to be able to make sure we are applying our dollars in the right locations without wasting them on piles of stocks in certain areas. We are trying to get rid of those iron mountains of the past.

Going forward with joint force transformation, what are some of your other priorities?

Giambastiani: If you look at what is important to the leadership in the Defense Department … [they] talk about creating a joint concept of operations for air, land and sea. How do you integrate all of this stuff? Translating that into a joint concept of operations and then into a joint acquisition strategy is a little different than the way we are doing business today.

Would new approaches to joint operations and acquisition have an impact on force integration?

Giambastiani: Think about the implications. This effort should help us drive toward what we want: doing things in a joint way as opposed to having organizations go forward and arbitrarily acquire capability by themselves.