Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr. has served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic and the commander in chief of the former U.S. Atlantic Command since September 1997. In October 1999, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen presided at a ceremony at Virginia's Norfolk Naval Base to redesignate the Atlantic Command the U.S. Joint Forces Command. In addition to his geographic responsibilities within the Atlantic region's area of operations, Adm. Gehman now is responsible for supplying other U.S. joint combatant commands with combat-ready forces, for developing joint doctrine and requirements, and for supporting U.S. domestic agencies in the event of an attack on U.S. soil involving weapons of mass destruction. Commissioned through the NROTC program at Pennsylvania State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering, Gehman's numerous sea-duty assignments include command of the salvage and recovery ship USS Conserver, the guided-missile destroyer USS Dahlgren, and the Sixth Fleet flagship USS Belknap. While serving as commander of Cruiser-Destroyer Group Eight embarked in the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, he commanded Joint Task Force 120 during Operation Support Democracy in Haiti. Prior to assuming command of the U.S. Joint Forces Command, Gehman served as the 29th vice chief of naval operations.   
 

Sea Power: Admiral, your functional responsibilities for joint warfare [i.e., warfare involving more than one branch of the U.S. armed services] as a trainer, integrator, and provider of joint forces are unique within the U.S. unified command structure. How do they enable you to serve as the chief advocate for jointness among the armed services? 

GEHMAN: The word advocate was carefully chosen, and I think it's a word of art. It suggests that some selling needs to be done on joint-warfare issues, and it suggests that some people need to be convinced--both of which are true. So, we advocate down here--we attempt to argue, we attempt to gather analytical evidence of the joint way of doing business, and then we take it to Washington, D.C., where all the decisions are made. The decision process is unchanged. 

One of the things we have to do with our advocacy is to gain consensus. We have several constituents. We have the other CINCs [commanders in chief of the U.S. unified commands], an important group of constituents. We have to work with them to gain consensus on a joint position--the issue may relate to hardware, doctrine, training, or interoperability. We gather evidence--hard evidence that will stand up to the scrutiny of Washington, D.C., and the procurement regime--and we take it to Washington and try to gain approval. This is new and different. 

Your command's new functions reflect an evolutionary redefinition of your mission and geographic area of responsibility over a number of years, correct? 

GEHMAN: That is correct. The evolution started with Goldwater-Nichols in 1986--the Department of Defense Reorganization Act. This is a natural outcome and progression over a period of 13 years. What has grown up is a body of people, doctrine, tactics, procedures, and requirements focused on the joint world. This body of people, doctrine, and institutions has slowly and, in an evolutionary manner, gained more conciseness and definition over the years. About six years ago, specific joint duties and responsibilities were assigned to the U.S. Atlantic Command. These duties were expanded last autumn with our redesignation as the U.S. Joint Forces Command. 

Do your duties as NATO Supreme Commander Atlantic remain unchanged as a result of the unified command's redesignation? 

GEHMAN: They remain unchanged even though the work that we are doing here in the United States in the area of experimentation, interoperability, and joint requirements is very similar to the work that the alliance is undertaking. The alliance is depending upon this link to remain very strong. 

What is your assessment of U.S. joint-warfare capabilities and interoperability, and do you see the Joint Forces Command accelerating progress in these areas?  GEHMAN: My assessment is that the more we learn the more we realize how much more needs to be done. We have just begun the process of educating ourselves in the world of joint requirements. And as we do so, we only then realize what more needs to be done. We are beginning to recognize some interoperability process shortfalls, some training and doctrine shortfalls, and some policy shortfalls. If we don't address them, we're never going to get any better. I'll give you a case in point--without mentioning any particular manufacturers or services. 

As we learned more about joint command and control areas, we came across U.S./DOD [Department of Defense] standard MILSPECS [military specifications] for command-and-control systems that fully conform to their design criteria--but which are not sufficiently interoperable. When I say that they're not interoperable, I mean that they are interoperable to the 80th percentile, but we are now coming to the conclusion that that degree of interoperability is not sufficient to get us to the warfighting capabilities envisioned in Joint Vision 2010 [the Joint Chiefs of Staff publication describing how U.S. armed forces will evolve to achieve new levels of effectiveness in joint warfighting]. 

The MILSPEC design criteria and standards were loose enough to be interpreted slightly differently by the services or their acquisition agents, and systems were optimized for the service environment. In the field, we found that the services' command-and-control interoperability level is good enough for training and good enough to get by now, but it will not suffice for the warfighting skills and level of competence that we envision in 2010. That suggests that there's something fundamentally wrong with our requirements, procurement, and acquisition process. So that's what I mean by saying that the more we learn, the more we recognize what additional things need to be done. 

What does this suggest for your future role in defining joint-warfare requirements in the defense long-range planning-and-budget process? 

GEHMAN: What it has led to is a policy-level agreement that our present interoperability processes are good enough to get by on for now, but they are not good enough for us to excel. We must improve the processes that we have in DOD for defining interoperability, choosing the interoperability standard we want to buy to, and then enforcing that standard throughout the acquisition process. Part of that process involves someone--such as the U.S. Joint Forces Command--going to the Pentagon armed with evidence and analysis, hard rationale, and demonstrable proof that DOD needs to spend the money in the way that we recommend it be spent. We must be able to show what DOD will get for doing this. 

What are some of the more important areas of joint-warfare doctrine that you will review? 

GEHMAN: One of the things that is happening as the U.S. Joint Forces Command matures is that we are identifying a handful of warfighting areas in which the joint requirement supersedes the services' requirements. In the whole universe of warfighting capabilities, the number is very small, but there are some areas in which the joint requirements are more important. I believe that later this year--our first year of existence--we will stake out a claim that there are certain areas in which the joint prerequisites are important. This would include such things as command and control, theater ballistic-missile defense, integrated air defense, close air support, and some intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance areas. There also will be some logistics issues on our list and maybe one or two others that I've overlooked. 

We will focus on the doctrine in these areas, as well as the joint-operational architecture that supports them and the technology that supports interoperability. I am not prepared to give you a list of action items--except to say that one of the deliverables that we have for our first year of existence is to obtain Gen. Shelton's [JCS Chairman Gen. Henry H. Shelton] approval of the areas in which the joint world has a dominant interest. 

This will likely manifest itself one issue at a time--as issues come up before the JROC [the Joint Requirements Oversight Council] or the Defense Acquisition Board, or as the secretary of defense writes his Defense Planning Guidance. We will attempt to get joint equities nailed down. During the course of the year, as I make my reports to the secretary of defense and the chairman, I will outline for them the areas which I think are more important or the areas where I think the joint world probably should step up and demand better support. 

Do you work some of these issues on a "real-time" basis with your counterparts in the unified-command structure? 

GEHMAN: Absolutely. We are in the process of delivering capability to forces in the field for today's operation--and we're talking about capabilities that took us just 60 days to work out and 90 days to deliver. This, of course, is the speed of light as far as the DOD acquisition process is concerned. I can tick off on my fingertips real military capabilities which have been delivered to the unified CINCs in the area of Joint Operations--in real time while an operation was ongoing. 

What do your responsibilities as the DOD executive agent for joint-warfare experimentation entail? 

GEHMAN: Experimentation is a subset of our major goal of integration. In other words, we must prepare for the future in a methodic and systematic way. We must have a process for examining concepts, organizational matters, doctrinal matters, and future technology--not only to maintain our own current military superiority, but also to prevent a surprise by an adversary. We should remember that when Germany attacked France in World War II, the Germans fielded an inferior military force in terms of numbers of tanks, planes, and soldiers. But they had different doctrine and different technology--blitzkrieg. So, joint experimentation is simply the joint world's version of what all the services are doing. There is an enormous amount of very aggressive futuristic service experimentation going on. 

Are you cooperating with, for example, the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory? 

GEHMAN: Absolutely, as well as with the Navy's fleet battle experiments, the Air Force's air expeditionary warfare experiments, and the Army's Force 21 Digitized Division experiments. All of the services have very aggressive, large, and well-funded and -supported experimentation programs for both the mid- and long-term. The question is: Where is the joint world's experimentation program? We don't always want to be the caboose on this train, so we have just started one, and it supports our integration pillar. 

We will be leveraging what the services do. I have a small amount of money appropriated by Congress for joint experimentation, and I examine the service experiments. If I can sprinkle some joint money and jointness on the services' experiments, I leverage my money 20- or 50-to-1, because the services are providing all the manpower, the ranges, and other things. All I have to do is add a small joint quotient to it. If there is no jointness that I can extract out of the service experiment, that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with it--they may be experimenting on some service core competency, which is just fine. I also have my own self-initiated, self-designed, self-funded joint experiments in which I conduct experiments into the joint capabilities of the future. 

Could you give some examples of those, please? 

GEHMAN: We started our first experiment last year. It was initiated here, designed here, run here, and paid for by us. It is an experiment on trying to attack critical mobile targets on the battlefield. This is a lesson we learned in Desert Storm and Kosovo. We cannot currently do as good a job as we would like on killing critical mobile targets on the battlefield. A critical mobile target could be a mobile ballistic-missile launcher, a mobile SAM [surface-to-air missile], a mobile headquarters, a weapon of mass destruction, or some other kind of a mobile threat--anything that scurries around the battlefield and is hard to find can be classified as a critical mobile target. 

We have taken the approach that none of the services' approaches to killing critical mobile targets seems to be working because right now we are not satisfied we have as good a capability as we would like. So we are trying a joint approach to attacking critical mobile targets on the battlefield, and that's our first experiment. Phase one was completed late last summer. Phases two and three will be conducted this year. 

The second self-generated experiment will be an experiment called Rapid Decisive Operation, and this will be an experiment in ways to go to decisive operations in hours or a day instead of weeks or months--this means going right for the other guy's jugular directly when hostilities begin. In other words, there will be no seizing of lodgments, no building up of logistics, no preparing the battlefield--none of that. I don't know how we are going to do that, but I do know it's going to take the capabilities of all the services, and they are going to have to be linked together on the battlefield in ways that they apparently are not linked now. 

Do your new Joint Warfighting Center and the ongoing series of JTF [joint task force] exercises figure in this experimentation process? 

GEHMAN: They all add to the critical mass of expertise that I have available to our experimenters to learn and not repeat things that have been done by others. We will harvest lessons learned and experience of both exercises and real-world operations. The whole idea of what we have put together here with the seven or eight subordinate commands that work for me--like the Joint C4ISR [command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] Battle Center, the Joint Warfare Analysis Center, the Joint Warfighting Center, the Joint Training and Analysis and Simulation Center, and others--adds to our body of knowledge here such that we have enough critical mass. We've got enough people, enough energy, and enough intelligence to allow me to work on these issues pretty rapidly, so they all contribute. 

Did members of your staff monitor the December 1999 JTF exercise [JTFEX 00-1] off the Atlantic Coast, and will you receive a report on its results? 

GEHMAN: I will receive a report on some of the lessons learned from the JTFEX. I did have people on board the principal ships during this JTFEX, but I do not receive a report in the sense of a grade. We offer to our rotationally deploying forces of all the services a complex and sophisticated joint- training experience before they get overseas into their complex theater of operations. We rely on my service components to certify the deployability of their own forces. I don't receive reports in the sense of a grade or a certification. I do receive reports on things that we have learned, what is working and what is not working, and what improvements we need in certain joint areas. 

We need to be sure that we keep a clear differentiation for your readers between joint training and joint experimentation. They are two different things, and they are not compatible with each other. You cannot experiment in training events even though you would, at first glance, think that the two would have a close relationship to each other. Joint training exercises are not a great place to conduct experiments. 

How have the other unified commanders and the individual armed services received your work in this area? 

GEHMAN: Each constituency is a little different, but our work has so far been received very well. I'm delighted with the support that I have received from Congress, the secretary of defense, the chairman, the JROC, the other uniformed CINCs, and the services. In our first year of existence we want to codify and put in place those processes by which we develop joint prerequisites. We must understand them and gain consensus among the unified CINCs on the way to proceed. Right now, one of the problems we have is that each CINC--not always, but sometimes--comes in with a different requirement, statement, or approach. We must get the CINCs to speak with one voice. 

Then we must gain support for what it is that we want on the boards, committees, and agencies in Washington, D.C., and then we must get into the enforcement business. We have to stick to it. In other words, advocacy involves not only coming up with the idea and then substantiating the idea, but also sticking with it to get it approved. That means many trips, phone calls, and participation on boards, committees, working groups, and integrated product teams. That's what is different about this command. 

Do your responsibilities for joint-warfare matters within the U.S. defense establishment extend into combined operations with our allies? 

GEHMAN: Yes. First of all, in my role as the joint force trainer in the United States, I do everything with our coalition operations in mind. December's JTFEX 00-1 had some coalition aspects to it. I constantly insert coalition requirements for all of our training audiences. 

In my NATO hat, there are several key roles that very nicely complement what's going on in the United States. First of all, under the Defense Capabilities Initiatives agreed to by the heads of states and governments at NATO's Washington Summit, the NATO nations signed up to a process of examining and acquiring more relevant capabilities, like mobility and sustainability. Some of the work in that area has been given to SACLANT [Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic]. So obviously, everything that I learn in my U.S. hat translates over to my NATO hat. 

One area of critical importance involves the NATO force-development process. That is the way that NATO builds armed forces. It starts by NATO's two supreme commanders drafting proposed force goals. Therefore, I can write draft force goals for more relevant, more capable, more precise, more deployable, more all-weather, lighter, and more sustainable forces. I get to put the first mark down on the paper. Those are just draft force goals, and they get massaged, whittled, and compromised as they go through the process. But, together with General Clark [Gen. Wesley K. Clark, Supreme Allied Commander Europe], I am the one who writes the first piece of paper. Obviously, if we think that a need for modernization exists then we have a grand position from which to initiate it. 

This process redefines NATO's trans-Atlantic link. What many people think of as the trans-Atlantic link is convoys of troop ships carrying military people and supplies from North America to Europe. Well, that's part of it, but I think the trans-Atlantic link has really changed to become an intellectual and leadership link--a link of innovation and technology. This command has a lot to do with that. 

The Joint Forces Command also was assigned the mission of providing military assistance to U.S. civil authorities responsible for dealing with the effects of incidents involving weapons of mass destruction within U.S. territory. What does this mission entail? 

GEHMAN: First of all, the Joint Forces Command is responsible for providing military support to civil authorities in all circumstances. The difference now has to do with managing the consequences of an incident involving weapons of mass destruction. We will be in charge of the U.S. military response versus just contributing forces, as in other cases. The secretary of defense has long felt that the uniformed active-duty U.S. military response to a weapon of mass destruction [WMD] incident in the United States was too fragmented. The normal procedural military way about organizing, training, and preparing for a mission was not being employed for a WMD consequence-management incident. He felt that this was a deficiency. 

We will always act in support of a lead federal agency in a WMD consequence-management operation. Under no circumstances will we--or our joint task force--be in charge of the incident. We will be in support of either a state governor, FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency], or the Department of Justice and FBI. This will depend on the nature of the incident and who is in charge. 

Does this carve out any new domestic responsibilities as a unified commander? 

GEHMAN: A minor one. We have created a Joint Task Force for Civil Support--a very small and lean organization commanded by Brigadier General Lawlor [Brig. Gen. Bruce M. Lawlor, USA]. We are presently training and equipping that force to be able to go to the scene of an incident and exercise command and control of all federal uniformed military forces that respond. This will allow our responsiveness to civilian authorities to be more organized, more efficient, and faster--with good reporting from the scene. 

How have FEMA and other federal agencies reacted to this initiative? 

GEHMAN: They are delighted that the Department of Defense now has one point of contact instead of fifty. 

Looking ahead ten years, what would you like to see accomplished to achieve your command's vision to transform U.S. armed forces capabilities into those outlined in Joint Vision 2010? 

GEHMAN: I would like to see a series of perhaps half a dozen military capability challenges that remain beyond our arms' reach. In other words, I would like to see the U.S. military always grasping and reaching for advance capabilities--and never be resting on its laurels or standing still. I would like to see joint interoperability defined as well in a more technical sense--that is, defined in acquisition, procurement, and engineering terms. How many bits per second? How many errors per message? What are the essential joint information-exchange requirements that you can define in a more technical and engineering sense? I am seeing some good trends. I think the trend in unmanned aerial vehicles is a very good trend. I think that we have not yet begun to realize their total value. 

I also would like to see a couple of real leap-ahead, out-of-the-box joint concepts supported. I am thinking about such things as "swarm" tactics, for example, a favorite of mine in which, instead of throwing a finite number of very expensive weapons system at the enemy--like cruise missiles, precision-guided weapons, and $100 million airplanes--you throw hundreds of thousands of $4 weapons. Swarm technology is a concept that employs many small things--sensors, radios, weapons--and you just sprinkle them all over the place. It may turn out that this is very useful in urban areas, but this is an example of what I'm talking about--three to six concepts, which are completely out-of-the-box. I would like to see a half dozen of those healthily supported. 

That vision adds substance to your role as an advocate for joint forces. In closing, is there anything else you would like to say to the readers of Sea Power Magazine? 

GEHMAN: I think it is important that students of national-security affairs realize that the principles of war have not changed. Some of the ways of going about military operations are changing, and some of the tactics, techniques, and procedures are changing, but the principles have not changed. You still have to get there "firstest with the mostest" to paraphrase a Civil War general [Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest]. You still have to apply more force than the enemy is applying, faster, and at the right point. And so there are some things that never change. You have to move faster than the enemy, you have to see the battlefield better than he sees it, and you have to make decisions faster than he does. Those principles simply never change. Here at the Joint Forces Command, we are working on better ways to execute those principles.