A Marine unit facing combat runs into opposition. The call goes out for fire support. In the past, the call would likely have gone to a Marine artillery unit or air asset.
Today, that call could go to an Army helicopter unit or an Air Force precision- strike aircraft. It could go to a Navy fighter-bomber staging off a carrier or even to a submarine armed with Tomahawk missiles.
In other words, the joint force is now a reality, and the American military must train as it fights. To that end, the Department of Defense is transforming the way the services train.
The world has dramatically changed, said Paul Mayberry, deputy defense undersecretary for readiness. "The strategic environment has changed, and the United States military must change also."
The American military no longer always confronts a known enemy with standing forces, Mayberry said. Servicemembers have to train to fight major-combat operations, but they also need to train to handle smaller contingencies. The American military's emphasis now is on flexibility and adaptability, he said. The military must be able to deal with surprise, uncertainly and asymmetric threats.
At the same time the American military is moving away from large permanent-standing organizations with large support elements backing them up, Mayberry said. Joint task forces will handle these contingencies, and the JTFs will generally be "smaller and highly distributed joint and combined forces."
The biggest transformation in training will be the emphasis on joint operations.
"We fight as a joint team," Mayberry said. "We must train routinely in a joint environment."
The Joint National Training Capability is the training initiatives centerpiece.
"The ultimate end state of (the capability) is that no individual, unit or staff enters combat prior to being able to fully experience the complexity and stress of their joint requirements in a robust and realistic training environment," he said.
The capability was initially supposed to be a Joint National Training Center -- a place where joint task forces would train before deployment.
But the thinking changed and experience showed that the center does not have to be a physical place, but a way to link forces throughout the world. So an Army unit, for example, training at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., could link with Air Force units training out of Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. They could also link with Marine units training at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, Calif., and with Navy ships maneuvering off the coast of California.
The units do not even have to be in the same hemisphere. Using simulations, staffs can train wherever they can get a computer connection. This would closely mirror the way the commands worked together during Operation Iraqi Freedom, with staffs working closely together even though based in Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Tampa, Fla.
