Admiral Expands on Iraqi Freedom Lessons Learned
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2, 2003 -- Capabilities to enhance joint
warfighting and to beef up intelligence collection,
analysis and dispersion are at the top of the "lessons
learned" from Operation Iraqi Freedom, the commander of
U.S. Joint Forces Command told the House Armed Services
Committee here today.
Navy Adm. Edmund Giambastiani said his command placed
capabilities in three categories: those that worked well,
those that require improvement and those that didn't
measure up.
Joint Forces Command placed people with coalition forces at
many levels. These service members assessed operations,
technologies, doctrines and personnel policies and reported
back to the command's headquarters in Norfolk, Va. This was
the first time such a large joint team participated in a
lessons-learned action.
Giambastiani's testimony was not a systems analysis or
assessment report. "I'm not going to provide you with how
many aircraft we need or should buy, or what type of
weapons platform worked better than another," he said.
It was also not a review of tactical operations. "Our focus
was on the joint level of warfighting," he told the
representatives.
Giambastiani told the representatives Operation Iraqi
Freedom represented a "remarkable shift in the way joint
forces operate." The shift is a new joint way of war that
capitalizes on four key dimensions of the battlespace:
knowledge, speed, precision and lethality, he said.
The coalition was able to capitalize on technologies and
increased emphasis on flexible thinking to bring the
services together for a new level of joint operations,
Giambastiani said.
In the past, DoD officials said, it was enough to
"deconflict" operations -- to have the Marines working on
the right and the Army on the left, for example. This time,
truly joint operations took place, and American commanders
were confident enough to handle the situation, officials
said.
"There is no doubt that Operations Northern Watch and
Southern Watch in Iraq and Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan
greatly aided in improving our operational confidence in
the use of command and control," Giambastiani said.
He said the experience allowed U.S. Central Command "to
eliminate many of the seams that were typical of ad hoc
joint task forces."
The integration of special operations forces into the main
battle plan was another achievement. The admiral said that
in Desert Storm, U.S. forces had 30 Special Forces
operational detachment teams working on missions separate
from those of the conventional force.
"In Operation Iraqi Freedom we deployed over 100 Special
Forces teams, and they were closely wedded to our
conventional forces and, in many cases, merging the
capabilities of both land and air forces," he said. "The
net result is that we not only had precision munitions
launched from the air and ground, but precision decisions
to direct our smart weapons."
Giambastiani said urban operations, information operations
throughout the battlespace and intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance are among the capabilities that need
more work. He said these were good, but that he would
classify them as 60-40. "They need substantial
improvements," he said.
Among the capabilities that fell short was fratricide
prevention. "Even one death due to fratricide is too many,"
the admiral said.
Deployment planning and execution needs more work, the
admiral continued. "We could not provide the flexibility
and adaptation demanded by late changes in planning
assumptions or other modifications," he said.
Giambastiani said reserve mobilization and deployment
issues need much more work. "We didn't do well by our
reserves in many cases, because we gave them short notice,"
he said. "The challenge here is establishing the right
reserve-to-active-component force mix."
He said he has been ordered by the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff to examine the balance, and he has sent his
recommendations to Washington.
Giambastiani said the lessons-learned review was conducted
with "ruthless objectivity." He said all involved did this
to avoid what he called "Victor's Disease."
"This affliction arises from overconfidence and complacency
born from previous military victories," he said. "One
symptom of this disease is that militaries will focus on
improving military capabilities to fight the last war …
instead of anticipating and adapting for the future, which
might be wholly different, requiring new capabilities and
clearly changed methods."
Finally, the admiral addressed what he called a fundamental
building block of the joint force capabilities: the command
and control infrastructure.
"This is often presented in our budget documents as
information technologies, but they are far from that," he
said. "They are central to modern warfare."
The two main components are the deployable joint command
and control system and the standing joint force
headquarters prototypes. "These two capabilities build on
our warfighting dominance today to ensure that it continues
well into the future," he said.
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