|
 Experimentation
director looks back on tour, reflects on what's next for
directorate
Army Maj. Gen. James Dubik reflects on his tour as director
of joint experimentation at U.S. Joint Forces Command and
cites challenges his successor can expect to encounter.
By Jennifer Colaizzi
USJFCOM Public Affairs Office
(SUFFOLK,
Va., -- Oct. 2, 2004) – U.S. Joint Force’s
Command’s outgoing director of joint experimentation
and his team have been so successful in expanding joint
concept development and joint prototyping over the past
two years that his successor is facing the challenge of
turning the prototypes into fielding capabilities.
No one expects change to be easy and Army
Maj. Gen. James M. Dubik, director of experimentation for USJFCOM, has
had his share of what he considers salmon swimming upstream
to get the organization to where it is today.
Looking
back over his tenure Dubik, who is handing over command
of the directorate to Army Maj. Gen. John Wood
on Oct. 6, said “everything we do is swimming upstream
to spawn—spawn new ideas, new organizations, new
procedures.”
Hard
work has paid off. During his tenure, Dubik and his team
implemented a two-pathway experimental campaign plan – one
for joint concept development, the other for joint prototypes.
A
catalyst for J9’s reorganization came post-Millennium
Challenge 02 (MC02), when the directorate faced two challenges
according to Dubik. “First, we began prototyping
the Standing Joint
Force Headquarters (Core Element) enabling
capabilities. Second, we began thinking through the next
generation of concepts.”
Before
he arrived, J9 was organized to answer one question: “Can
we do rapid decisive operations in this decade?" Following
MC 02, when combatant commanders requested prototypes for
capabilities they witnessed during the experiment, J9’s
mission was abruptly shifted to providing “prototype
capabilities to the combatant commanders quickly" and
concept development, said Dubik.
Once the directorate was reorganized and focusing on near-term
improvements and far-term thinking, collaboration with
others outside the command became paramount.
Dubik
remains especially pleased with USJFCOM’s
partnering efforts.
He
and his staff had an opportunity, initiated by Navy
Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani, Jr., USJFCOM commander,
to draw on the knowledge of the Defense Science Board (DSB)
members. The DSB, which analyzes scientific issues for
the secretary of defense and provides credible solutions,
became the external eyes for J9.
“The Defense Science Board provided invaluable advice,” said
Dubik for us as we developed and planned the joint concept
development and experimental campaign plan.
Other significant partnerships include those with combatant
commanders, multinational and interagency organizations,
and the services.
Because
he knew the services were tasked with their service-specific
department of defense requirements, we pulled together
and said, “Look we fight together, let’s experiment
together. So how do we do this?"
The solution was one wargame per year per service, labeled
a joint wargame, and U.S. Joint Forces Command would co-sponsor it with the individual service. The wargames included:
• Unified
Course 2004 with the Navy
• Joint Urban Warrior 2004 with the Marine Corps
• Unified Quest 2003 and 2004 with the Army
• Unified Engagement 2004 with the Air Force.
According
to Dubik the services provide intellectual capability
and a long history of wargaming and experimentation and “it
would be foolish for me not to tap into that,” he
said. “We learned from each other, and we adapted
our approach to experiments and wargames based upon what
we learned.
“We had a chance to modify how we did business,” said
Dubik who was referring to J9’s work in creating
prototypes that could function in a joint as well as a
coalition environment.
Dubik mentioned several significant prototype accomplishments:
•
Operational Net Assessment – this provides a net
assessment of the battlespace rather than a military assessment.
•
Joint Fires Initiative – this prototype merges the
Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines primary fire control
automated systems into a single joint weapon system.
•
Collaborative Information Environment – ability to
do simultaneous planning and execution of joint operations
distributively and among multiple “layers” of
an organization
•
Joint Deployment Process Owner – promotes collaboration
among the services on joint deployment planning and execution;
improves joint deployment processes right now
•
Multinational Information Sharing – enables coalition
members to create a knowledge base that supports effects-based
planning and operations.
According to Dubik, all of these initiatives are huge
successes and have helped to stimulate the existence of
a joint concept development and experimentation community
in several countries. Two years ago there was no such community
in France, Germany, Canada, and Australia.
Another
concept that was established during Dubik’s
time was the idea of continuous experiments—distributed
in a constructive environment.
Distributed
experiments occur without bringing all the players to
one spot. By connecting everyone through virtual
space, groups can play from locations such as Australia,
Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, France,
and Germany. Dubik says that it’s powerful – using
more people while keeping a lower budget.
Continuous means that between experiments simulations
can run on data input and outputs can be fed into the next
experiment. This is looking like a big plan for 2005 and
the incoming director, he said.
In
the last six months, joint warfighting simulation and
SEAS has been put into place. SEAS, also known as Synthetic
Environment for Analysis and Simulation, is the non-military,
non-kinetic, and non-lethal aspects of modeling and simulation—diplomatic,
religious, social dimensions.
“Now we have two models that we can put together
and really use them to replicate the future battlefields,” he
said. “We can start learning more about how to create
the set of effects—lethal and non-lethal, kinetic
and non-kinetic, military and non-military—that a
joint commander is responsible to create.”
In
summary, the new J9 approach to experimental activity
produced a methodology for learning together or “jointly” through
co-sponsored wargames and multinational partnering, and
Wood will be looking forward to a busy year. USJFCOM is
already scheduled in FY 05 to participate in a co-sponsored
wargame with the Department of State.
According to Dubik, USJFCOM will be involved in a series
of wargames that investigates the proper balance of simultaneously
and sequentially constructing military campaign plans for
the 21st century.
And
although Dubik has given the joint experimental community “A”s
on their overall experimental work together , he says that
there’s still more work that could be done.
Dubik moves on to his third star and to command the Army's I
Corps at Ft. Lewis, Wash. |
