USJFCOM was the one unified command to be cut in another era of budgetary cuts that came in the early-2010s. This decision came less than 20 years after it was designated the premier command for a trans-formational military of the future. Yet command his-torian William McClintock has some thoughts on the structural weaknesses inherent in USACOM that may have led to this situation. First, USACOM, though a large unified command, remained under the budget of the Navy, which was the main opponent to the idea of a joint forces command from the outset. The Navy’s budget was shrinking in 1993, and the Chief of Naval Operations had already given his opinion that the new USACOM brought no value-added to his service. With this in mind, it is not surprising USACOM also habitu-ally encountered manning problems. It was always understaffed for its mission. Second, USACOM did not control the budgets of its component commands.
Without the power of the purse strings, it is difficult to imagine directing FORSCOM or MARSFORLANT to do something contrary to the wishes of its service chief. Finally, while the original concept placed all CONUS-based forces under USACOM, the reality was this never happened. Instead, these forces were split between east and west coasts. Without the full complement of forces, it was difficult for USACOM to maintain a position as the joint force provider.32
Nevertheless, USACOM was successful through the 1990s and into the new millennium. What
hap-pened after 9/11? An interview with the director of the Joint Warfare Center in 2003, Dr. Eugene New-man, is enlightening. He claimed the quality of offi-cers arriving at the center for training had changed for the better. In 1993, officers often arrived without computer skills, without joint experience, and without an understanding of why joint training was necessary.
Ten years later, he noted none of that was true. It was now foreign to American officers to think outside of joint operations; if the mission did not involve joint forces, it did not pass muster.33 Perhaps the time for a dedicated force to serve as the joint force trainer and integrator has passed precisely because USJFCOM succeeded in elevating “jointness” as a mandatory consideration in military operations. Secretary of De-fense Robert Gates said as much in February 2011, when he claimed that joint cooperation was now fully embedded in American military ethos and so the need for a separate command dedicated to joint advocacy had passed.34
The manner with which the Office of the Secre-tary of Defense (OSD) approached the dismantling of JFCOM belies a successful completion of mission.
Senators and Congressmen from Virginia, concerned about the 5,000 jobs at stake with the dissolution of the command, claim Gates did not provide adequate anal-ysis or transparency for his decision. They threatened to subpoena him to testify before the House Armed Services Committee to justify his actions. Congressio-nal outrage lessened after an agreement was made to keep approximately half the jobs threatened, transfer-ring select organizations within JFCOM to other com-mands identified as fulfilling still relevant functions for the military.35
Still, the decision to disestablish USJFCOM was made quickly and did not appear to include the input of the Armed Services or Congress. The idea was first presented at the Public Session Quarterly Meeting for the Defense Business Board (DBB). The DBB was established by the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) to find inefficiencies that would streamline the defense budget. Retired Marine Corps Major General Arnold Punaro led the committee and delivered the first blow to JFCOM. In his review, Punaro claimed JFCOM was riddled with redundant commands and should be eliminated to save the Department of Defense (DoD) money. He announced this recommendation on July 22, 2010.36 Within a month, in August 2010, Gates ap-peared on various news outlets and stated he would recommend to the President that JFCOM should be dissolved. By January 6, 2011, the new UCP was signed by President Barak Obama, and the decision was finalized.
It is interesting that Punaro would be the person leading the charge to sink JFCOM. He spent 24 years as a congressional staffer to Senator Nunn (D) where he was neck-deep in the fight to gain the votes nec-essary within the Armed Services Committee to ap-prove the Goldwater-Nichols Act. His actions earned him condemnation from members of his own service in the Pentagon for supporting the bill.37 From 1994 to 1997, Punaro served on the General Officer’s Steering Committee for the CINC, USACOM. It would appear he was one of those in Washington responsible for the creation of JFCOM, a loyal proponent for the joint ad-vocacy Powell envisioned in the early-1990s. Thirteen years later, he had completely reversed his position with regards to the command.
A possible explanation could lie with the largest exercise ever executed in American
history—MILLE-NIUM CHALLENGE 2002—a massive undertaking meant to test joint concepts devised by JFCOM. It was both an exercise and an experiment, incorporating computer simulations and field exercises to create a joint operation focused on the situation in the Middle East to test initiatives based upon Revolution in Mili-tary Affairs tenets, particularly the concept of Effects-Based Operations.38 MILLENNIUM CHALLENGE 2002 took 2 years to plan, involved 13,500 personnel on 26 different installations and cost the taxpayer
$250 million.39
While a spokesman from USJFCOM claimed the experiment was a success, and the concepts tested were sufficiently validated for acceptance as doctrine by the DoD, a senior-ranking member of the exer-cise publicly denounced this assertion. Retired Ma-rine Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper (U.S. MaMa-rine Corps [USMC]) was hired as a contractor to play the part of the opposing force (OPFOR) commander. For the first 3 days of the 3-week-long exercise, Van Riper was allowed to determine all of his actions relatively unfettered. He exploited over-reliance on technology by the U.S. forces to sink much of the naval force ar-rayed against him and caused those running the ex-periment to re-set the simulation. Van Riper stated in news articles in the months following the exercise that he decided to quit as the OPFOR commander when it became clear he would be required to follow a very re-strictive script that would allow the U.S. forces to win the game. He claimed the concepts failed testing or were not properly vetted, and he would not allow his name to be attached to their validation and use by the armed forces. He made further assertions that he had witnessed the same absence of intellectual integrity in a previous exercise, Unified Vision 2001, an exercise also devised by USJFCOM.40
While there is no proof that Van Riper spoke with Punaro privately about his concerns, it is probable that they have known each other since the Vietnam War.41 Regardless, it appears USJFCOM had suffered a seri-ous setback with the public and costly embarrassment following MILLENNIUM CHALLENGE 2002 that could have changed Punaro’s position regarding the relevance of the command. Furthermore, throughout the first decade of the 21st century, the command wed-ded itself to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s vision of Transformation, a model based on tenets of a so-called Revolution in Military Affairs. These tenets have since been largely discredited in many circles of the military and do not seem to mesh well with Secretary Gates’s vision for the future military as enumerated in his recent comments at the various ser-vice academies.42 Combined with a prolonged war, a growing debate over the federal deficit, and an overall acceptance by the services of a joint ethos, USJFCOM’s adherence to Transformation concepts provided its critics with an opportunity to torpedo the command.
Whether through success or irrelevance, the niche US-JFCOM created for itself has disappeared.