About 60 senior officers from the National Guard and other services recently spent a week Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., learning how to lead a joint task force.
Offered three times a year at U.S. Northern Command, the Joint Task Force Commander Course prepares officers - usually colonels or higher - to command JTFs.
The bottom line: Faced with major preplanned events like an inauguration or responding to unplanned challenges like a hurricane, everyone is in the fight together and must work as one team.
The National Guard typically stands up a JTF for major missions such as Operation Jump Start, when Guardmembers helped Border Patrol agents secure the nation's southern border; for preplanned events such as national political conventions, sporting matches or presidential inaugurations; and in response to natural or manmade disasters, including wildfires, earthquakes and terrorist attacks.
"If we fail, it's broke for a long time, and we can't let that happen to our citizens." Army Maj. Gen. Charles Rodriguez, the adjutant general of the Texas National Guard, told attendees.
Air Force Col. Brent Feick, the National Guard Bureau's deputy director for domestic operations, said it's important to understand what a JTF commander is expected to do.
"There's a fair amount of education that needs to go in before you become a JTF commander so that you don't overstep your bounds or underestimate your problem," he said.
The course is a unique opportunity for potential JTF commanders from Guard communities nationwide and leaders from other agencies to network with each other, training officials said.
After presentations from doctors, state attorneys, chaplains and organizations, such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, commanders leave with a better understanding of how JTFs work and what resources are available.
They are encouraged to "think up" by anticipating the needs of their superiors and partner agencies and "think down" by understanding the jobs of those they lead.
Trainers said thinking up also means asking questions such as: How will NGB support my JTF' How can the Joint Chiefs of Staff support me' What can NORTHCOM provide'
Other agencies can contribute resources, situational awareness and perspectives that the Guard may lack, Rodriguez said.
"The Guard, as good as it is, cannot do everything," said Army Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, the former chief of the NGB, who on Jan. 16 became NORTHCOM deputy commander and also vice commander, U.S. Element, North American Aerospace Defense Command.
"It doesn't have all the capabilities that reside in the Department of Defense. When the Army and Air Guards exceed their capabilities, there are capabilities and capacity that resides in the Department of Defense, and Northern Command is the combatant command that would coordinate, facilitate and direct those forces when needed."
Rodriguez added that the Guard is always the first military force on the ground. "The Guard provides the communications links, the persistent relationships with civil authorities," he said. "You always want to err in the favor of leaving the civil authorities absolutely in charge."
Air Force Col. Vic Dallin of NORTHCOM's standing joint force headquarters, said it is important to build these relationships ahead of an event. "You all want to do the right thing and get the mission done," he said. "A JTF is able to focus the mission and make sure that we're working together."
JTF 101
Course attendees included assistant adjutant generals, a state comptroller, directors of joint staffs, chiefs of staffs and counterdrug leaders from the Army and Air National Guard. Marine and Navy officers audited. Lecturers and mentors included former adjutant generals and JTF commanders.
Topics included state and federal chains of command, unity of effort and unity of command; the National Incident Management System; the Posse Comitatus Act that allows military support to civil authorities, but not for direct law enforcement operations; subtle organizational and legal differences between each of the 54 states and territories; Emergency Management Assistance Compacts between states; and issues unique to the National Guard such as parallel command versus dual hat command.
Attendees got top-level guidance on interagency planning, JTF funding and public affairs. They also received intelligence briefings, saw National Guard equipment that makes it easier for multiple agencies to communicate during a crisis and conducted table-top exercises.
JTFs have been used for national special security events, such as the Olympics, Group of Eight summits of world leaders and U.N. General Assembly opening ceremonies.
Sometimes, more than one JTF stands up for a single event, with each responsible for a different function or geographic area.
Successes mean the JTF organizational approach will likely remain a fixture, senior leaders say.
"We are getting some templates in place for predictable events," Blum said. "This is a very special course put together for a special [area of responsibility] for a combatant command that is absolutely unique amongst all the combatant commands."
Created in 2002 after the 9/11 attacks, NORTHCOM is the nation's second-newest combatant command; U.S. Africa Command, established last year, is the newest. The nation's oldest military force, the National Guard is a resource for NORTHCOM, which has few permanently assigned forces.
NORTHCOM's mission includes command and control of Department of Defense homeland defense efforts and coordination of defense support of civil authorities.
The Guard is particularly important for air sovereignty, ground-based missile defense and other missions, Blum said.
"This command absolutely to be successful has a very close and collaborative relationship with the National Guard," he said. "The Guard really underpins our success for many of our mission sets. On the domestic front, the Guard being located in every community across the country provides us with basically our forward-deployed forces.
"We rely on them to an extraordinary degree. When you talk about NORTHCOM, NORAD and the Guard, it's very difficult to separate one from the other."
NORTHCOM anticipates and conducts homeland defense and civil support operations in support of local, state or federal agencies. The command typically uses JTFs to provide civil support - not a new concept to the National Guard, which has used temporary JTFs within single states for decades.
But the JTF model has been refined, and the "J" has come to mean more than military services, but also other agencies, such as FEMA or DHS.
The phrase, "unity of effort" has been around for a long time, Feick said. "For 372 years, the National Guard has worked with their civilian counterparts, but the concept of having the Navy, Coast Guard, Army, Marines and National Guard and militias that in many states have funding and force structure - if you don't have a JTF commander, then it can become somewhat of a cacophony of forces."
Marine Col. Ken Hopper, planner and policy developer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff's antiterrorism and homeland defense directorate, said one central organization that should control all the assets that will come to a fight.
"Being Americans, we see an area in distress, your natural reaction is, 'How can I help''" he said. "There's a lot of tools out there in the tool bag, and these guys are going to have to make some very quick decisions."
Hundreds of agencies were involved, but JTFs helped the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Obama.
The inauguration
"It was a magnificent performance by the Department of Defense in support of the inauguration," Blum said. "It wasn't only the ceremony, which was superb. It was the security, which was amazingly superb and very complex. It dealt with the Army, Coast Guard, Navy, Air Force, the Marine Corps and the Army and the Air National Guards; it dealt with the Secret Service and about 240 other agencies. It was about as complex a bowl of spaghetti as you can imagine, yet when you watched it, it was flawless."
Army Col. Cecilia Flores, the D.C. National Guard's vice chief of staff, served as JTF-District of Columbia's chief of staff.
"JTF-DC showed the spirit of states helping other states," Flores said. "We had a mission that was bigger than we could support. We were successful because 28 states and territories supported us."
Even with her inaugural experience, Flores said the JTF Commander Course was beneficial. "Even if I'm not a JTF commander, I could do a better job to advise a JTF commander," she said.
Taking the course alongside commanders with previous JTF experience was valuable, she said. "I'm learning vicariously through their mistakes or things that they did well."
The coordination that JTFs offer was a key to inaugural success, Feick said. "The key was everybody understanding their roles," he said.
Jointness
The JTF concept has existed in the Guard for decades, and it has been embraced nationally in the last decade. "It was less coordinated," Feick said. "Y2K didn't do it, 9/11 didn't do it, Katrina was the turning point - and we're much better off for it."
"Today, there is absolutely no comparison to pre-9/11," said U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Wayne Brown, chief for air, land and maritime homeland defense, who audited the course. "Now, we wouldn't even begin to think about conducting an operation without thinking about other components, other services, other agencies, international services. If you're not thinking across the spectrum of all the players - including the private sector and non-governmental organizations - then you're missing something."
Eighty-five percent of the nation's critical infrastructure is in the private sector, attendees heard.
During Hurricane Ike last year, the Coast Guard in coordination with Northern Command was bolstered by National Guard helicopters for rescues after its own were fully tasked.
"Before, we may not have thought about other organizations to provide additional capabilities and capacity," Brown said. "Now we realize that when we work together we bring more expertise into the team, we bring more assets into a particular fight, and we bring reserve into the fight as well - and we gain more information, more leverage and greater authorities to get the mission done."
"Things have changed tremendously," said Hopper, the JCS representative.
Refinements
JTFs are still evolving and being refined in response to lessons learned, and course attendees had ideas for further improvements.
"Can we have pre-designated JTF commanders - colonel and above - for a hurricane, a flood or a fire, with a biography that's already approved by the secretary of defense'" Feick suggested. "Is that possible'"
Another refinement is raising the threshold for federal response, which saves money and time and keeps responses local.
"Every incident is local until asked for support," Hopper said. "Once their resources - equipment or money - have tapped out, that's when they will go and ask for federal assistance."
Support must arrive neither a second too soon nor a minute too late, leaders say, and federal agencies' goal is to withdraw as soon as local agencies' ability to cope is restored.
"The federal government responds only in support of the state," said Robert Powers, FEMA's acting assistant administrator for disaster operations. "We don't go in first. Everything we do is in support of the state."
The course included potential domestic JTF commanders, who already have experience leading JTFs overseas.
"Running a JTF overseas is absolutely different than what we do here," Blum said. That's because complex constitutional and other issues affect domestic operations.
A domestic JTF provides military support to local, state and tribal civil authorities, where an overseas task force might be running a military operation.
"The concept is the same, however the rules are different," Hopper said.
"We have to cooperate very, very closely with the federal government, the state government, the local governments, all the way down to your county sheriffs, your local police chiefs, your mayors, your county executives,
all the way up to the White House," Blum said.
Uniquely, National Guardsmen are county sheriffs, local police chiefs, mayors and county executives, and the Guard has a unique ability to connect local with national, observed Navy Capt. Dave Welch of U.S. Pacific Command.
"It's an incredible group of professionals, and they bring an important capability to the United States defense community," he said. "They provide an important tie to the state and local communities through their private sector involvements as well as the relationships and connections that they have at state and local levels of government."
The Guard is a logical choice to lead JTFs, attendees said.
"It's their brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts that they are protecting," Hopper said.
With wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, riots and terrorist attacks among the potential risks it faces, the California National Guard, for example, could find itself running multiple JTFs for multiple incidents simultaneously.
California
"In California, we're faced with about any potential calamity that any state in the country could have, and we feel that we need to have a little redundancy on officers who could, if needed, be a JTF commander," said Army Brig. Gen. Scott Johnson, deputy commanding general of the 40th Infantry Division.
"The most useful thing to me is becoming thoroughly familiar with the resources," Johnson said.
It was Johnson's first visit to NORTHCOM. "I am amazed at the number of National Guard personnel, who are integrated into NORTHCOM," he said.
"It's a key relationship," Dallin said. "You can't really tell who a Guardsman is and who an active-duty person is when it comes down to doing the mission."
NORTHCOM also is integrated into other agencies.
"The number of liaisons that NORTHCOM has embedded throughout the federal government, especially in Washington, D.C., and the thinking that the NORTHCOM commander has done about ensuring that we're working seamlessly across all organizational boundaries is phenomenal," said Brown, the Coast Guard captain.
"It is a magnificent team of teams," Blum said - a team that includes the National Guard. "This is one combatant command that cannot do its job from day-to-day without the Guard."
NORTHCOM and the Guard
Blum's appointment as the first National Guard general to be deputy commander of a combatant command illustrates the intimacy of NORTHCOM's relationship with the Guard.
NORTHCOM depends on the Guard, Blum said. "If we're depending on you, you've got to have the equipment that we're depending on you to have."
This year, NORTHCOM endorsed 342 separate line items of equipment that the command deems critical and essential for the National Guard to have, Blum said.
"That's historic," he said. "That has never happened before."
Examples include equipment required for air and ground transportation and communications that can be used both here and overseas.
"The standard is that the Guard and Reserves receive the same equipment as the active force," Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in written remarks to the Senate Armed Services Committee Jan. 27.
Some $6.9 billion is budgeted to repair and replace National Guard equipment in the 2009 fiscal year, Gates said.
Equipment is vital to success, JTF Commander Course attendees heard - and Guardmembers are at the core of success.
"Our successes are tied to our Soldiers and Airmen," said Army Col. Ken Sanchez, one of the Colorado National Guard's JTF leaders in support of last year's Democratic National Convention. "When it's time to go do the job, they find a way. They work through whatever issues they have. They come from all over. They come with a rucksack, ready to do whatever they have to do. God bless them."
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