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Today, the tactical challenges of operating within an anti-access/area-denial environment form the focus of the United States Navy. While the tactical tasks are daunting, they must no longer remain the Navy's first priority. If naval leadership continues to focus on tactical-level difficulties rather than working towards the proper development of an operational-level goal linked to a desired strategic end-state, the results on the high-seas will be disastrous. This paper uses an operational art analysis of the German Operation CERBERUS during World War II to demonstrate the paramount importance of the operational level over the tactical level in an anti-access/area-denial environment. If the U.S. Navy only solves the tactical challenges, but does not link these solutions to a properly envisioned operational-level objective, it will suffer a similar failure as the Germans did after Operation CERBERUS.

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, a pressing question has arisen: Why has there not been an al Qaeda attack or attempted attack within the United States homeland originating from the southern border? Another question that arises is this: Would the Mexican drug cartels collaborate with al Qaeda? After examining the strategic objectives, operational objectives, methods, and organizational transformations of al Qaeda and the Mexican drug cartels, this paper concludes that cooperation between the two entities is highly unlikely. It is true that the two entities share some methods, however, their organizational goals are antithetical and divergent. This paper explains the complexities that have prevented a partnership from ever emerging between the Mexican drug cartels and al Qaeda.

The current U.S. military way of war is driven by a conventional, symmetric combat mindset. This immediately leads to designating the ground component as the main effort to achieve operational objectives against ground-centric adversaries. There may be, however, better options that would maximize combat potential to meet the operational objectives with the fewest losses in the least amount of time. One of those options would be for the Joint Force Commander (JFC) to designate airpower as the main effort, using the Joint Force Land Component Commander (JFLCC) and Joint Force Special Operations Component Commander (JFSOCC) as supporting commanders, when the situation warrants. Operation ALLIED FORCE (OAF) and Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF) are used to illustrate the validity of this concept. This operational concept would be appropriate in certain situations when the Joint Force Air Component Commander (JFACC) has command and control of the preponderance of kill mechanisms to attack the enemy's center of gravity. The use of operational art through an Ends, Ways, Means, and Risks framework is examined to determine when the JFC should consider designating airpower as the main effort and what conditions the JFC should be alert for in order to use this concept. Changes across the entire Doctrine Organization Training Material Leadership Personnel Facilities (DOTMLPF) spectrum are required to codify this change to ensure JFCs have another accepted option to achieve operational objectives.

The influence of the African continent on world stability has recently been recognized by the United States, China, and several European nations. The United States has outlined several strategic concerns for the continent, including preventing terrorist safe havens, slowing China's expansive influence in the region, retarding the spread of HIV/AIDS, improving regional stability, and responding to humanitarian crises. America's first step in resolving these enormous problems is the creation of Africa Command. The location of the new Unified Command headquarters has been the subject of much speculation, but it is widely believed it will ultimately be located on the African continent. Many nations are skeptical about the United States' commitment to the continent and have openly refused to host the headquarters, although it is commonly thought that many nations are willing to host the command but do not want to appear too eager. The leaders of USAFRICOM indicate that they do not plan to build large-scale military bases or infrastructure on the vast African continent; instead, it will rely upon and enhance existing transportation and communication networks to meet mission requirements. The lack of a traditional military base from which to operate, the enormity of the African continent, and an extremely diverse mission set dictate that operational and mission considerations be the primary drivers in the selection of USAFRICOM's headquarters location(s). The author outlines the seven primary needs of USAFRICOM and concludes that multiple locations will be required to achieve USAFRICOM's objectives. The locations recommended are Morocco, Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa and Kenya., The original document contains color images.

This paper explores how our military combat training centers are currently training Army and Marine Corps ground forces for counterinsurgency. Although the training centers have done a good job transforming from the Cold War to the war on terror, training objectives must be continually refined in order to train the force. Training objectives for commanders and their staffs at the tactical level are lacking and not fully developed and more importantly are not synchronized and nested with the joint task force commander's campaign plans, goals, and objectives in Iraq. This is an important topic because it suggests there is not a mechanism or system currently in place to ensure that we are fully training our tactical commanders and staffs in all aspects of the counterinsurgency and in line with the operational commander's vision for the end state. It suggests further that if we were to get the training right it could have far reaching impacts on our ability to better provide military support to stability, security, transition, and reconstruction (SSTR).

The Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO) is the overarching concept of the family of joint concepts that guides the development of future joint capabilities. Its purpose is to lead force development and employment primarily by providing a broad description of how the future joint force will operate. Service concepts and subordinate joint operating, functional, and integrating concepts will expand on the CCJO solution. Interagency and multinational partners may use it to assess potential integration requirements and opportunities. The CCJO broadly describes how future joint forces are expected to operate across the range of military operations in 2012-2025 in support of strategic objectives. It applies to operations around the globe conducted unilaterally or in conjunction with multinational military partners and other government and nongovernment agencies. It envisions military operations conducted within a national strategy that incorporates all instruments of national power. This concept is applicable to combatant commands, the Military Services, Defense agencies, and the Joint Staff for concept development and experimentation. The CCJO briefly describes the environment and military problem expected to exist in 2012-2025 (from just outside the future years defense program to 20 years in the future). It proposes a solution to meet challenges across the range of military operations and describes key characteristics of the future joint force. This concept concludes by presenting risks and implications associated with this concept.

A review of many of our recent past conflicts provides evidence that while the need for careful administration of conflict termination may have been understood its execution has not been well managed. Failures in conflict termination at the operational level arise primarily from two essential components of the conflict termination process. These two components which exist principally at the national strategic level are the formulation of the national objectives and the establishment of conditions under which a stable peace will be achieved. In essence for the operational commander conflict termination is merely the translation of these two components into a military end state. While closely interrelated these two fundamental components of conflict termination must be evaluated separately and well understood by the operational commander in order to avoid critical pitfalls of a badly conceived and poorly supported termination strategy. While the decision to initiate and terminate a war is always a political decision and resides at the highest national command level successful conflict termination is inextricably linked with conditions on the battlefield established by the operational commander. Although operational commanders do not make policy their actions can critically impact the success or failure of those policies. The operational commander must establish an end state to support the political aim and be able to explain both to superiors and subordinates how his vision of that end state is critical to the conflict termination process.

The Serbo-Croatian war was the first in a series of wars that the Serbs would fight following the break-up of Yugoslavia. Analyzing the conflict using the Principles of War provides military planners valuable insight to the structure and capability of an opponent that NATO could face today. This paper will argue that the inability of the Yugoslav Peoples Army (JNA) to develop and execute operational objectives from national strategy resulted in their failure in the 1991 Serbo-Croatian War, even though faced with an inferior Croatian force. It will further argue that the JNA's operational plan violated nearly every Principle of War, but in the process, set the stage for future operations because of a failure to realize the political objective. Finally, it will compare the Serbo-Croatian War to the NATO conflict in Kosovo today and conclude with some operational lessons learned.

Airpower dominated the Gulf War, but what did it accomplish? How successful were coalition air attacks against specific target sets--from Iraq's nuclear weapons facilities and mobile Scuds to its tanks in the Kuwait theater? The information gathered during the course of a survey commissioned by the Secretary of the Air Force confirms the dominant role of airpower while illustrating that the indirect rather than the direct effects of bombing were perhaps of more importance. Moreover, it is apparent from the results of this survey that inaccuracies are inherent in wartime assessments and that one must contend with incomplete knowledge of the target base and enemy countermeasures. Even in a conflict of short duration when many collection measures are employed, the problems of assessing (not measuring) operational and strategic effectiveness remain as difficult, controversial, and afflicted by subjectivity as they have in wars of the past., Published in Joint Force Quarterly (JFQ), p26-36, Autumn 1993.