A Unified Command Plan for a New Era
By
Major Kelly Houlgate, U.S. Marine Corps
Proceedings, September 2005
It's time to rethink the geographical structure of the Cold War-era document in light of 21st century missions.
Since it was first created in 1946, the Unified Command Plan (UCP), the key aspect of the organizational command structure for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), has been hotly debated. The plan, however, has seen the U.S. successfully through every conflict of the Cold War through the early years of the war on terrorism. The plan has been crucial to decision-making and global command and control, especially since the combatant commanders were greatly empowered by the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (Public Law 99-433).
The time has come, however, to rethink and perhaps completely rewrite the Unified Command Plan, basing the commands on functional capability requirements. As we move farther into the 21st century, sure to be marked by uncertainty and continued combat against shadowy non-nation state enemies, it is imperative that the entire national security establishment take a long, hard look at the country's organizational and command requirements.
Changing the plan is not a radical idea. Its official history states that, "much of the history of the UCP involves debates over how commands should be organized. Such disputes usually pitted those who wanted commands organized by geographic areas against those who advocated forming commands according to functional groupings of forces." 1 Change in the plan is a normal, periodic process by which the Defense Department reevaluates America's global needs. The plan is a flexible, changeable document that has adapted to the times. It most recently underwent major changes in 2002 with the creation of Northern Command. The opportunity for significant, ground-breaking change is greater now than perhaps ever before: the U.S. defense establishment is involved in the Quadrennial Defense Review; the administration has called for global realignment of forces; the President is in the midst of reorganizing the National Security Council; government officials and outside observers continue to call for increased inter-agency cooperation throughout government; DoD is championing a strategic planning methodology called "capabilities based planning;" and the Global War of Terrorism is appearing to be a struggle that will span generations. The convergence of these factors points towards an unprecedented chance for America to increase its security, raise the efficiency of its training and preparedness, and better respond to tomorrow's needs.
Geography or Capabilities?
The current plan is based both on geographically oriented—Northern, Southern, Central, European, and Pacific—and functional—Joint Forces, Special Operations, Strategic, and Transportation—commands. It is important to note that the geographic commands are based on 20th century nation-state boundaries. The 21st century is not likely to be so neat. A command structure based on the map seemingly makes things simple when an isolated crisis occurs. What happens, however, when the enemy is a global terrorist organization?
Since 2001, the response has been to assign Special Operations Command (SOCOM) the role of leading the fight against terrorism. This command's success makes one wonder about other possibilities involving function over geography. Perhaps the entire plan can be reorganized based on functional area, or capability commands. This dramatic paradigm shift has its precedents. The Special Operations Command is a functional command that has a strategic warfighting mission, and, since 2003, Strategic Command (STRATCOM) has had the leading role in global strike. It is not inconceivable to find it planning and leading a retaliatory strike against a rogue nation. The two commands' missions, based on capabilities, point the way to the future.
The unified plan might be rewritten to include the following eight commands:
- Homeland Defense (HDCOM) would focus on defending the U.S. at home, to include borders and coastlines. It would work closely with the Department of Homeland Security.
- Humanitarian Assistance (HACOM) would have close ties to the non-governmental organization (NGO) and the civil disaster relief communities. It would seek to have NGO representatives embedded in its staff.
- Security and Stability (SASCOM) would operate the U.S.'s security cooperation and engagement efforts worldwide. It would also run any Defense Department contributions to stability and reconstruction missions.
- Major Combat (MCCOM) would train to fight the nation's major, high intensity combat efforts.
- Exercise/Experiment (EXCOM), a slimmed down Joint Forces Command, would conduct experimentation and exercises with an eye towards transformation.
- Special Operations (SOCOM)
- Strategic (STRATCOM)
- Transportation (TRANSCOM)
The last three would retain much of their current missions, with some divestitures and additions as needed to balance the new plan. In this construct, the joint trainer and force provider role would be returned to a re-oriented joint staff, with the inherent support from the services.
There would no longer be geographic commands. The services would still "organize, train, and equip" forces to be provided to the combatant commanders—perhaps better named capability commanders—CapComs. Each could still have functional component commanders and service components, at least for the foreseeable future. (The ultimate evolution of joint warfare is arguably a single-service defense force, but that is another discussion.) Each commander would be required to maintain a rapidly deployable Standing Joint Task Force (SJTF) headquarters cell. In the event of a crisis, the Secretary of Defense would assign a supported command, and also give supporting commands instructions. The SJTF (or a newly created Joint Task Force) for the supported command would move into theater and execute required operations. Because a task force would be focused on a much narrower set of operational tasks and missions—not the global region, as is the practice today—that means that it likely would be better prepared to accomplish its assigned missions.
Having each commander focus on a capability or functional area lets the Defense Department mass its expertise as needed. For example, the humanitarian assistance staff would be populated with members of the services and various agencies whose training and expertise is dedicated towards humanitarian operations. Security and Stability Command would be filled with language experts and warriors with small wars skill sets. Special operations would continue to focus on direct action against high value targets, but many Special Forces capabilities might move to Security and Stability Command. The command focuses would never be as narrow as one would like for that could create unacceptable capability gaps. The Secretary of Defense and the joint staff would allocate missions to the eight commands to hedge risks and minimize gaps.
Initially, there would be links to services based on traditional roles and missions, though these would likely shift as the plan matures. As part of this dramatic shift, the President could also consider moving the Coast Guard. In the post-9/11 world, with the Coast Guard taking on a much greater defense role, the Department of Defense might be where the Coast Guard belongs.
Breaking Down Barriers
Some readers may discount this proposal simply due to its jarring change to the normal comfort zone. How will the commands understand the regions and know what's going on in the world? First, the global nature of information and awareness supports a functional command structure. Geography no longer constrains operational commanders. Only the Pacific and European commands have their primary headquarters in their theater of responsibility and Central Command leads its Middle East mission from a headquarters in Florida.
Second, with a revitalized and empowered National Security Council (NSC), 2 all elements of national power will be better aligned. The council can and does organize itself for specific tasks, often by region. The State and Defense Departments also have regional teams to advise their leaders. These will form the core geographic expertise, augmented by a continuous flow of global intelligence. Country teams will remain crucial parts of the process, responding to requests for information on their specific nations. Today, combatant commanders focus efforts on continually tracking regional trends and planning for contingency missions. Under this proposed plan, commanders would continually train to provide capabilities and accomplish assigned missions, focusing on specific regions, with significant participation from the NSC inter-agency community, only as part of specific plans and for intelligence purposes. The government as a whole will focus regionally and globally, while DoD focuses on needed military capabilities.
Under a restructured unified command plan, humanitarian efforts such as provided by Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron Fifteen (HM-15) from USS Essex (LHD-2) during the early 2005 tsunami disaster relief, would be directed by a command focused solely on humanitarian assistance.
|
|
Critics might point out that the commands under this new plan appear to duplicate service roles. This is a valid point. A common criticism of Special Operations Command, despite its success, is that it has almost become a fifth service. That perception is primarily because it trains and equips forces—traditionally service roles—for specific missions. This is exactly what commanders under the proposed plan would do. Services would still have to provide forces across the spectrum of commands and would thus not be as specialized. As with SOCOM today, the commanders and services will share training costs and maximize opportunities. The ultimate result might be the marginalization of the services, truly an issue that would lead to heavy resistance to change. Other than cultures to defend and allegedly healthy competition, however, there are not many compelling arguments to maintain services as they currently exist in an era of joint warfare and soon-to-be joint procurement. Taking away some of the acquisition authorities—the "equip" of "organize, train, and equip"—from the services, and giving them to the new commanders, would potentially alleviate many of the programmatic dilemmas facing the DoD and Congress. Commanders, focused solely on their specific required capabilities, would not compete as aggressively. Of course there would still be budget battles, but once capability requirements were set by the Secretary of Defense, it would primarily be a mathematics problem, not a roles and missions debate.
No More "Proconsuls"
Today's world is undeniably global. Having senior commanders focus on specific regions cheats reality. Terrorism, natural disasters, and other challenges—among them WMD threats, non-proliferation, space, information, and communications—have no borders. No other military is based on geographic boundaries, due partly to their limited scope but also in part to a different world view. India does not have an "Americas Command." Removing geography from operational commanders also removes the proconsul stigma that has become connected with them in recent years. It puts the regional focus and initiative back into the hands of the State Department and the NSC/inter-agency process. To be sure, the inter-agency community might need to reorganize to include regional inter-agency teams, but the defense command structure interface would be significantly streamlined. A single command—Security and Stability—would work closely with the State Department to manage security cooperation efforts and global engagement. Thorny issues, such as the current division of the Caribbean and Africa and the Israel-Arab Middle East dilemma, now under two separate commands, are alleviated by not being tied to geographic boundaries. Perhaps most importantly, DoD needs to focus on the world as a whole, not in packets. The likely nature of the war on terror—over generations—not to mention other trends, begs for boundary-free organizations.
Rigorous Consideration of Possibilities
The proposed rewrite of the Unified Command Plan may not be the answer to the future security concerns that the U.S. faces, but it comes closer to matching efforts to achieve inter-agency and joint coordination. The DoD, it has been argued, will need to take the lead to force the inter-agency process to reform itself. A great place to start would be reforming the plan.
Special Operations Command is truly the test case for the proposed realignment. It is a functional command that has an operational and strategic warfighting mission and it has a much larger budget than the other commands. It seems to be passing this test with flying colors.
The future appears to call for similar command structures that will better prepare the nation's armed forces to conduct the most likely missions. As it has done many times in the past, DoD should take this opportunity to exercise some rigorous thought on the plan's possibilities. The time to fundamentally rewrite the Unified Command Plan is now.
- See "History of the Unified Command Plan." back to article
- An excellent short description of some recent changes can be found in a Washington Times op-ed piece by David Isby, The New National Security Council . back to article
Major Houlgate, a former inspector-instructor with the 2d Battalion, 25th Marines, is a strategic analyst in Plans, Policies, and Operations Division at Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps.
| Join
the Naval Institute, a membership association for Navy,
Marine Corps, and Coast Guard professionals and anyone interested
in the sea services. Benefits include a subscription to Proceedings
magazine, discounts on books, magazines and gifts, and access to
the world's largest private ship and aircraft photo library. |
© 2005 U.S. Naval Institute. All rights reserved.
