FOREWORD

In 1997, a special edition of the Air Force Law Review was published. It
was entitled: "The Master Operations Lawyer's Edition," and it was my
privilege to write the Foreword. Before tackling the task of writing
another Foreword for another volume devoted to operations law, I
reviewed that last edition. I was startled by what I found. What we then
viewed as a cutting-edge volume seems quite basic today. That
observation is a fair measure of just how far the Air Force, and its
Judge Advocate General's Department in particular, has come in five
years. The pace of change for our armed forces and for the Air Force JAG
Department has been incredible.

In some measure, the pace of change that we have seen was dictated by
the course of world events. Since the end of the Cold War, we have been
called upon to involve ourselves in a steady stream of contingencies:
armed interventions in Bosnia, East Timor, and Kosovo; humanitarian
assistance missions to Mozambique and South Africa; and engagement and
enhancement missions to many other countries. All of these contributed
to a concern for the toll that such back-to-back operations were taking
on our equipment and our people. Terms like "high opstempo" or "high
perstempo" became a part of our everyday terminology. All of these
operations have presented unique legal issues.

Partly in response to this increasingly complex world environment, the
Air Force evolved into the Expeditionary Air and Space Force. That
evolution presented its own unique set of legal issues, but change was
absolutely necessary to reshape the Air Force for the 21^st^ Century. An
expeditionary Air Force carries with it the promise of providing some
measure of predictability in an inherently unpredictable world. By
organizing ourselves into Air Expeditionary Forces, we promised to
deliver the right combination of capabilities to meet the needs of
theater combatant commanders anywhere in the world. "Light, lean and
lethal" became more than a bumper sticker. Those words became an
accurate description of our global agility and battlefield lethality.

And now, after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon, we are finding additional reasons to change. New legal
considerations emerged as the United States launched a full-scale
operation aimed at combating global terrorism. The legal issues
associated with this counterattack continue to grow in importance as
they shape military operations. We opened the campaign against global
terrorism on two distinct fronts: we took the fight to the enemy in his
training camps and his political sanctuary in Afghanistan, and we denied
him further tactical victories within the United States through a more
robust homeland defense. These operations, and the often complex legal
questions they present, remind military legal professionals that we must
continue to challenge ourselves\--challenge ourselves to provide
Authoritative Counsel and Operational Readiness, thus ably discharging
two of our core competencies.

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#  Fortunately, as the world in which we operate changes, and the Air Force evolves in response to, and in anticipation of that change, the Judge Advocate General's Department continues to evolve as well. We build new skill sets, gain new knowledge, and adapt to new demands. Along with the Air Force, the Judge Advocate General's (JAG) Department has risen to the challenges presented by the end of the Cold War. We are challenged to operate with a reduced infrastructure (fewer bases and fewer overseas locations), yet still respond to global needs. We have increased our steady state, or home base, responsibilities, yet have taken on a greater role in the deployed operational environment. To meet these challenges, we have continued to improve the way we do business. We have refined our education and training, our equipment, and our legal support capabilities. We have also updated our vision of The Judge Advocate General's Department in the 21^st^ Century to reflect our increased responsibilities both at home and abroad.

#  In order to assure that we are ready to participate fully in the Expeditionary Air and Space Force, we have positioned more of the Air Force's legal professionals in each AEF library. This means that we have identified more judge advocates and military paralegals for possible deployment than ever before. By tasking these legal professionals as part of Unit Type Codes (UTCs), we have better identified the bases and units that are ready to provide contingency support. In doing so, we have adhered to the Air Force's Teaming Concept\--planning to deploy the maximum number of airmen from a single base to a forward operating location. In short, wings are now more likely to take their legal support---the attorney/paralegal teams they know and work with daily, when they deploy. When these teams arrive at their deployed locations, they are also more likely to know the other members of their deployed unit. We have increased manning at certain key bases in order to anticipate these deployments, but we also have worked with our Reserve component to assure that home base legal support continues when lengthy deployments decrease our permanent party personnel.

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#  We have also increased JA participation, and upgraded requisite skills, at all levels in deployment exercises. We have steadily improved our training in order to ensure that JAGs and paralegals, regardless of component (Active, Guard, Reserve), are ready to deliver superb legal services anywhere in the world. Our major deployment training course, JAGFLAG, has become a robust program that combines academic and "laboratory" approaches to preparation for deployment. It has built on the inherent strengths of our JAGs and paralegals\--making them complimentary parts, each having unique skills, and in combination, a sort of "legal weapons system."

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#  We have continued the seminal effort to conduct joint commander/JAG training in DARCLOC \-- the Deployed Air Reserve Commander and Legal Operations Course. And, we have developed whole new blocks of material to deal with deployed fiscal law, anti-terrorism law, and contingency contracting. We have thus focused training on the way we plan to fight, and this is now paying dividends in our current operations.

We have begun to develop legal doctrine for the Air Force as well. This
developing doctrine will give us a touchstone for every operation in the
future. By developing legal doctrine, we will assure that no operation
is ever planned or executed without an insightful approach to de-arming
the legal land mines that, experience tells us, will always be present.
Our legal doctrine will in turn be Air Force doctrine. That is
significant. As Air Force doctrine, it becomes an integral part of our
Air Force. Legal doctrine is not just for lawyers and paralegals. It
will be relevant for operators and planners, logisticians, and
communicators. Legal doctrine will capture that which makes our armed
forces a moral as well as a physical force. Our legal doctrine will tell
all who study it that ours is an Air Force that serves a nation governed
by the rule of law. Our doctrine will make it clear that, even facing
direct threats to our nation, we wage war in accordance with the law.

#  Not only must we prepare mentally to meet the challenges of modern operations, we must also supply our airmen with the finest tools available. This includes mundane deployment items such as packs, ponchos, and the other gear our legal offices are purchasing for their members, as well as providing state-of-the-art deployable equipment and robust support. The Air Force Legal Services Agency, Legal Information Services Directorate (JAS) continues to address the latter challenge, constantly improving the JAG deployment kits, our so-called "Big Blue Box" or "JAG-in-a-box." We have increased their number with many more centrally funded kits delivered to AEF wings and other deployment locations. JAS has also developed operations law CDs for deployment (often overnight in response to an imminent contingency or response). JAS has added new operations law research materials to FLITE to address the increasingly broad scope of material to which our legal professionals must have access in order to maintain Legal Information Mastery and provide Authoritative Counsel in a timely manner. Our International and Operations Law Division (AF/JAI) has likewise stepped up its contributions, developing its Web page into an expansive and easily searchable resource for operations law practitioners. JAI has also developed the Department's first Operations Law handbook, *Air Force Operations and the Law - A Guide for Air and Space Forces*. This book is a single, comprehensive source of legal information for today's expeditionary-minded legal advisor.

#  As judge advocates and other legal professionals expand their legal capabilities and services to meet today's many challenges, we must remain focused on the Air Force mission. Military legal professionals do not have a separate mission; rather, their mission is always imbedded in the mission of the commander they serve. How then do legal professionals meet changing mission objectives? To do this, we must continue to develop our Core Competencies: (1) Fair Military Justice, (2) Operational Readiness, (3) Robust Legal Programs, (4) Compelling Advocacy and Litigation, (5) Authoritative Counsel, and (6) Legal Information Mastery. We need to prepare commanders to be able to look airmen, their families, and the public "in the eye" and say that each disciplinary decision they made was fair, reasonable, and the right thing to do. Courts-martial must be professionally prosecuted and professionally defended, and they must be presided over by military judges whose competence commands respect. We need to be ready for action---as both airmen and as legal professionals. As dual professionals, we must be personally and professionally prepared for deployment. We need to ensure our programs are up to the challenges of helping Air Force members and their families deal with the routine as well as the extraordinary situations they face. We need to aggressively represent the Air Force and our national security interests, regardless of the complexity of the issue or the legal forum. We must know the legal answers and be able to provide timely commonsense advice. Finally, we must ensure our legal advisors know where to find, in a timely manner, the information necessary to answer complex questions involving life and death at the intersection of the law and military operations.

#  These core competencies are contained in our Department's Vision for the 21st Century. Any member of the Department who has not read our Vision, should. No, must. We need to not only read it, but to embrace it---as a Department and as individuals. In order to continue to deliver on the commitments we've made in identifying our Core Competencies, we need to continue to train and develop our skills, both as legal advisors and as airmen. We have made tremendous progress in this area. Our Deployed Fiscal Law and Contingency Contracting Course has grown to 115 students. This year's course also had a two-day extension covering the basics of operations law, and the entire week's instruction was put on a CD to allow deploying JAG/paralegal teams to spin-up or refresh their training in the field. We have also expanded seating for the Operations Law Course and JAGFLAG. Additionally, the JAG School has developed extensive resources for distance learning that will soon be available through streaming video on the Web. Some of these new electronic and web-based training initiatives are truly revolutionary for us. These and other distance learning initiatives help us train tomorrow's legal advisors, but we must fully exploit their capabilities to ensure we can deliver on the commitment we have made in our Core Competencies.

#  Education and training does not end at the JAG School door or at the base office training sessions\--individuals have a responsibility to develop, advance and hone their own professional expertise. The Chief of Staff's Reading List is an excellent place to start in developing professional airmanship. The continuing legal education page the JAG School will soon put on-line is a great place to enhance one's legal training. And simply reading our new Operations Law Guide is a great way to prepare for the future in the Expeditionary Air and Space Force.

But, we must also strive to see beyond the legal horizon and attempt to
address the prospective legal issues that loom there. If we stay in
reactive mode exclusively, we are ruled by the problem *de jour*. If we
anticipate, think ahead, prepare personally and professionally, and then
act to influence that which is yet to happen, we help shape what might
be termed the "legal battlefield." If we don't do this difficult
intellectual work, someone else, with less perspective and perhaps a
less noble agenda, might well do it for us. And, the military legal
issues of the future will shape the way we fight and train to fight,
just as surely as weapon procurement budgets or the defense planning
guidance will shape the available forces. We must not let chance define
the battlefield, but rather, we must see that it is shaped prospectively
by reasoned thought\--expressed, among other ways, through continued
professional writing. Likewise, we should ensure our Department's future
role is not defined by the happenstance of events and hindsight, but is
thought out in advance, planned for, and executed in an orderly and
efficient fashion\--we must aggressively explore the legal issues our
Armed Forces will face. Your professional thought can alter the future,
but only if you take the time to write. I challenge you to do so!

I am excited about this International and Operations Law Edition of *Air
Force Law Review* and the future writing I hope it will generate. It is
not a "Master Operator's" edition published primarily for current
application, but a prospective analysis of issues we will certainly
face. I commend to your reading in particular the comments and speeches
as they reflect not only our greater interoperability with coalition
partners (and related legal issues), but also as they give a perspective
from senior leaders and visionaries in our Department. As you read these
articles, remember that those of you who are members of the United
States Air Force Judge Advocate General's Department can shape the final
resolution of many of the issues the authors have identified. I urge you
to read this volume and then become part of the development of the law.
If you are prompted by this volume to become more involved in the
operational aspects of our legal practice, then this publication has
served us well. If this volume has further encouraged you to mold our
Department and the future direction of operations law, then it has
served to inspire. I sincerely urge you one and all to become
inspired\--the Air Force and our military legal practice are worthy of
your inspired, professional support.