EXPERT OPINION — Reports came out last week that claim the Chairman of Joint Staff, General Dan Caine, is preparing a new unified command plan (UCP) that will reorganize and consolidate the regional combatant commands. According to press reports, the proposal, which is to go to the Secretary and the President soon, would combine U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command under a new U.S. International Command. U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Northern Command would be combined as U.S. Americas Command. For now, the functional commands, U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Space Command, U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Transportation Command and U.S. Indo Pacific Command would remain the same.
If this happens, it would be the biggest command shake up in decades. However, to truly have the greatest effect, more needs to happen than just a reorganization and consolidation of combatant commands. The work to change and upgrade the combatant commands must be more consequential.
For this to happen, these commands must have all the tools at their disposal to develop military relationships and oversee operations in their regions. To be most effective, that means that their intelligence and their interagency arms must be bolstered.
On the intelligence side, Washington should push out the work to the combatant commands that the analysts, targeters and operators are doing in D.C. Before the early 2000s, the combatant commands hired their intelligence professionals through the services. In the early 2000s, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) took over the requirement to integrate all the combatant commands’ intelligence professionals and those professionals became DIA employees.
There has been great success with increased and more consistent training and more sophisticated intelligence work at the combatant commands. More defense intelligence enterprise professionals now have a first-hand understanding of providing support to military activities. However, there is much more work to do in this area. A vast majority of the Washington DIA employees do not have direct experience working with warfighters on tactical issues or have forgotten their experience in this area. There is also often a duplication of efforts on analysis, reporting, and collection between DIA headquarters and the combatant commands.
This all can be streamlined by pushing those DC-based professionals to the combatant commands. DIA headquarters should be small and highly focused on manning, training, equipping, and integrating. The analysts, operators and targeters should be working directly with the warfighters under the direction of the combatant commander or at the Pentagon directly for the Chairman, Joint Staff.
More specifically, DIA headquarters should provide the HR, the training programs, the data, and the technology for the rest of the DIA enterprise to support each combatant Commander and his warfighters directly.
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In the early 2010s, there was a discussion in policy circles about how to make combatant commands more effective. A key role for Combatant Command senior leaders is to develop relationships with military partners in their region. This will become more difficult as a Combatant Commander’s geographic outreach grows. Each Commander will need more tools and senior professionals to help develop those relationships. To assist in this and to underscore the need for interagency coordination, Combatant Commands should have dual leadership from the civilian sector and military.
Most regional commands now have a senior foreign policy advisor, usually at Ambassador rank, who advises the commander on foreign relations. This position needs to be enhanced to a true deputy position vice an advisor. At the same time, the combatant commands need senior representatives from major government departments such as the Department of Homeland Security, Treasury, Commerce, and FBI. This will enhance the U.S.’ ability to compete against our adversaries by offering tools to use with foreign governments that are integrated and coordinated across the U.S. government.
The time is right to make more consequential changes to a system that needs to modernize.
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