White Paper Version 0.5

White Paper Version 0.5

Concept Framework

A

Concept Framework

For

RAPID DECISIVE

OPERATIONS

22 October 1999

USJFCOM J9

Concepts Division (J92)

A Concept Framework for

Rapid Decisive Operations

in the 21st Century

1.0. Purpose. Version 0.5 of the RDO White Paper is a product of the “concept definition” phase of concept development. Its purpose is to establish an initial concept framework composed of key constructs, such as “shaping the battlespace”, that are essential to rapid decisive operations. This framework will help focus discussion and examination of these constructs in a series of FY 00 events that include seminars, workshops, wargames, and a joint M&S-supported experiment. USJFCOM will work closely with Services, combatant commands, and DoD agencies to understand and incorporate near-term enhancements and lessons learned from recent operations into concept development and experimentation efforts. J-9 will publish Version 1.0 of this White Paper based on the results of these efforts.

This “framework” version first discusses briefly the operational context for RDO. A concept section then describes RDO’s primary elements, followed by a brief recap of potential desired operational capabilities (DOC). This paper concludes with thoughts on an experimentation strategy.

2.0. Operational Context.

2.1. The April 1999 Defense Planning Guidance established a requirement for USJFCOM to develop new joint warfighting concepts to address a variety of challenging and important future operational missions. One of these relates to forcing an adversary to undertake certain actions or denying an adversary the ability to threaten or attack others. The Rapid Decisive Operations (RDO) joint integrating concept[1] described in this paper intends to investigate how a joint force commander (JFC) can accomplish this in a rapid, decisive joint operation that forces the adversary to do our will as quickly as possible. In this arrangement of joint operations, the JFC quickly employs all available capabilities in the right balance to achieve operational and strategic objectives.

2.2. This RDO concept is founded in the key constructs of JV 2010 as amplified by the May 1997 Capstone Concept for Future Joint Operations (CFJO). It also incorporates recent work from the draft Joint Contingency Force Operations concept that began as part of USJFCOM’s Campaign Plan 1999 (CPLAN 99). RDO considers several of JV 2010’s 21st Century Challenges such as “Battlespace Awareness”, “Rapid Joint Force Projection”, and “Generating Precision Effects.” These and other challenges are addressed at appropriate points throughout the paper. This concept also uses JV 2010 DOCs as a point of departure for developing a wider set of RDO DOCs. Finally, it provides context for USJFCOM’s current work on the following functional concepts—Attack Operations against Critical Mobile Targets; Joint Interactive Planning; Common Relevant Operational Picture; Adaptive Joint Command and Control; and Focused Logistics: Enabling Early Decisive Operations. The concept will also influence early work related to strategic deployment, information operations, and forcible entry operations.

2.3. Recent campaigns, including those against Iraq (December 1998) and Serbia (March-June 1999) have demonstrated that accomplishing our strategic objectives in the early 21st century may require quicker, more concentrated employment of a wider range of capabilities in a time-constrained environment. The convergence of potent new concepts and capabilities envisioned by JV 2010 will allow the JFC to rapidly apply force in a discriminate manner to achieve decisive effects across a broad range of 21st century missions.

2.4. In a generic sense, “rapid” and “decisive” are desirable characteristics for any mission across the range of military operations. While future operational environments may be relatively focused and routine, others will be complex, differ from mission to mission, and often will combine both combat and noncombat operations. The JFC will seek decisive operations rapidly in any of these specific missions. This paper will focus RDO on applying joint combat power, principally at the operational level, to achieve objectives in a regional contingency environment such as recent operations in Serbia. Future applications of the RDO integrating concept will address large-scale combat operations typically associated with major theater warfare. Finally, RDO will be examined at the lower end of the range of military operations in an MOOTW environment. Although many principles described in this paper also apply to larger-scale operations, the RDO concept is not intended as a preliminary phase of a protracted campaign.

2.5. Power projection and forward presence will likely remain the fundamental national strategic concepts for military operations well into the early 21st century. Power projection will enable the timely response critical to our deterrent and warfighting capabilities. Forward presence facilitates power projection and sends a clear signal of US commitment and resolve. RDO builds on these concepts by calling for an agile, lean, and lethal joint force that can deploy and respond rapidly worldwide, achieve decisive results, and redeploy for subsequent operations. RDO will also look at leveraging leading-edge technology enhancements to increase our capabilities. Further, it will investigate concept options that could require new joint doctrine, organizations, training and education, materiel, leadership, and people (DOTMLP). In an attempt to “think outside the box”, the concept is not constrained by current budget, strategy, or policy.

3.0. The Concept.

3.1. When diplomacy and other options fail, our military capabilities currently provide several ways to compel an adversary to do our will. For example, precision engagement by aerial and naval fires can destroy a wide range of capabilities, including critical infrastructure, military projection platforms, and economic targets. Air, sea, and land exclusion zones can deter an attempt by a hostile nation to acquire territory by force and can also adversely affect their economy. Even the credible threat of military operations through the quick deployment of military forces to the region can potentially deter an adversary. In other cases, a full-scale deployment and attack by coalition forces might be required to forcibly eject an enemy from the territory of a neighboring state. Possible strategic objectives could be to preclude or halt an adversary’s military operations against a neighbor, to cause him to cease development of weapons of mass effects, or to protect basic human rights. Whatever the goal, the basic precepts typically will be quick decisive operations, minimal loss of life, and limited collateral damage.

3.2. As applied in this paper, the RDO concept focuses on how a highly deployable, lethal, agile, survivable, and supportable joint force can rapidly defeat an adversary’s operational and strategic centers of gravity in order to force the adversary to do our will. The essence of the concept emphasizes situational understanding, immediate response capability, speed, and massing of effects rather than forces.

3.3. A limited, focused example of such operations might be a single precision strike from a great distance that accomplishes the strategic objective, such as Operation EL DORADO CANYON conducted against Libya in 1986 in response to the terrorist bombing of US Service members in Berlin. The RDO concept, however, will consider a broader scope of operations, one that enables a JFC to determine and employ the right balance of air, land, sea, space, and information-based capabilities in an intense, focused, brief campaign to defeat or neutralize an adversary’s strategic and operational centers of gravity. Distinguished from traditional operations, this approach usually will not focus on seizing and occupying territory in the battlespace except for a limited purpose, such as to generate an otherwise unobtainable opportunity for precision engagement, to secure a key decisive point, or to protect the civilian populace. Forces inserted for these purposes would have the capability to be quickly withdrawn and employed elsewhere. An RDO campaign typically will be characterized by immediate, continuous, and overwhelming operations to shock and paralyze the adversary, destroy their ability to coordinate offensive and defensive operations, fragment their capabilities, and foreclose their most dangerous options.

3.4. The “quad” chart above summarizes key elements of the concept. The hypothesis quadrant reflects the primary goal—to compel the adversary to concede without a protracted campaign. The “desired capabilities” quadrant lists examples of the many potential DOCs that enable RDO. The following sections discuss some of the key components that comprise the RDO concept. These include precision engagement, battlespace awareness, rapid joint force projection, the construct of shaping the battlespace, and joint command and control.

Precision Engagement

3.5. Combat operations in the 2010 timeframe will typically consist of the application of JV 2010’s dominant maneuver and precision engagement capabilities, enabled by focused logistics and full-dimensional protection. Successful RDO, as this white paper describes, relies heavily on precision engagement (PE).

3.5.1. Although its roots are embedded in its predecessor precision strike, PE encompasses more than just attacking targets with advanced weapons systems and high-tech munitions; it also uses a wider range of capabilities. Inherently, it includes actions to detect, identify and track operational targets, determine the desired effect, select and combine the right forces, engage the operational objective, assess results, and reengage as required. PE focuses primarily on operational effects, not on the means by which effects are achieved. The JFC, for example, could employ forces, an array of weapons and munitions (including non-kinetic means), a range of information operations, or a combination of those means at decisive points and times to accomplish RDO objectives.

3.5.2. Precision engagement contains a variety of means that are also used in many ways to accomplish objectives associated with dominant maneuver (DM) and full dimensional protection (FDP). Ground-based indirect fire systems (including surface-to-surface missiles) are PE systems organic to maneuver units. Likewise, both fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft provide platforms for precision weapons that typically support DM objectives. A variety of air-, land-, and sea-based PE systems can interdict adversary capabilities before they can engage friendly forces. Similarly, aircraft carrying precision weapons conduct offensive counterair operations while a variety of platforms and weapons round out the air and missile defense component of FDP.

3.5.3. The improving range, accuracy, and reliability of a broad range of precision weapons, platforms, and other systems increase the probability that some missions can be accomplished primarily by employing PE capabilities. If RDO requires destruction of enemy forces and facilities, our first choice in 2010 could be to do so from well outside of direct-fire range if possible. PE, however, is broader than just improved ways and means for target destruction. At the core of PE is the focus on achieving effects that range well beyond killing people and destroying things, supplementing attrition-based, hard-kill techniques with a broader range of effects that will help break an adversary’s will. Precision engagements can be conducted to achieve very specific limited objectives and can leverage non-kinetic options (such as information operations to disrupt, deny, or exploit enemy systems) that limit collateral damage and preserve population and infrastructure.

3.5.4. The Precision Engagement Joint Warfare Coordinating Authority[2] fielded two 21st Century challenges to focus JV 2010 capability development efforts. The first of these, Integrating Precision Effects, is concerned with the information superiority aspect of precision engagement¾the need to develop a fused C4ISR system that enables the optimum application of precision effects. Generating Precision Effects, is concerned with the JFC having the tools to precisely apply a full range of effects (kinetic to non-kinetic) against adversaries.

3.5.5. Information operations (IO) provide a variety of non-kinetic precision engagement options to the JFC. Defensive IO¾to protect friendly systems and capabilities essential to information superiority¾will begin early in any operation and continue throughout. Likewise, the JFC can use offensive IO very early in the operation¾even before the joint force deploys¾to influence, disrupt, deny, exploit, destroy, or otherwise affect an adversary’s information environment, thereby increasing the information differential in the JFC’s favor. As the JFC and his staff weigh potential courses of action, they could determine that a full range of integrated offensive IO, supplemented by selective precision engagement with kinetic means, might accomplish operational and strategic objectives with minimal commitment of conventional forces. Information operations can be a significant combat multiplier, essential to the success of any campaign.

Battlespace Awareness

3.6. Information processing capabilities ensure that key joint and component command and control systems such as Global Command and Control System (GCCS), Maneuver Control System (MCS), Contingency Theater Automated Planning System (CTAPS), and Advanced Tomahawk Weapons Control System (ATWCS) are fully interoperable. In other words, they all share and promote battlespace awareness¾a real-time, common, relevant picture of the battlespace. Battlespace awareness will not eliminate the fog of war, but will yield a much-improved visualization of the battlespace in space, time, and effect, regardless of terrain, weather, or time of day. The total picture results from a combination of strategic and operational actions and capabilities and an unimpeded flow of relevant information among all levels. The USJFCOM CPLAN 00 functional concept, Common Relevant Operational Picture (CROP)[3], contains a detailed discussion of the ways and means to address this JV 2010 challenge.

Rapid Joint Force Projection

3.7. The NCA’s ability to respond to a requirement for rapid decisive operations will be greatly facilitated by the realization of 21st Century challenges associated with rapid joint force projection. The challenge described in the accompanying text box focuses on moving forces rapidly to positions of strategic and operational advantage. This will be enabled by enhanced global situational awareness resulting from a common relevant operational picture (see the CROP concept, mentioned earlier). There is a related focused logistics challenge (Joint Deployment and Rapid Distribution) that concentrates on peacetime initiatives associated with enhancing transportation infrastructure to facilitate rapid deployment prior to and throughout a crisis. Forward presence forces, prepositioned assets, and innovative basing options should greatly increase force projection agility and responsiveness. The organic lift capability of forces, such as that afforded the Marines by the V-22 Osprey, will allow the JFC to set the timing and tempo of operations, with precision engagement where and when the JFC chooses. The mobility and agility thus afforded joint forces should enable the JFC to extend his operational reach and allow him to strike simultaneously with multiple systems throughout the battlespace.