GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR
On the day of Powell’s retirement, October 1, 1993, USACOM—the giant—was born. It now not only had responsibility for most of the Western Hemisphere, it also commanded the majority of American military forces. At the same time, American diplomats believed they had reached a peaceful solution to the problem in
Haiti. The junta in charge of the island agreed to allow Aristide to return with American forces to aid in a po-litical transition. But when the USS Harlan County, car-rying the initial contingent of U.S. forces, was turned back in the fall of 1993, the Joint Staff began planning for a force-based solution.23
Two operational plans (OPLANS) were devised by USACOM into 1994. One was for a forced entry into Haiti (JTF-180) and the other was in case a peaceful solution was reached (JTF-190). With both JTFs po-sitioned in September of 1994, the stage was set for the successful diplomatic mission of President Carter and General Powell. Since both JTFs were ready, the actual operation that reinstated Aristide to power was a combination of forces from both.24 Despite the success of Operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY from the standpoint of joint operations, the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations were able to convince the Secretary of Defense to alter the Unified Campaign Plan (UCP) in 1995 and remove the Carib-bean from USACOM’s AOR; it was given to SOUTH-COM to streamline drug interdiction operations and became effective in January 1997.25
This shift was, arguably, the most important when looking toward the future for this newly reorganized command. From its inception, USACOM failed to gain the support of its former master, the U.S. Navy. The only service to maintain its objections against the con-cept of a unified command focused on joint operation advocacy was also the service charged with financing USACOM. Throughout its existence, the command remained woefully short on manpower. In an inter-view in 2003, the man responsible for standing up the Joint Warfighting Center, Eugene Newman, stated his two biggest concerns in implementing joint training were a lack of forecasted funds and perpetual under
manning.26 Given its limited resources, it may not be surprising that USACOM lost its control of the Carib-bean. Yet the precedent that was set, and a growing institutional belief that the future of the command lay in its functional role may have begun a 5-year slide toward a complete loss of operational responsibilities.
In other ways, though, the command was still ex-panding. It created a new facility to aid its reorganized Joint Training Directorate (J7). The Joint Training, Analysis, and Simulations Center (JTASC) focused on training commanders and their staffs in joint missions at the operational level and worked primarily through computer simulations. Staffing remained a constant problem in USACOM and to combat this, U.S. Air Force Major General Michael Short (J7) devised a method of incorporating reservists during peak train-ing times in the Joint Reserve Unit (JRU). Then in 1995, USACOM created the Joint Processing and Onward Movement Center (JPOM) at Fort Benning, GA, to de-ploy joint forces from CONUS to the Balkans.27
Following the success of these joint ventures, in 1998, five Chairman Controlled Activities all focused on joint integration and training became part of the USACOM organization.28 Yet one of the key concepts for USACOM as envisioned by both Powell and Miller failed to materialize. Adaptive Joint Force Packaging (AJFP) was not accepted by the combatant command-ers ovcommand-erseas. The idea of training habitual joint units in different configurations to meet possible contin-gencies was considered too rigid by the other uni-fied commanders. They wanted the power to decide what force structures they needed for their mission sets. They were not willing to trust USJFCOM to pre-dict all possible contingencies and build packages to meet those outcomes. Instead, an ad hoc system was
devised that involved the Joint Staff, the supported command, and the supporting command and allowed other unified commands, like PACOM, to also fulfill the role of joint force provider and give the supported command greater latitude in prescribing manning requirements.29
Still, by 1999 USACOM was fully engaged in its functional role as joint force trainer, provider, and in-tegrator. It gained another three Chairman Controlled Activities focused on joint functions. At that point, to recognize this fact and to highlight the future of the organization, USACOM was renamed in the UCP 1999 as U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM). Ad-ditionally, it still had substantial regional responsibili-ties, not the least of which was the defense of CONUS.
So when the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 occurred, USJFCOM was ready to provide joint task forces to aid New York City. Though these forces were not required, USJFCOM did work to stand up a JTF Headquarters for Homeland Security.30 Shortly there-after, however, a new reorganization of the American defense community would come and leave USJFCOM with no operational responsibilities whatsoever.
In the new UCP 2002, the Atlantic region was tak-en from USJFCOM and givtak-en to U.S. European Com-mand (EUCOM) and defense of CONUS was given to the newly formed U.S. Northern Command (NORTH-COM), Thus, USJFCOM was left as a solely functional command.31 In effect, the attacks on 9/11 led to a re-duction in USJFCOM capabilities first demanded by the other unified commands during implementation planning in 1993. In the space of less than 10 years, following an unprecedented attack on U.S. soil, the largest, and possibly most powerful, unified com-mand had been relegated to training, integration, and experimentation.
SAILING INTO PORT OR SINKING