Capstone Concept for 

Joint Operations 

Version 3.0 

15 January 2009 

Distribution Statement A

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. 
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FOREWORD 

The Capstone Concept for Joint Operations describes in broad terms my vision 

for how the joint force circa 2016-2028 will operate in response to a wide 

variety of security challenges. It proposes that future joint force commanders 

will combine and subsequently adapt some combination of four basic 

categories of military activity -- combat, security, engagement, and relief and 

reconstruction -- in accordance with the unique requirements of each 

operational situation. The concept is informed by current strategic guidance, 

but because it looks to the future, it is intended to be adaptable, as it must be, 

to changes in that guidance. 

 This concept’s primary purpose is to guide force development and 

experimentation by: (1) establishing a common framework for military 

professionals for thinking about future joint operations, (2) visualizing future 

joint operations for policymakers and others with an interest in the 

employment of military force, (3) establishing a conceptual foundation for 

subordinate joint and Service concepts, and (4) motivating and guiding the 

study, experimentation and evaluation of joint concepts and capabilities. 

 The Armed Forces of the United States comprise the Active and Reserve 

components and civilian personnel of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, 

and Coast Guard. Each Service possesses its own unique traditions and 

competencies, which contribute to the versatility, flexibility and effectiveness of 

the joint force. Together we support and defend our Nation, its people, its 

friends, and its interests worldwide. We always seek to operate with partners, 

and lead where appropriate, but we will be prepared to act unilaterally when 

necessary to protect our vital national interests. We respond to crisis and 

disaster to alleviate human suffering and promote peace. When necessary, we 

will confront and defeat those who threaten our national security. In 

conjunction with other U.S. government agencies, we are engaged in 

strengthening and expanding relationships with international partners on a 

day-to-day basis. These partnerships contribute to creating and maintaining a 

stable environment while concurrently deterring potential adversaries. 

 Today’s U.S. Armed Forces are, I believe, the most capable in our 

Nation’s history, and these capabilities provide important strategic advantages 

with respect to nearly any situation or potential adversary. U.S. forces can 

conduct operations on a scale that very few others can approach. Their ability 

to project and sustain military power over global distances is unmatched. U.S. 

joint intelligence capabilities, a key factor in the success of practically any kind 

of military operation, are the best in the world. 
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 U.S. military power today is unsurpassed on the land and sea and in the 

air, space, and cyberspace. The individual Services have evolved capabilities 

and competencies to maximize their effectiveness in their respective domains. 

Even more important, the ability to integrate these diverse capabilities into a 

joint whole that is greater than the sum of the Service parts is an unassailable 

American strategic advantage. 

 However, it is our people who ultimately are our greatest advantage. 

Their patriotism, training, discipline, leadership, and ability to adapt to any 

situation make us both a formidable foe and a reliable friend. 

 As capable as our joint forces are today, this will not be enough to meet 

future challenges as described in this concept. We will need to develop new 

capabilities and change the capacities of existing ones. We will need to create 

new joint and Service doctrine, tactics, techniques and procedures. We will 

need to establish new methods for integrating our actions, both internally and 

with partners. We will need to select, educate, train, equip and manage our 

people differently. We will need to envision and create new organizations. We 

will need to develop new technologies and adapt existing ones to new missions. 

This concept is designed to catalyze that process. 

 The Capstone Concept for Joint Operations is the most fundamental of all 

U.S. military concepts. It therefore speaks in terms of broad precepts and 

assertions that apply across a wide range of possible situations. It will be 

further elaborated in subordinate joint and Service operating concepts, which 

will apply its broad ideas to more specific situations. It is not a “how-to” 

manual prescribing detailed methods of execution and does not establish 

authoritative doctrine. 

 The concept progresses from describing an operational problem set to 

envisioning an operational solution to those problems to exploring the 

institutional implications of adopting that solution. Sections 1-3 envision why 

and under what conditions the joint force of the future will be employed. These 

sections reflect the Joint Operating Environment, a separate but companion 

document. Sections 4-6 describe what the joint force will do and, in broad 

terms, how it will do it. These sections are the core of the concept. Sections 7 

and 8 explore the institutional implications and risks associated with operating 

this way. These sections are intended directly to guide the capabilities 

development process. 

The Capstone Concept for Joint Operations describes how the joint force 

will operate in an uncertain, complex, and changing future characterized by 

persistent conflict. While the concept focuses on the future, many of its 

underlying concepts are timeless. Military success in the future rarely will be 

the product of radically new ideas, but instead will typically result from 

adapting these enduring truths to new requirements, conditions and 

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Table of Contents 

Foreword........................................................................................................ iii

1. The Joint Force as an Instrument of Policy................................................. 1

2. The Joint Operating Environment .............................................................. 2

3. National Security Challenges ..................................................................... 7

4. Joint Operations as the Integration and Adaptation of Combat, Security, 

Engagement, and Relief and Reconstruction............................................. 12

5. Basic Categories of Military Activity.......................................................... 14

6. Common Operating Precepts.................................................................... 21

7. Implications of Adopting this Concept ...................................................... 28

8. Risks of Adopting this Concept................................................................. 35

9. Conclusion............................................................................................... 36
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1. THE JOINT FORCE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF POLICY 

The fundamental purpose of military power is to deter or wage war in support 

of national policy. In these capacities, military power is a coercive instrument, 

designed to achieve by force or the threat of force what other means cannot. 

While it may be employed in more benign ways for a variety of important 

purposes across a wide range of situations, these other uses should not be 

allowed to imperil its ultimate ability to wage war. 

 In a broader sense, the joint force is one of several instruments of 

national policy maintained to help shape the international political 

environment in support of U.S. interests. The preeminent requirement of all 

joint operations, therefore, is that they help to create or maintain the 

conditions sought by that policy, whether through coercion or persuasion, and 

whether in response to an unexpected crisis or opportunity or as part of a 

deliberate and proactive plan. Since, even in war, this requirement may extend 

well beyond defeating enemy forces in battle, to be an effective policy 

instrument, joint forces must provide political leaders a much wider range of 

competencies than just dominance in combat. 

 Military force is only one element of national power, moreover, and in the 

complex environment of the future, it rarely will succeed alone. Instead, joint 

forces typically will operate in conjunction with other agencies of the U.S. and 

partner governments, and the success of the endeavor will depend on the 

success of that partnership. Depending on circumstances, the joint force may 

lead the national or multinational effort or may support other agencies, usually 

by creating the security conditions that allow nonmilitary agencies to operate. 

 Military action tends to be the most visible and hazardous expression of 

national policy, and any employment of U.S. military forces, even for benign 

purposes, tends to have significant domestic and international repercussions. 

Hence, whenever possible and appropriate, joint operations should be 

augmented or even supplanted by other, less threatening manifestations of 

national power. 

 While military power can contribute significantly to resolving some 

political problems, and sometimes is essential to doing so, it rarely will do so 

exactly as envisioned and without unintended and irreversible consequences. 

Moreover, while there are many problems in the world for which military forces 

are not an ideal solution, they may be employed nonetheless because their 

readiness, discipline, resources, and deployability make them the most 

expedient option. 

 As an instrument of policy, military forces never operate in a political 

vacuum. Every joint force commander must accept the reality that political 

factors will always constrain U.S. military operations, sometimes at significant 
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cost in operational efficiency. But while joint force commanders must adapt 

their operations to the requirements of policy, policy should avoid requiring of 

the joint force what it is incapable of achieving. Reconciling political purpose 

and military means thus requires candid and continuous dialog between 

political and military leaders. 

2. THE JOINT OPERATING ENVIRONMENT 

The Joint Operating Environment, a companion to this concept, forecasts the 

trends that will shape the future environment within which the joint force will 

operate. This section summarizes the findings of that document. The findings 

describe an environment characterized by uncertainty, complexity, rapid 

change, and persistent conflict. 

 The future joint operating environment 

will reflect both enduring and changing 

conditions. The central enduring condition is 

the unruly nature of the international 

political system, a universe of autonomous 

polities continuously seeking to optimize their 

own wealth, security, opportunities, and influence in relation to each other and 

the system as a whole. Ultimately constrained only by their own resources and 

the countervailing interests of other actors, these entities pursue their various 

interests through a wide range of behaviors toward each other, from friendly 

cooperation to more or less peaceful competition to outright conflict. 

 The result is a complex interactive environment in which events are 

largely unpredictable and sometimes counterintuitive. Political entities will 

resort to aggression or threats of aggression -- some more readily than others --

to pursue their interests. Crises will occur, within and between entities, as 

they adapt to this environment. The forces of nature and other chance events 

only add to the complexity. Friction and uncertainty abound under such 

circumstances. Accidents and miscalculations are common, and apparently 

negligible events produce disproportionate and often unintended 

consequences. Strategic surprises inevitably will occur. Indirect effects play 

out and interact unpredictably over time. 

 Rather than occurring as a series of isolated episodes, international 

relations unfold as a continuous fabric in which each event is shaped by those 

that precede it and shapes those that follow. Competitions and conflicts, once 

begun, often take on a life of their own beyond the intentions or control of any 

of the participants. It is in the context of this enduring complexity that the 

tensions, instabilities, disasters, crises, and conflicts inevitably will arise that 

could require the commitment of U.S. joint forces. 

The future operating environment

will be characterized by uncertainty,

complexity, rapid change, and

persistent conflict.
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 A second enduring condition will be America’s status as a global power 

with global interests. American security and prosperity in a globalized future 

will be linked inextricably to those of others. The United States will necessarily 

be a leader Nation to which much of the rest of the world will look for stability 

and security. It will continue to fall to the United States and its partner 

nations to protect and sustain the peaceful global system of interdependent 

networks of trade, finance, information, law and governance. Maintaining 

freedom of action and access around the globe is as much a requirement for 

the functioning of this peaceful global system as it is for the conduct of military 

operations. This will require continuous engagement throughout the world and 

persistent presence achieved through the forward deployment of U.S. joint 

forces. 

 Reflecting that requirement, a third condition that will continue to govern 

the conduct of U.S. joint operations is the need to conduct and sustain them at 

global distances. The most likely occasions requiring the commitment of joint 

forces will arise, as they have for the past half-century, in places where few or 

no forces are permanently stationed. America’s ability to project power rapidly 

and conduct and sustain operations globally thus will remain critically 

dependent on air and maritime freedom of movement and on sufficient 

strategic and operational lift. Future operational success will also rely 

increasingly on the use of space and cyberspace. Providing adequate lift and 

maintaining sufficient control of the global “commons” -- areas of sea, air, 

space, and cyberspace that belong to no one state1 -- thus will remain a vital 

imperative of future joint force design. 

 Of the conditions that are changing, perhaps the most significant is what 

one observer has described as “The Rise of the Rest”2 -- the increasing ability of 

other states to challenge the United States for influence, if not globally, then 

certainly regionally. The economic and military predominance that has 

underwritten U.S. foreign and defense policy for the past two decades can no 

longer be assumed. These emerging, advanced military competitors will be able 

to pose significant regional military challenges in the event of conflict. 

 In addition, a variety of nonstate actors -- often motivated by extremist 

religious or ethnic ideologies -- are emerging with some of the power of states, 

but lacking the political discipline imposed by national sovereignty and 

accountability. Many of these entities already have or soon could have the 

capability and capacity to pursue their interests by armed force. Many operate 

across state or even regional boundaries. They rarely adopt the centralized 

structure of states, which would expose them to greater external pressure, but 

instead take the form of popular movements or distributed networks, usually 

empowered by the connectivity of the Internet. 

 This diffusion of power in an increasingly globalized environment, within 

which some actors neither recognize nor are restrained by generally accepted 
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conventions of international behavior, greatly complicates conflict prevention, 

management, and resolution. At the same time, the cultural resistance to or 

inability to cope with the complexity of modernity risks overwhelming some 

governments, producing failed or failing states. The failure of a state often 

makes populations more susceptible to social movements based on ethnic or 

religious loyalties. These conditions invite humanitarian crises and even 

internal or cross-border armed conflict. 

 The foreseeable future promises to be an era of persistent conflict -- a 

period of protracted confrontation among states, nonstate entities, and 

individual actors increasingly willing to use violence to achieve their political 

ends.3 The future is unlikely to unfold as steady-state peace punctuated by 

distinct surges of intense conflict. Rather, the major initiatives of U.S. foreign 

policy -- major war, strategic deterrence, foreign humanitarian assistance, 

security cooperation, and so on -- are all likely to unfold against a global 

backdrop of chronic conflict. Such protracted struggles will not lend 

themselves to decisive military victory, but often at best will be amenable to 

being managed continuously over time. Many of these conflicts may cut across 

national, regional, cultural, and combatant command boundaries, complicating 

the responses to them. 

 Future conflict may result from a clash of policy interests between 

governments, but -- as in the past -- is at least as likely to arise within states 

and from a wider variety of causes, including religious and ethnic passions, 

dysfunctional borders, societal collapse, government corruption or 

incompetence, and natural resource scarcity. Moreover, as demographic, 

economic, and other patterns shift geographically around the world, the locus 

of conflict and crisis likely will shift also, requiring the United States to 

reevaluate its global posturing of military forces. 

At the same time, the means of waging conflict are becoming more lethal, 

ubiquitous, and easy to employ. Advanced weaponry, once the monopoly of 

industrialized states -- including anti-access and area-denial capabilities -- 

increasingly is becoming available to both less-developed states and nonstate 

actors. The potential proliferation among a growing roster of states and 

nonstate actors of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, is 

particularly dangerous, and could significantly complicate any future U.S. use 

of military force. Nuclear weapons will remain one potentially existential threat 

to the Nation. 

While the U.S. has enjoyed uncontested superiority in space for several 

decades, ever cheaper access to space and the emergence of antisatellite and 

counterspace weapons have begun to level the playing field, and the use and 

control of space for both civil and military purposes is becoming increasingly 

competitive. Likewise, rapid technological improvement of cyber capabilities 

and the relatively low cost of obtaining them will allow states, nonstate actors, 
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and even individuals to threaten disruption of military, economic, and other 

digital networks anywhere in the world. 

Meanwhile, as a result of accelerating transparency and connectivity, 

traditional military operations have become increasingly sensitive to popular 

perceptions and attitudes, both domestic and international. Thanks to 

pervasive media coverage and the growing ubiquity of personal 

communications devices, much of the population can follow, closely and 

practically in real time, events they previously would have learned of only after 

the fact, if at all. In addition to complicating the preservation of operations 

security, that growing transparency risks turning what once would have been 

inconsequential military incidents into strategically significant events. 

Transparency will put greater pressure than ever before on commanders at all 

levels, whose every decision and action will be scrutinized and critiqued in real 

time by media whose independent access to information will be virtually 

impossible to restrict. 

Greater connectivity makes populations more susceptible than ever 

before to manipulation by a variety of actors, some of whom will not hesitate to 

use disinformation to achieve their objectives. Potential adversaries have 

already recognized the strategic importance of the narrative battle and will 

continue to develop and employ increasingly sophisticated methods in that 

battle. Influencing public perceptions of battlefield events thus will become 

both more important and more difficult for joint forces, and commanders even 

at subordinate levels will find themselves nearly as consumed with shaping the 

narrative of those events as with planning and conducting the operations that 

produce them. 

The challenge of shaping the narrative will only be aggravated by 

changing Western attitudes about the use of military force. Pervasive visual 

images of human suffering can create pressures to divert joint forces to 

humanitarian activities on the one hand and to restrict their use of lethal force 

on the other -- a combination that could degrade combat readiness before 

battle and risk outright failure once it is joined. 

Another accelerating change in the operational environment is 

continuing urbanization as a result of population growth in cities and their 

surrounding urban sprawls. Such urban areas, especially the burgeoning 

cities of the developing world, many of them located along the world’s coasts, 

can be petri dishes for disease, crime, the emergence of radical ideologies, and 

civil conflict. They also present enormous challenges to the conduct of military 

operations. Operating in urban terrain, in combat or not, absorbs larger 

numbers of ground troops than operations in practically any other type of 

terrain. Moreover, urban combat tends to produce heavier military casualties, 

at least among ground forces, than combat in other types of terrain. It can also 

produce high civilian casualties and severe collateral civil damage, especially 
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when the enemy is a home-grown irregular force deliberately willing to exploit 

the protection from detection and attack afforded by concealment among the 

civilian populace. 

 Diminishing overseas access is another challenge anticipated in the 

future operating environment. Foreign sensitivities to U.S. military presence 

have steadily been increasing. Even close allies may be hesitant to grant 

access for a variety of reasons. Diminished access will complicate the 

maintenance of forward presence, a critical aspect of past and current U.S. 

military strategy, necessitating new approaches to responding quickly to 

developments around the world as well as more robust exploitation of existing 

U.S. advantages to operate at sea and in the air, space, and cyberspace. 

Assuring access to ports, airfields, foreign airspace, coastal waters and hostnation support in potential commitment areas will be a challenge and will 

require active peacetime engagement with states in volatile areas. In war, this 

challenge may require forcible-entry capabilities designed to seize and maintain 

lodgments in the face of armed resistance. 

Resolving many challenges, especially in the developing world, ultimately 

will require establishing or restoring the legitimacy of indigenous governments 

-- something the United States cannot accomplish unilaterally. This will put a 

premium on the joint force’s ability to work with and through partners to 

improve the partner’s capabilities. Joint forces will almost always find 

themselves working with indigenous military and security forces, for whose 

behavior they will rightly or wrongly be held accountable. 

 The future operating environment has the potential to produce more 

challenges than the United States and its military forces can respond to 

effectively. This has two implications. The first is the importance of shaping 

developments proactively so that they do not reach crisis proportions requiring 

the employment of a sizable joint force. The second is the importance of 

establishing cooperative security arrangements to share the burden of 

maintaining security and stability. Both implications will again place a 

premium on the use of joint forces for peacetime engagement. 

 Together, these enduring and changing conditions will present a variety 

of complex security challenges, including armed aggression and threatened 

aggression, the rise of extremist ideologies and movements, failed governance, 

natural and manmade disasters, and violations of international agreements. 

Surmounting these challenges often will exceed the capabilities of any single 

agency of government, including the joint force. Instead, successful future 

military operations typically will require the integrated application of all the 

instruments of national power. Future joint forces may find themselves 

operating as the military element of an integrated national task force or at least 

in close conjunction with other agencies of government. 
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 Moreover, in a globalized world, most such operations will tend to affect 

multiple international stakeholders, creating the political if not the operational 

need to act in concert with international partners. Such concerted action, 

however, inherently is much more difficult to manage than unilateral national 

action and usually requires significant compromise to maintain unity. Indeed, 

in many if not most cases, achieving a common understanding of the nature 

and cause of the problem may be even more difficult than, and certainly must 

precede, agreeing about the solution. As a result, whether prompted by 

cooperation, competition, or conflict, future joint operations will require far 

greater cultural awareness than U.S. forces have demonstrated before and 

greater tolerance of both inefficiencies and limits on operational choice as the 

price of closer interagency and multinational collaboration. 

3. NATIONAL SECURITY CHALLENGES 

The conditions and trends identified in the Joint Operating Environment and 

summarized in the previous section forecast five broad national security 

challenges likely to require the employment of joint forces in the future. These 

are not new challenges. They are the 

natural products of the enduring political 

environment, but they will exhibit new 

features in the future. None of these 

challenges is a purely military problem. 

Rather, all are national problems calling 

for the application of all the elements of 

national power. Individual joint operating 

concepts will address the joint 

contribution to dealing with each of these 

challenges in greater detail. 

Winning the Nation’s wars remains the preeminent challenge and 

primary justification for maintaining capable and credible military forces.4 In 

the future, as in the past, war may take a variety of forms. It may erupt among 

or between states or nonstate entities with war-making capabilities. It may 

take the form of classic state-on-state war, insurgency, or civil war. Aims may 

range from outright conquest or revolution to secession to the extraction of 

limited political, geographic, or economic concessions. Combatants may range 

from the regular military forces of states to paramilitary or irregular forces. 

They may operate in identifiable military formations using advanced fighting 

platforms -- tanks, aircraft, ships, and so on -- or they may be largely 

indistinguishable from the civil population. They may employ methods ranging 

from combined-arms tactics to guerrilla warfare, terrorism, sabotage, 

subversion, unconventional warfare, or other methods usually considered 

“irregular.” This full range of methods will be available to both state and 

nonstate adversaries, who are likely to adopt some combination. 

Five broad national security challenges are

likely to require the employment of joint

forces:

• Win the Nation’s wars

• Deter potential adversaries

• Develop cooperative security

• Defend the homeland  

• Respond to civil crises  
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 Warfare against the regular forces of a sovereign state using orthodox 

means and methods can be called conventional or regular warfare, while 

warfare against predominantly irregular forces can be called irregular warfare.5 

The latter tends to be protracted, favors working through partners, and 

revolves around the support of the population rather than solely the defeat of 

enemy fighting forces. These clean distinctions will rarely exist in reality; 

however, as often in the past, future conflicts will appear as hybrids comprising 

diverse, dynamic, and simultaneous combinations of organizations, 

technologies, and techniques that defy categorization.6 Likely adversaries can 

be expected to pursue and adopt any methods and means that confer an 

advantage relative to U.S. military power -- including methods that violate 

widely accepted laws and conventions of war.7 Even an advanced military 

power can be expected to adopt some methods considered “irregular” by 

Western standards, while nonstate actors increasingly are acquiring and 

employing “regular” military capabilities. Rather than attempting to defeat U.S. 

forces in decisive battle, even militarily significant states are likely to exploit 

increasingly inexpensive but lethal weapons in an erosion strategy aimed at 

weakening U.S. political resolve by inflicting mounting casualties over time.8

 In the extreme, any of these forms could involve the use of weapons of 

mass destruction. Such use, especially of nuclear weapons, would likely 

change both the strategic and operational context of the conflict dramatically. 

Any form of war is likely to include an ideological element, a “war of ideas,” 

which might be a primary or lesser attribute of the struggle. Finally, any 

future war is likely to involve the exploitation of cyberspace, and war between 

more advanced states may well include space operations. 

 The scale of warfare may range from limited strikes or raids to prolonged 

theater or multi-theater campaigns. Given the likely limited number of 

permanent U.S. overseas bases and the proliferation of lethal antiaircraft and 

antiship weapons, future warfare may require forcible entry in the face of 

significant resistance. Both friendly and enemy operations may target the 

adversary’s civilian leadership, popular will, and the civil infrastructure that 

supports his fighting forces. Hence, as in the past, future war may well impose 

requirements to restore civil order and services and to rebuild damaged 

infrastructure. 

 Despite this wide variation, all wars share the same fundamental nature. 

In any form or context, war is organized, reciprocal violence for political 

purposes. War is essentially a violent struggle between hostile and 

independent wills, each trying to impose itself by force directly upon the other 

or upon some contested population. This struggle combines physical, mental, 

and moral aspects. It is simultaneously a clash of material means -- weapons, 

equipment, and supplies; of intellect, as manifested in opposing strategies, 

operations, and tactics; and of resolve and morale. War is therefore not action 

against an inanimate object, but is “always the collision of two living forces.”9 
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This interactive quality makes war a dynamic process of initiative and response 

as each belligerent adapts itself to the other. 

 As armed politics, war is not a thing apart but exhibits the friction, 

uncertainty, complexity, and fluidity common to all political interactions. As a 

violent form of politics, however, war tends to exhibit all these attributes in 

extreme measures. To these war adds lethal violence and destruction -- the 

qualities that distinguish war from other forms of political interaction -- which 

have a significant psychological impact on the people who experience them. 

Because war reflects a clash of opposing wills, the human dimension is central. 

War may involve the use of advanced technology, but it is waged by people and 

therefore subject to the vagaries of human behavior under conditions of 

extreme danger and stress. Any successful U.S. approach to war must 

comport with this fundamental understanding. 

 In preparing to meet the challenge of future war, the U.S. military faces a 

dilemma. Major war against another military power or group of powers 

presents the greatest potential threat to national security, but is less likely in 

the time frame of this concept than other forms of conflict. In contrast, other 

forms of war are all but guaranteed -- in fact, are currently ongoing -- but are 

unlikely to pose the same existential threat. 

 Since the surest way to invite a threat is to be unprepared for it, the 

United States must maintain its competency in large-scale conventional 

warfare even while it prepares for and conducts less conventional operations. 

And since capabilities optimized for either of these requirements may be illsuited to the other, tradeoff decisions are inescapable. Ultimately, U.S. military 

forces must be able to operate across the full range of potential conflicts. 

 Moreover, avoiding war is usually preferable to fighting it. Hence, while 

the preeminent challenge for military forces is to wage war, joint forces also 

must contribute to meeting other critical security challenges: 

• Defending national interests requires not only being able to prevail in 

conflict, but also deterring potential adversaries who might threaten the vital 

interests of the United States or its partners.10 These threats could range from 

direct aggression to less openly belligerent actions that nonetheless threaten 

vital national interests. Deterrence convinces potential adversaries not to take 

threatening actions by influencing their decision making. It requires 

convincing those adversaries that a contemplated action will not achieve the 

desired result, that the cost of the action will be too great, or that an acceptable 

situation can be achieved without it -- or some combination of the three. 

Because of the gravity of potential nuclear aggression by a growing list of 

actors, maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent capability will remain a 

particular national security imperative. 
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 State and nonstate threats both can be deterred, although deterring the 

latter may be more difficult and complicated. Deterrence must be pursued 

both during peace to prevent war and during war to prevent escalation. It 

involves general activities, postures, and communications intended to influence 

any adversary’s decision making, such as maintaining credible defensive and 

offensive capabilities, but may additionally include more specific activities 

focused on a particular adversary, such as implementing a proactive deterrence 

campaign or executing flexible deterrent options in response to specific threats. 

 Since deterrence takes place entirely in the mind of another, it often is 

impossible to know whether it is succeeding -- although its failure tends to be 

unmistakable. Moreover, a potential adversary’s actions are influenced not 

only by external deterrents, but also by other factors including his own culture 

and the value systems of his society and political leadership -- factors that 

often are not well understood outside the society in question. Deterrence thus 

becomes even more complicated in the future as the variety of potential 

aggressors increases. Actions that deter one potential adversary may have 

much less effect on -- or may even encourage -- another. They may even be 

perceived differently by the same potential adversary under different 

circumstances. 

 For all these reasons, developing better ways to measure the 

effectiveness of deterrent efforts is a vital requirement. Moreover, because 

future threats increasingly may be transregional, joint deterrence activities 

likely will require the cooperation of multiple combatant commands. 

• In the globalized future described in the Joint Operating Environment, it 

will be increasingly important to develop cooperative security by maintaining or 

strengthening the global security framework of the United States and its 

partners.11 Cooperative security involves the comprehensive set of continuous, 

long-term and integrated actions among a broad spectrum of U.S. and 

international governmental and nongovernmental partners that maintains or 

enhances stability, prevents or mitigates crises, and facilitates other operations 

when crises occur. Essentially it is the challenge of fostering a favorable 

security environment and establishing a solid base for effective crisis response. 

It can involve strengthening the U.S. security posture in a region, developing 

allied and friendly capabilities for self-defense and multinational operations, 

thwarting the emergence of specific state and nonstate threats, alleviating the 

conditions that underlie instability, and improving cooperative security 

arrangements for enhanced multinational cooperation. Like deterrence, 

cooperative security can reduce the chances of conflict, but unlike deterrence, 

it does not involve the threat of force. Cooperative security and deterrence 

should be complementary, each pursuing separate objectives but both 

contributing to security and preventing conflict. 
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• The ultimate obligation of U.S. joint forces is to defend the homeland.12 

Homeland defense is the protection of U.S. sovereignty, territory, domestic 

population, and critical infrastructure against external threats and aggression 

or other threats as directed by the President. Homeland defense includes a 

wide range of active and passive measures to prevent, preempt, defeat, and 

mitigate the effects of aggression. At the limit homeland defense entails 

outright war, but it also requires significant capabilities and actions short of 

war. Deterrence and cooperative security contribute to homeland defense by 

preventing aggression, but qualify as distinct security challenges in themselves. 

Threats to the homeland can range from missile or other attack by advanced 

regular militaries to terrorist attack, any of which could involve the use of 

weapons of mass destruction or cyber attack. 

 Homeland defense generally involves the implementation of an active, 

layered defense that attempts to defeat threats as far from the Nation’s shores 

as possible. Homeland defense requires considerable interagency integration, 

as well as cooperation with international partners to interdict developing 

threats at their points of origin. 

• The United States inevitably will find it necessary to respond to a variety 

of civil crises by acting to relieve human suffering and restore civil functioning, 

most often in support of civil authorities.13 These crises include any kind of 

disruption to civil functioning resulting from any natural or manmade disaster, 

civic disturbance, or endemic condition that creates a significant threat to 

human life or public welfare. They may be foreign or domestic. They may 

occur independently, as in a natural disaster disrupting an otherwise 

functioning society, or they may occur within the context of a conflict, such as 

widespread suffering in a nation embroiled in an insurgency. 

 Security may often be a factor in crisis response, as the result of the 

breakdown of civil order, even when there is no military adversary involved. 

Moreover, even when a civil crisis occurs independently of existing conflict, 

there often is the risk that violent conflict might arise out of the disorder and 

suffering. This challenge is likely to become more common in the future as 

more states find themselves unable to cope with the demographic and natural 

resource trends described in the Joint Operating Environment. 

* * * 

While these challenges are not uniform across the combatant commands, some 

of which will be focused almost exclusively on cooperative security or 

deterrence, while others are actually engaged in warfare, almost any mission 

assigned to the joint force will reflect one or more of them. 

Accordingly, tomorrow’s joint forces must be prepared to deal with all these 

challenges, anywhere in the world, potentially on short notice and for 
CCJO v3.0 

12

indeterminate duration, in response to unexpected events. The specific time, 

location, and form of any particular challenge will be practically impossible to 

predict, at least in time to develop forces specifically for that threat. Any of 

these challenges is likely to require joint forces to project and sustain military 

power over global distances and for significant durations. Moreover, each 

challenge will tend to evolve over time. Finally, preparing for any one challenge 

will not necessarily prepare joint forces for another. 

4. JOINT OPERATIONS AS THE INTEGRATION AND ADAPTATION OF 

COMBAT, SECURITY, ENGAGEMENT AND RELIEF AND 

RECONSTRUCTION 

The national security challenges of the preceding section establish the 

purposes for which joint operations may be required now and in the future. 

This section describes in general terms how future joint forces will contribute 

to meeting those challenges. Subordinate operating concepts will apply these 

broad ideas to more specific situations. 

 The central thesis of this concept comprises three interrelated ideas that 

together describe broadly how the joint force will operate: 

• Address each situation on its own terms, in its unique political and 

strategic context, rather than attempting to fit the situation to a 

preferred template. 

• Conduct and integrate a combination of combat, security, engagement, 

and relief and reconstruction activities according to a concept of 

operations designed to meet the unique circumstances of that situation. 

• Conduct operations subject to a continuous assessment of results in 

relation to expectations, modifying both the understanding of the 

situation and subsequent operations accordingly. 

These three ideas are explained in greater detail below. Together they describe 

a generic process of operational adaptation designed expressly to cope with the 

complexity, uncertainty, and change that will define the future operating 

environment.14 This process applies to all joint operations even though the 

specific ends, ways, and means of those operations may vary widely according 

to the situation. 

 First, in designing joint operations, the joint force commander must 

come to grips with each operational situation on its own terms, accepting that 

this understanding rarely will be complete or entirely correct, but at best will 

approximate reality. The Joint Operating Environment describes complex, 

globalized challenges for which the underlying causes and dynamics will be 
CCJO v3.0 

13

anything but obvious, while the repercussions of action often will be broad and 

unpredictable. The interests of various stakeholders may be unclear, and even 

identifying those stakeholders may be difficult. In this environment, the joint 

force cannot afford to apply 

preconceived methods 

reflexively, but instead must 

conform its methods to the 

specific conditions of each 

situation. 

 Those methods must 

reflect both the internal 

dynamics of the situation 

itself, which give the situation 

its basic operational nature, 

and the strategic context, 

which establishes the broad 

political and resource limits 

within which operations must 

be conducted. Because of 

pervasive uncertainty, both 

may require making 

assumptions about the situation based on the best available, but often 

inconclusive, information. Such assumptions must be treated as hypotheses 

to be confirmed or altered by the evidence developed through action. 

 Second, in framing a concept of operations conforming to this situational 

understanding, the joint force commander must consider the use of combat, 

security, engagement, and relief and reconstruction activities. The following 

section discusses these in greater detail. Suffice to say here that most joint 

operations will require some combination of two or more of these broad 

categories of military activity, which in total embrace virtually every mission 

the joint force could be called upon to perform. Operational art thus becomes 

the arranging and balancing of combat, security, engagement, and relief and 

reconstruction activities to achieve the objectives of the joint operation or 

campaign -- and their continual rearranging as that operation or campaign 

unfolds. 

 The concept does not envision these activities occurring in regular or 

distinct phases. While some tactical sequencing inevitably will be required, 

this rarely will be uniform across the operational area. Rather, it is envisioned 

that those activities will occur largely simultaneously across the operational 

area. 

 While the four basic categories of activity constitute the means of joint 

operations, the ways are the concepts by which they are arranged and 

The central thesis of this concept comprises three

interrelated ideas that together describe broadly how the

joint force will operate:   

• Address each situation on its own terms, in its

unique political and strategic context, rather than

attempting to fit the situation to a preferred template.

• Conduct and integrate a combination of combat,

security, engagement, and relief and reconstruction

activities according to a concept of operations designed to

meet the circumstances of the situation.

• Conduct operations subject to continuous

assessment of results in relation to expectations, modifying

both the understanding of the situation and subsequent

operations accordingly.
CCJO v3.0 

14

integrated. As desirable as it might be, no single such concept can prescribe 

that arrangement across the full set of potential security challenges. The 

concept for an offensive campaign to defeat the armed forces of a hostile state, 

for example, necessarily will be very different from the concept for helping a 

host nation defeat a growing insurgency, which in turn will have little in 

common with the concept for responding to a peacetime natural disaster. 

 In every operational situation, the joint force commander will have to 

develop a concept of operations that integrates -- and reconciles the frequently 

competing demands of -- combat, security, engagement, and relief and 

reconstruction as they apply. That concept of operations cannot be based on a 

rigid template, but instead must reflect the specific conditions of the situation. 

This has significant implications for doctrine, training and education. 

 Finally, the joint force commander must expect that, however carefully 

conceived, his initial operational design will prove inadequate in some respects. 

His plan therefore must incorporate explicit means of continuously assessing 

the results of operations in relation to expectations, and he must be prepared 

to modify operations when the two diverge. By probing the situation to cause it 

to reveal itself more clearly, operations themselves thus become a way of 

testing early assumptions and expectations. 

 To succeed, this approach requires making assumptions about the 

situation explicit so they can be reconsidered as events unfold. It further 

requires collecting information not only to monitor tactical execution, but also 

to provide commanders a basis from which to re-evaluate their fundamental 

assumptions and modify their operations accordingly. 

 In short, as both a concession and response to pervasive uncertainty, all 

joint operations are fundamentally and explicitly an adaption based on learning 

about the situation through action. Both understanding the situation and 

arranging combat, security, engagement, and relief and reconstruction become 

continuous activities informed by feedback. Regardless of the mission, the 

more quickly and appropriately the joint force can adapt itself to its situation, 

the more successful it will be.15

5. BASIC CATEGORIES OF MILITARY ACTIVITY 

All joint forces are designed, organized, equipped, and trained to execute one or 

more of four broad types of military activities. These are the basic building 

blocks from which joint operations are 

constructed. As indicated above, most 

joint operations will require some 

combination of two or more of these 

activities arranged and weighted to 

accomplish the mission. 

All joint operations comprise one or more of

four broad categories of activity:

• Combat  

• Security  

• Engagement  

• Relief and reconstruction  
CCJO v3.0 

15

Combat aims at defeating armed enemies -- regular, irregular, or both. It 

concludes successfully when those enemies capitulate or are destroyed. It is 

the demonstration of credible combat power that primarily deters aggression. 

 Historically, one or both of two defeat mechanisms have been employed 

in combat.16 Attrition wears down an adversary’s human and material 

resources. Disruption attacks his organizational cohesion or effective 

functioning so that even if elements of the enemy system remain undamaged, 

the enemy cannot operate as a coherent whole. Both defeat mechanisms also 

psychologically affect the enemy’s will to fight. 

 When it can be achieved, disruption reduces the need for attrition, saving 

time and reducing human and material costs. But the vulnerability of an 

enemy force to defeat by disruption is sensitive to both its intrinsic character 

and the conditions of battle. Generally, the more rigidly structured an enemy, 

the greater his adherence to decipherable doctrinal patterns, and the greater 

his reliance on continuous command and control, the greater his vulnerability 

to disruption. Conversely, the more imbedded an enemy in the theater of 

operations, the less transparent his activities, and the less dependent on 

external sources of logistical support, the less his vulnerability to disruption. 

 Because they tend to operate dispersed on familiar terrain, avoid regular 

patterns, and employ episodic and often redundant command chains, irregular 

forces tend to be more difficult to disrupt than regular forces. More difficult 

does not mean impossible, however, and given sufficient time and intelligence 

resources to unravel an irregular enemy’s tendencies and structure, even an 

irregular adversary can be disrupted. Too often, however, combat against an 

irregular enemy degenerates into a battle of attrition in which success favors 

the side with the greater stamina or the willingness to apply the greater 

ruthlessness. Given the future described in the Joint Operating Environment, 

developing knowledge and doctrine for disrupting irregular enemies comparable 

to that which exists for regular enemies should remain a priority. 

 Combat activities and capabilities can vary widely depending on context. 

The capabilities required to detect and defeat regular forces operating from 

advanced warfighting platforms can be very different from the capabilities 

required to defeat irregular forces that blend in with the civil population. Both 

will be very different from the capabilities required to detect and defeat 

adversaries operating in space and cyberspace. 

 The trends described in Section 2 promise a more varied, ambiguous, 

and politically volatile combat environment than U.S. joint forces have ever 

before encountered. While the central task of combat to impose defeat will not 

change, how to do so decisively will become increasingly complicated. 

Moreover, while combat is the essential activity in war, there is much more to 

winning wars than defeating enemy forces in combat. Above all, joint forces in 
CCJO v3.0 

16

the future will need to be able to apply combat power in more varied, 

measured, and discriminate ways than ever before. 

Security activities seek to protect and control civil populations and 

territory -- friendly, hostile, or neutral.17 They may be performed as part of a 

military occupation during or after combat, to help defeat an insurgency, or in 

response to a humanitarian disaster. Unlike combat, they seek ultimately to 

reassure rather than compel. Security activities conclude successfully when 

civil violence is reduced to a level manageable by law enforcement authorities. 

 Recent experiences have revitalized awareness of both the importance of 

security activities and the capabilities needed to conduct them effectively. 

There now is widespread acknowledgment that security activities may be as 

essential to success in war as combat; they cannot be relegated to a relatively 

few special-purpose units, but instead must be treated as a competency 

required of all U.S. general-purpose forces. 

 Because the premises of security are quite different from -- indeed, often 

opposite to -- those governing combat,18 preparation for conducting security 

missions requires deliberate education and training in areas ranging from 

cultural awareness and the laws of armed conflict to acceptable methods of 

population control and the administration of justice. 

 Effective security requires a visible and enduring security presence in the 

communities to be secured. Until that presence can be furnished by 

indigenous civil law enforcement personnel, nothing can replace sufficient 

trained and disciplined military personnel on the ground. 

 Joint forces engaged in offensive combat must be prepared to establish 

security in populated areas from the moment organized resistance in those 

areas has ceased, and must continue to do this until the threat of civil violence 

no longer exists or until other instruments become available to control it. Joint 

force commanders must consider the requirements needed to conduct both 

activities simultaneously while preserving sufficient flexibility for dealing with 

unforeseen events. 

Engagement activities seek to improve the capabilities of or cooperation 

with allied and other partners. They may be conducted as a complement to 

broader diplomatic or economic engagement, in aid of a friendly (and 

sometimes not so friendly) government’s own security activities, and even 

during war itself. They are the primary military contribution to the national 

challenge of establishing cooperative security. Engagement activities typically 

are long-duration undertakings, ending only when they have achieved their 

goals or when either the U.S. or partner government concludes that they have 

become unnecessary or unproductive. 
CCJO v3.0 

17

 The scope and nature of engagement activities can vary enormously, 

reflecting differing strategic relationships between the United States and 

partner nations. Each engagement effort will be unique and must be framed to 

accommodate both U.S. objectives and the concerns of and constraints on the 

potential partners. 

 Even more than other categories of joint activity, engagement is subject 

to a myriad of laws and regulations governing everything from limits on funding 

and the deployment of military personnel to legislative restrictions on the tasks 

to which military assistance may be applied. Given these complexities, nothing 

can compensate for close and continuous interagency coordination at the 

individual country level. The key to that coordination is the country team and 

the U.S. Ambassador to whom it answers. As the permanent agent of the U.S. 

government’s diplomatic relationship with the host nation, the country team 

alone can negotiate the access essential to effective engagement. And as the 

President’s personal representative, only the ambassador has the authority to 

insure synchronization of interagency operations. Above all, by virtue of its 

routine political contacts with the host government and its familiarity with local 

conditions, the country team is uniquely placed to assess the partner nation’s 

ability and willingness to accept military engagement and, where those differ 

from the U.S. appraisal, to convince the host government to modify its views. 

For all these reasons, the country team will be the coordinating authority in 

most engagement efforts, and the success of those efforts will depend on the 

effectiveness of the liaison between and among the regional combatant 

command and the country teams in its area of responsibility. 

 Trends suggest that engagement requirements increasingly will exceed 

the capacities of specialized but manpower-limited organizations such as 

special operations forces and permanent military assistance groups. The 

unique capabilities of those forces remain vital, and their capacities may well 

expand. But the reality is that a growing share of joint engagement tasks will 

fall to general-purpose forces. Accomplishing those tasks without 

unacceptable penalty to their combat capabilities will require innovative 

adjustments of joint and service doctrine, organizations, and training. 

 Finally, not least of the challenges associated with engagement is 

measuring its impact. Because engagement is for the most part a long-term 

undertaking, the most important results may not be visible until long after it 

begins. Indeed, in some cases, as for example when undertaken to help a 

partner nation improve its ability to deter external aggression, effects may 

never be clearly measurable. 

 Since engagement imposes both direct budget costs and opportunity 

costs with respect to the joint forces that conduct them, that inability to 

measure their impact risks undermining the legislative and political support 

without which no engagement is feasible. Even more than other joint activities, 
CCJO v3.0 

18

therefore, engagement depends crucially on the persuasiveness of the strategic 

narrative underwriting it, and on the active sponsorship of political, diplomatic 

and military leaders. In the end, however difficult its results may be to 

quantify, joint engagement may be the most cost-effective of the Nation’s 

military investments. 

Relief and reconstruction activities seek to restore essential civil services 

in the wake of combat, a breakdown of civil order, or a natural disaster.19 Like 

security, they may be required in conditions ranging from military occupation 

to counterinsurgency to a humanitarian crisis. They conclude successfully 

when routine local government and commercial activities are able to meet the 

economic and health needs of the affected communities or when other agencies 

are able to take over the relief and reconstruction effort. 

 Absent effective local law enforcement, relief and reconstruction activities 

may require concurrent security activities, and often must be integrated with 

nonmilitary efforts, both governmental and nongovernmental. Preparation for 

this mission must therefore consider two cases, one in which significant 

civilian relief assets are present, the other in which they are not. Joint relief 

and reconstruction activities may involve significant contractor support; such 

support will have to be integrated with the other actions of the joint force. 

 Historically, military forces have shown little concern for the civil damage 

resulting from combat. That began to change in the last century as the 

continued conduct of combat increasingly fell hostage to the recovery of battledamaged lines of communication and support facilities such as roads, rail 

lines, ports and airfields. Similarly, failure to attend to essential civil needs in 

occupied areas invited popular resistance, suppression of which might require 

the diversion of precious combat forces. 

 To those concerns must be added the psychological impact of untended 

collateral civil damage, not only on the affected population, but also, broadcast 

by ubiquitous visual media, on the American public and the international 

community at large. Such untended collateral damage can undermine the 

legitimacy of U.S. and partner actions. At home, a natural disaster can have 

the same impact, producing a similar demand for the mobility, logistical assets, 

command and control, and organized and disciplined manpower which, in 

many cases, military forces alone possess. 

 Relief and reconstruction activities conducted during battle differ in 

several important respects from those conducted during prolonged military 

occupations, and those, in turn, from peacetime operations aimed at assisting 

communities in the wake of manmade or natural disaster. Perhaps the key 

variable is the security conditions within which relief and reconstruction must 

be conducted. Where no significant security threat exists, or where local law 

enforcement capabilities suffice to maintain public order, relief and 
CCJO v3.0 

19

reconstruction becomes primarily a logistical and engineering problem. In 

such cases, typical of natural catastrophes and post-conflict environments in 

which hostile forces have accepted defeat, military forces rarely will be alone in 

mounting relief efforts, and their most important contribution may be to assist 

other organizations in such areas as transportation, communications, logistics, 

and emergency health care. 

 Such benign conditions are unlikely to coexist with combat. Even where 

care has been taken to minimize civil damage, combat inevitably destroys civil 

facilities and disrupts social services, particularly in dense urban areas. 

Meanwhile, the temporary suspension of civil law enforcement risks unleashing 

looting, vandalism, and other manifestations of public disorder. Unless 

brought promptly under control, such conditions can make relief and 

reconstruction virtually impossible. In turn, delay in re-establishing essential 

social services can feed the disorder, exacerbate the security problem and, in 

the extreme, incite the growth of organized resistance. 

 That said, while security may be a prerequisite for the ultimate success 

of relief and reconstruction activities, it cannot be a precondition for 

undertaking them. Both to engage local civil populations and preempt 

resentment and resistance, efforts to restore essential civil services and 

encourage the restoration of peaceful daily routines must begin as quickly as 

possible after organized resistance has ended. In the context of continuing 

operations, in short, security and relief and reconstruction go hand in hand. 

 The preeminent objective of relief and reconstruction conducted during 

combat will be to maintain offensive momentum or defensive integrity. While 

that by no means precludes efforts to ameliorate the conditions of civil 

populations, those efforts must be carefully prioritized to avoid reducing 

pressure on a still undefeated enemy. In counterinsurgency operations, the 

tension between these competing objectives can become acute, and joint force 

commanders must constantly reassess and adjust the balance between relief 

and reconstruction efforts aimed at supporting continued combat and those 

aimed at improving the conditions of the population. 

 Where combat against organized resistance has ended or never existed, 

military relief and reconstruction activities typically are a stopgap measure to 

preserve life and property until civil and commercial efforts can be organized 

and brought to bear. In some cases, however, particularly in less developed 

areas, the interval between an initial response by joint forces and the 

deployment of sufficient civil relief resources to replace them can be prolonged. 

 Nevertheless, it is essential that military forces begin partnering with 

other federal agencies and local authorities as rapidly as possible, especially 

when nongovernmental organizations are involved. Except in the case of relief 

and reconstruction incident to combat, straightforward command relationships 
CCJO v3.0 

20

rarely will exist, and the greater the number and variety of participating 

agencies, the greater the risk of misunderstanding and disputes. Military 

commanders must be able to tolerate a certain degree of ambiguity and 

inefficiency as the price of successful cross-agency collaboration. They likewise 

must allocate sufficient resources and effort to overcoming this challenge. 

Effectiveness therefore will put a premium on close and continuous liaison and 

communications. 

 The employment of joint forces in relief and reconstruction activities, 

unless carefully monitored and controlled, easily can begin to degrade combat 

readiness. Commanders responsible for such operations must be alert to signs 

of such degradation and take measures to sustain or restore the combat 

proficiency of the units involved. 

* * * 

Together, these four categories of activity embrace virtually every mission the 

joint force could be called upon to accomplish. Assisting a friendly state to 

defeat an insurgency, for example, might require combat against organized 

insurgent forces, security to protect the population from intimidation, relief and 

reconstruction to restore or expand civil services, and engagement to train 

host-nation security forces. Even a more conventional conflict typically would 

require joint forces to conduct, in addition to combat, security activities to 

control secured areas, relief and reconstruction to facilitate continued combat, 

and engagement to ensure effective cooperation with multinational partners. 

Homeland defense could involve engagement to deprive nonstate enemies of 

sanctuary overseas; security to detect and prevent attack by monitoring land, 

sea, air, and cyberspace access; combat to defeat an actual attack; and in the 

worst event, relief and reconstruction to mitigate the effects of a successful 

attack. 

 Deterrence is a special case because it can involve both the 

demonstration of capabilities and the performance of activities. Deterrence 

requires the credible willingness to employ defensive and offensive combat 

capabilities, including nuclear, to convince a potential aggressor that any 

attack would likely fail and would result in unacceptable retaliation. It can 

involve security activities that convince the potential aggressor that attack 

preparations likely would be detected. In conjunction with cooperative security 

efforts, it can involve a variety of engagement activities to convince the 

potential adversary that it can achieve acceptable objectives without attacking. 

It can also involve engagement with partners to convince a potential aggressor 

that an attack would result in a multinational response. Finally, it can involve 

reconstruction capabilities that demonstrate that even a successful attack will 

not achieve its desired objective because the United States will recover 

effectively. 
CCJO v3.0 

21

 How each activity will be conducted will vary with context. Combat in 

support of counterinsurgency will differ from combat to defeat cross-border 

aggression by the armed forces of a hostile state. Recovery from a natural 

disaster at home or abroad will differ from relief and reconstruction pursuant 

to combat in an occupied territory. That said, the basic aims, means, and 

concepts associated with each of these activities will change little from case to 

case. 

 Combat, security, engagement, and relief and reconstruction must all be 

competencies of the joint force. While some special-purpose forces will 

specialize in particular aspects of one or more, general-purpose forces must be 

able to operate in all four types of activity in one way or another. Currently, 

U.S. joint forces possess codified doctrine for the conduct of combat, but 

doctrine and capabilities with respect to the other activities are less robust. 

That imbalance must change. That said, it is important to keep in mind that 

while other agencies can perform security, engagement, and relief and 

reconstruction, only the military can conduct combat. 

6. COMMON OPERATING PRECEPTS 

Regardless of the combination of combat, security, engagement, and relief and 

reconstruction activities, 

several broad precepts will 

underlie all successful future 

joint operations. In effect, 

these precepts elaborate the 

central thesis described in 

Section 4. All flow logically 

from the conditions and 

challenges described earlier. 

None is fundamentally new, 

although the emphasis each 

receives and how it is 

implemented in the future 

may change. Subordinate 

joint operating concepts will 

apply these precepts in 

greater detail to more specific 

situations. 

• Achieve and maintain 

unity of effort within the 

joint force and between the 

joint force and U.S. 

government, international, 

These precepts will underlie future joint operations:

• Achieve and maintain unity of effort within the joint

force and between the joint force and U.S. government,

international, and other partners.

• Plan for and manage operational transitions over time

and space.

• Focus on operational objectives whose achievement

suggests the broadest and most enduring results.

• Combine joint capabilities to maximize complementary

rather than merely additive effects.

• Avoid combining capabilities where doing so adds

complexity without compensating advantage.

• Drive synergy to the lowest echelon at which it can be

managed effectively.

• Operate indirectly through partners to the extent that

each situation permits.   

• Ensure operational freedom of action.

• Maintain operational and organizational flexibility.

• Inform domestic audiences and influence the

perceptions and attitudes of key foreign audiences as an explicit

and continuous operational requirement.
CCJO v3.0 

22

and other partners. The problem of achieving and maintaining operational 

coherence is more important and difficult than ever before given the 

requirement to operate in multiple domains simultaneously in conjunction with 

other national agencies, international partners and nongovernmental 

organizations. After decades of effort, U.S. joint forces have established 

effective mechanisms for achieving internal unity of effort based on a single 

military chain of command, although the requirement to ensure that 

equipment, procedures, and so on are interoperable persists. The challenges of 

the future will require joint forces to achieve this same level of unity between 

different joint forces and with other governmental and nongovernmental actors, 

both U.S. and international, even when formal unity of command is infeasible. 

They also will require future joint forces to integrate with partners with whom 

they have never integrated before and at lower echelons than ever before. In 

many cases, joint forces will require the ability to integrate effectively with 

partners who are technologically less advanced. 

Mechanisms for achieving unity of effort necessarily will differ across 

situations and among participants. Some actors will integrate fully with the 

joint force. Others, such as some international partners, may cooperate openly 

while requiring operational autonomy. Still others, such as some 

nongovernmental organizations, may find it necessary to distance themselves 

from military forces for reasons of their own credibility and security. The joint 

force will have to be extremely flexible about establishing nonstandard 

relationships -- an example of the direct imposition of political factors on 

operational conduct. 

Two basic situations apply. Where military considerations predominate, 

the joint force likely will integrate the national effort and will have to 

incorporate partners into its command and control processes. Where other 

considerations predominate, some other government agency likely will integrate 

the national effort, with the joint force adapting itself to that agency’s 

procedures. Even in this case, the joint force, because of its resources and 

well-established planning methods, will likely provide significant support to the 

lead agency. Both basic situations will have implications for communications, 

organization, procedures, and training. 

• Plan for and manage operational transitions over time and space. 

This concept calls for continuous adaptation to changing circumstances, which 

often can be done within the context of an existing operational design. 

Sometimes, however, situations will undergo fundamental shifts. These will 

rarely be uniform in time and space across an operational area, but they can 

be critical periods in the conduct of operations. The future joint force 

commander will have to recognize these fundamental transformations in the 

situation and transition quickly and smoothly in response to them. Failure to 

do so can result in problems ranging from lost momentum or opportunities to 

more or less significant setbacks to outright mission failure. Conversely, 
CCJO v3.0 

23

successful transition can allow the joint force to seize the initiative in a 

situation and garner disproportionately favorable results. 

These transitions may often involve the replacement of one organization 

by another -- either within the joint force or between the joint force and 

another U.S. or international agency, but they almost always will require some 

fundamental reorienting of existing forces. In any event, they will require 

fundamental shifts in operational behavior -- such as from combat to security 

activities, with their potentially contradictory imperatives. 

Transitions of this magnitude cannot be improvised, but must be 

planned, even if the precise timing of the shifts cannot be predicted -- and 

accepting that surprises inevitably will occur despite the best analysis. This 

will require efforts to anticipate potential situational transformations as well as 

vigilance to operational shifts as they occur. Key also will be mechanisms for 

quickly reorienting the force despite the natural inertia of ongoing operations. 

Especially vital will be retaining key commanders and commands in place 

during transitions, to avoid abrupt breaks in operational continuity. 

• Focus on operational objectives whose achievement suggests the 

broadest and most enduring results. Designating operational objectives 

that, if achieved, generate the intended outcomes is a key task of operational 

design in any situation. A situation can be thought of as a system, a collection 

of elements interacting to perform certain functions that are essential to the 

continued existence of that system -- whether the system is an adversary’s 

fighting forces, a society reeling from a natural disaster, or a collection of states 

creating a regional cooperative security arrangement. Some elements and 

functions of the system invariably will be more important to the existence of 

the system -- and offer the joint force greater leverage against it -- than others 

toward which applying effort will contribute only marginally. 

The idea is to focus efforts on objectives that appear most critical to the 

continued overall functioning of the system rather than those that impact 

individual elements but leave the system unaffected. In the case of combat, 

this would mean attacking to disrupt the enemy’s functioning as a cohesive 

whole, rendering him ineffective as a combat force even if whole units remain 

undamaged -- and exposing him to piecemeal destruction, if necessary. 

Conversely, in the case of relief and reconstruction, it would mean focusing on 

those tasks that would most efficiently create or restore some basic level of 

functionality in local institutions and infrastructure -- in this case to enhance 

rather than disrupt the functioning of the system. 

Identifying critical objectives will depend more on judgment than on 

calculation. Full understanding of the dynamics of any operational situation 

will remain fundamentally unachievable, and planning for joint operations 

should not be predicated on false expectations of certainty. Initially, 
CCJO v3.0 

24

operational objectives may have to be tentative, and commanders must be 

prepared to shift those objectives as the situation develops. The choice of 

factors on which to concentrate efforts thus should be treated as a hypothesis 

to be tested by action. 

In many situations, the systemic nature of the problem may not be 

obvious. The operating patterns of irregular enemies, for example, tend to be 

less easily discerned than those of regular forces. Likewise, some systems are 

simply less vulnerable than others to system-level influence. Networks of 

largely autonomous elements, for example, tend to be less vulnerable to system 

disruption than centralized hierarchies. Such systems ultimately may have to 

be dealt with by dealing cumulatively with the individual elements. 

Regardless of the approach, it is important to recognize that any action 

in a situation will change the situation. Operational design must always be 

alert to this, revising objectives as necessary. 

• Combine joint capabilities to maximize complementary rather than 

merely additive effects. The Services have evolved diverse sets of capabilities 

to operate effectively in certain situations and physical domains. The essence 

of joint operations is not only to match each Service to its proper situation so 

that it contributes most effectively to success, but also to combine Service 

capabilities such that each enhances the effectiveness and compensates for the 

vulnerabilities of the others. Joint synergy essentially “scales up” the 

commonly understood mechanism of combined arms.20 

 Achieving that sort of complementary synergy requires more than just 

understanding the particular capabilities and limitations that each component 

brings to the operation. It also requires the ability to visualize operations 

holistically, identifying the preconditions that enable each component to 

optimize its own impact and then diagnosing how the other components might 

help to produce them. It requires the ability to think in terms of the 

performance of joint functions -- maneuver, fires, intelligence, command and 

control, force protection, logistics -- independent of a specific Service or 

domain. Finally -- not the easiest challenge -- it requires the ability and 

willingness to compare alternative component missions and mixes solely from 

the perspective of combined effectiveness, unhampered by Service 

parochialism. 

Above all, achieving joint complementarity requires mutual trust that the 

missions assigned to components will be consistent with their intrinsic 

capabilities and limitations; that those capabilities will not be risked for 

insufficient overall return; and, above all, that component obligations once 

accepted will be executed as promised. As a later precept suggests, the lower 

that component synergy routinely can be driven, the greater will be the 

prospect of developing that mutual confidence. 
CCJO v3.0 

25

• Avoid combining joint capabilities where doing so adds complexity 

without compensating advantage. Joint synergy is not a natural outcome of 

multi-Service operations. The requirement to be able to operate jointly imposes 

constraints on the Services, which the Services willingly accept because of the 

demonstrated tremendous increase in collective operational impact that 

effective joint integration provides. That integration requires explicit effort, 

however, and is achieved only at a cost in increased complexity and greater 

requirements for training, technical, and technological interoperability, liaison, 

and planning. 

 The U.S. Armed Forces in recent decades have succeeded in driving down 

the costs of joint integration through a variety of organizational, procedural, 

technological, and training mechanisms, and the synergy achieved by 

combining Service capabilities usually more than offsets the added complexity. 

In some situations, however, the benefits of joint integration cannot 

compensate for that additional complexity, and requiring joint integration 

becomes operationally unwise. 

 Where a task is suited to the capabilities of one or two Services, and 

where involving the remaining components would merely increase complexity 

without compensating operational benefit, doing so should be avoided. In 

short, joint synergy must be understood to be a means to greater operational 

effectiveness, not an end in itself. The joint commander must recognize the 

limits of synergy in any given situation and optimize joint effectiveness within 

those limits. 

• Drive synergy to the lowest echelon at which it can be managed 

effectively. The future operating environment will demand the application of 

military power in ever-smaller increments, which in turn will require the 

achievement of joint synergy at ever-lower echelons of command. Joint 

integration that was once achieved at the component level or slightly below will 

be achieved routinely in the future at drastically lower echelons -- even down to 

the small-unit level. 

 Thanks to advances in areas ranging from communications and 

information sharing to munitions effectiveness, it increasingly is becoming 

possible to achieve joint synergy at lower echelons of command without 

incurring the risks and inefficiencies associated with piecemealing the assets 

themselves. Thus, in the future, the chief prerequisites for the continued 

devolution of joint synergy downward will have to do with cross-Service 

education and training and the continued development of more flexible and 

adaptable joint planning and coordination mechanisms -- all of which help to 

lower the inherent costs of joint integration. 

In addition, the more widely the premises and practices of mission 

command, including the encouragement of subordinate initiative, are infused 
CCJO v3.0 

26

throughout the joint force, the more effective the devolution of joint synergy will 

be. 

Above all, the further downward the commitment to joint synergy is 

driven, the more completely “one force, one fight” will become internalized 

throughout the joint force, increasing not only its operational flexibility, but 

also its institutional robustness. 

• Operate indirectly through partners to the extent that each 

situation permits. In a future likely characterized by frequent and 

widespread military challenges, not even the United States will be able to 

respond directly to every crisis. In addition, any large-scale employment of 

U.S. military forces abroad invites political repercussions simply because it is 

the United States that is acting. Indeed, some will oppose almost any U.S. 

military commitment, no matter how limited or benign, solely to restrain the 

exercise of American power. In these circumstances, friendly surrogates 

assisted by the joint force may be able to conduct operations when the direct 

employment of U.S. forces would be objectionable or infeasible. In other 

instances, such as counterinsurgency, eventual success may depend on the 

indigenous government demonstrating its own sovereign power, and the overt 

exercise of power by U.S. forces may ultimately be counterproductive. 

Even more than in the past, therefore, the future joint force may 

increasingly find it necessary to pursue its objectives by enabling and 

supporting such partners, whether friendly nations, international 

organizations, or some other political entity. This typically will require U.S. 

forces to minimize their own visibility by operating in a supporting role, 

allowing those partners to take the lead, even at some expense in reduced 

operational efficiency. Mounting such indirect operations will more likely 

succeed where prior engagement activities by special and general-purpose 

forces -- including military advice and planning, foreign military sales and 

other forms of security assistance -- have laid the necessary political and 

military groundwork. 

Finally, even when the scale or seriousness of a strategic threat requires 

the direct employment of sizable U.S. forces, such operations will usually 

benefit from the operations of partners augmented by U.S. support. 

• Ensure operational freedom of action. Achieving the advantage of 

synergy requires that joint forces maintain freedom of action on the land and 

sea and in the air, space, and cyberspace -- in both the operational area and 

the global commons. In recent decades, U.S. forces have enjoyed virtually 

uncontested maritime, air and space supremacy. In some future situations -- 

most cases of disaster relief, for example -- there will be no adversary to contest 

freedom of action. But as the Joint Operating Environment points out, a 

growing number of potential adversaries in the future will have the capability to 
CCJO v3.0 

27

contest U.S. domain supremacy as part of a strategy of erosion, not only in the 

air and maritime domains, but also on the land, in space, and in cyberspace. 

Far from enjoying uncontested supremacy, future joint forces may increasingly 

find themselves fighting for temporary local superiority as a prerequisite for 

undertaking decisive operations against an enemy. 

Although the Services necessarily will devote significant capabilities to 

achieving freedom of action within the domains in which they operate, the 

cross-domain application of combat power can be an important source of 

synergy, and it is essential that the Services dedicate adequate resources to 

these capabilities as well. The proper balance between intradomain and crossdomain capabilities within the Services will vary from case to case and will 

require analysis and experimentation. 

• Maintain operational and organizational flexibility. Future 

challenges will require a rapidly scalable and organizationally flexible joint 

force. Technology and training increasingly are permitting the empowerment 

and autonomous employment of much smaller and more widely dispersed 

tactical formations. Based on an underlying modular structure down to smallunit levels, joint forces will routinely and smoothly aggregate and disaggregate 

into temporary joint formations of differing sizes depending on the nature and 

scale of operations. They will also similarly combine elements of different 

Services and even other agencies and international partners as required. 

 The effect will be a fluid process of task organization in which joint 

formations of various sizes and compositions quickly coalesce around the 

performance of a task and then disband, with the contributing elements reforming in other combinations to perform new tasks. This will have significant 

implications for organization, training, doctrine and procedures, and 

technology, among others. 

• Inform domestic audiences and influence the perceptions and 

attitudes of key foreign audiences as an explicit and continuous 

operational requirement.21 In the globalized, information-intensive 

environment described in the Joint Operating Environment, gaining the support 

of key audiences for U.S. policies and actions will be critical to success in 

practically any situation. In any kind of operation, from peacetime security 

cooperation to warfare, information will be a critical and powerful element of 

military power, often as important as any other. Because every action sends a 

signal, whether intentionally or not, joint forces will plan and execute every 

operation not only for the physical conditions they produce, but also for their 

effect on the perceptions and attitudes of key audiences. In fact, in many 

cases, attitudinal effects may be the primary operational consideration. 

 Since practically every future joint action will be subjected to scrutiny 

and interpretation, joint operations must routinely include an integral public 
CCJO v3.0 

28

narrative explaining those operations to various audiences. It will not be 

enough to act appropriately; it will be just as important to engage in the debate 

about how to interpret those actions, and it will usually be best to initiate the 

debate on terms of the joint force’s own choosing. 

 Because in an increasingly saturated information environment signals 

will have to compete for the attention of their audiences, it will be important for 

the joint force to coordinate its messages and images -- and to maintain unity 

of effort by integrating those messages with those of its partners. Moreover, 

since deeds send stronger messages than words, it is important that actions 

both large and small be consistent with the resulting narrative. Few things will 

destroy credibility more quickly than actions that are incompatible with stated 

intentions. 

7. IMPLICATIONS OF 

ADOPTING THIS CONCEPT 

Adopting this concept has 

significant implications for the 

way the Services organize, man, 

train, and equip the units that 

compose the joint force. Given 

the broad scope of a capstone 

concept, these implications will 

naturally be broad. Subordinate 

concepts, with their narrower 

scope, will derive more specific 

implications. 

 The common theme to all 

these implications is creating 

greater adaptability and versatility 

across the force to cope with the 

uncertainty, complexity, 

unforeseeable change, and 

persistent conflict that will 

characterize the future operating 

environment. These implications 

include: 

• Build a balanced and 

versatile joint force. The single 

clearest implication of this 

concept is that the United States 

Institutional implications of adopting this concept include:

• Build a balanced and versatile joint force.

• Improve knowledge of and capabilities for waging irregular

warfare.

• Improve knowledge of and capabilities for nuclear warfare

and operations in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear

environments.

• Improve knowledge of and capabilities for security,

engagement, and relief and reconstruction activities.

• Renew emphasis on and understanding of strategic

deterrence, including nuclear deterrence.  

• Create general‐purpose forces capable of operating

independently at increasingly lower echelons.   

• Maintain the capability to project and sustain military power

over global distances.   

• Improve the ability to operate in urban environments.  

• Improve capabilities and capacities for covert and clandestine

operations.  

• Markedly increase language and cultural capabilities and

capacities.   

• Institute mechanisms to prepare general‐purpose forces

quickly for new mission sets.   

• Markedly improve the ability to integrate with other U.S.

agencies and other partners.

• Improve organizational solutions for protracted missions that

cut across geographical boundaries.    

• Develop innovative and adaptive leaders down to the lowest

levels.  

• Develop joint commanders who are masters of operational

art.

• Develop senior leaders who are experts not only in the

operational employment of the joint force, but also in the

development and execution of national strategy.

• Improve Service and institutional adaptability to deal with

rapid change.
CCJO v3.0 

29

must have balanced and versatile forces able to accomplish a wide variety of 

potential missions. This will require a broad array of forces and capabilities 

that can be tailored to deal with unpredictable, dynamic situations. Currently, 

U.S. forces are working to improve their combat capabilities with respect to 

irregular enemies. While this process will continue during the time frame of 

this concept, U.S. forces must also maintain their dominance in conventional 

warfare, both to be prepared to fight against another military power and to 

deter attack. 

 While combat will always remain the essential military activity, future 

joint forces must improve their capabilities and capacities to perform security, 

engagement, and relief and reconstruction activities, which can be every bit as 

important to successfully meeting the security challenges of the future. 

 The broad variety of potential challenges and the uncertainty over which 

will actually arise suggests that the bulk of U.S. forces should be versatile 

general-purpose forces capable of performing any of the four basic military 

activities -- albeit perhaps with adjustments to organization, training, 

equipment, and so on. That said, some missions, such as nuclear warfare, are 

so specialized that they will require dedicated special-purpose forces. 

 Ensuring a balanced and versatile force will include addressing the 

proper ratio between Active and Reserve forces. It will also require assessing 

the proper role and management of contractors and other civilians within the 

force. 

 The importance of balance and versatility applies to force posture as well 

as to force composition. The geographical shifting of political and economic 

interactions critical to U.S. interests implies the need to shift U.S. global 

military posture accordingly. 

 Another balancing consideration is redundancy, an essential attribute in 

military forces, which must be able to absorb losses. Redundancy can be 

created by building sufficient capacity of key capabilities. In many cases, 

however, it can also be achieved through the interchangeability of different 

capabilities. Ground, air, and naval fires, for example, provide functional 

redundancy to the extent that they can be used interchangeably. 

 Finally, balancing the force will require the Services to address the 

relationship between intradomain and cross-domain capabilities, which raises 

the issue of self-sufficiency versus interdependence. While the Services 

necessarily depend on one another, both intrinsically and as a byproduct of 

limited resources, the inherent friction and uncertainty of the operating 

environment also require that military units maintain some level of selfsufficiency to survive and operate during periods when cross-domain support 
CCJO v3.0 

30

is unavailable. Resolving this tension will be an element of achieving proper 

balance. 

 Optimizing the balance of the joint force across all these dimensions has 

significant implications for policy, force structure, doctrine, organization, 

training, materiel, leader development, personnel, and facilities. Developing 

new capabilities and capacities may require changes to existing structure and 

historical budgetary percentages. Balance therefore will require thorough 

analysis and experimentation. Above all, it will require close and continuous 

coordination within the Department of Defense, especially with respect to 

addressing cross-domain interdependencies. 

• Improve knowledge of and capabilities for waging irregular 

warfare. During the past several decades, the U.S. military has developed an 

unequaled expertise in conventional warfare, codified in a comprehensive body 

of doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures. While a good deal of theory 

exists concerning irregular warfare, and while U.S. forces continue to improve 

dramatically in this area, irregular foes will continue to pose significant 

challenges for the foreseeable future. U.S forces will require the same level of 

expertise in irregular warfare that they have developed for conventional 

warfare. 

• Improve knowledge of and capabilities for waging nuclear warfare 

and operating in chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear 

environments. Similarly, while a good deal of theory exists concerning nuclear 

warfare and operations in chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear 

environments, doctrine and training in those areas is less current. The Joint 

Operating Environment forecasts that joint forces will not have the luxury of 

contemplating future warfare free of these significant operational challenges, 

but will have to develop the same level of expertise with respect to them that 

they have developed for conventional warfare. 

• Improve knowledge of and capabilities for security, engagement, 

and relief and reconstruction activities. Likewise, despite considerable 

historical experiences with these activities, the U.S. military during the past 

few decades has allowed doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures for 

conducting them to lapse. To succeed across the full set of national security 

challenges, U.S. forces will need to readdress themselves to these noncombat, 

but equally vital, activities. 

• Renew emphasis on and understanding of strategic deterrence, 

including nuclear deterrence. In the future, multiple states and nonstate 

actors will possess the capabilities to threaten U.S. vital interests in a variety of 

ways, often on a catastrophic scale. Deterrence in this environment will be a 

much more complicated challenge than was deterrence of a very small number 

of states during the Cold War. Joint forces will play a major role in meeting the 
CCJO v3.0 

31

national security challenge of deterrence and will require a body of knowledge 

and deterrent capabilities equal to that challenge. Key among these will be 

nuclear capabilities, the failure to maintain which will encourage potential 

aggressors. That said, the joint force and the Nation cannot rely solely on their 

nuclear capabilities for strategic deterrence, but must have a flexible range of 

options for deterring a wide range of threats short of nuclear warfare. Future 

deterrence will also require a greater level of coordination with other U.S. 

agencies and partners. 

• Create agile general-purpose forces capable of operating 

independently at increasingly lower echelons. This concept suggests the 

imperative for general-purpose forces increasingly to possess attributes 

commonly associated with special operations forces. These attributes include 

agility, speed of command and control, cultural sensitivity, the aptitude for 

highly discriminate action, and the ability to operate independently at lower 

echelons while possessing the access to a wide array of support. As an 

example, independent small units may be required to advise and operate 

alongside partner security forces in a broad range of missions. 

• Maintain the capability to project and sustain military power over 

global distances. The ability to operate indefinitely at the end of long lines of 

operations has been a historical requirement for U.S. forces, and nothing in 

this concept suggests that joint forces can surrender that ability for the future. 

Joint forces will require the ability to ensure at least local and temporary 

maritime and air superiority in both the operational area and the global 

commons—and, increasingly, space and cyber superiority -- as a prerequisite 

for the successful conduct of practically any expeditionary operation. They will 

require a mix of air and sea strategic and operational lift capable of delivering 

forces and materiel to their destinations, often in the absence of capable 

airfield and port facilities. They will require the ability to construct the 

expeditionary infrastructure needed to support operations in an austere 

theater. Finally, they will require the ability to conduct forcible-entry 

operations in the face of increasingly lethal antiship and antiaircraft weapons 

that will be available to a greater number of potential adversaries. 

• Improve the ability to operate in urban environments. The Joint 

Operating Environment forecasts that future operational areas increasingly will 

be urban. Urban environments present significant and unique challenges for 

all categories of military activity, in terms of both the complex physical terrain 

and the concentrated and intermeshing flows of social activity. Urban combat 

presents challenges to target identification and discrimination, weapons 

employment, sustainment, force protection, and ground movement. Urban 

combat also takes a heavy toll on ground troops and equipment. Security 

activities in urban environments are complicated by dense populations 

interacting in a myriad of social, economic, religious, and other patterns. 

Engagement activities must deal with the variety of social, government, military 
CCJO v3.0 

32

and other institutions characteristic of urban environments. Finally, relief and 

reconstruction activities must deal with dense populations under duress and 

with the specialized and complex infrastructure upon which they depend. 

• Improve capabilities and capacities for covert and clandestine 

operations. The future increasingly will require the ability to employ military 

power in ways that minimize political repercussions -- something that will be 

very difficult to do overtly because of the transparency of the future operating 

environment. In many cases, it may be desirable to act preemptively before a 

developing situation reaches a level of crisis requiring the overt deployment of a 

large joint force. In some cases, partner nations may welcome U.S. military 

assistance but may not be able politically to acknowledge that assistance. In 

still other cases, it may be in U.S. interests to act militarily even though overt 

action is politically unacceptable. Hence, a joint force with improved capability 

and capacity to operate covertly and clandestinely will be a more flexible and 

effective instrument of policy. 

• Markedly increase language and cultural capabilities and 

capacities. Several parts of this concept point directly toward the requirement 

for greater language and cultural proficiency within joint forces. The idea of 

understanding each operational situation in its unique political and strategic 

context will require a higher level of cultural attunement than joint forces 

currently possess. Similarly, increased emphasis on security, engagement, and 

relief and reconstruction activities implies even more extensive contact and 

interaction with indigenous agencies and populations than does combat. 

Effective multinational cooperation, a political and operational imperative 

identified in the Joint Operating Environment, likewise relies heavily on cultural 

awareness and proficiency in foreign languages. 

 That acknowledged, it is not reasonable to expect the entire force to be 

culturally and linguistically knowledgeable about every geographic locale to 

which joint forces might be committed. Future force development therefore 

must make provision for rapid assembly of liaison teams with the requisite 

expertise, and military educational institutions must be able on short notice to 

conduct targeted language and cultural familiarization courses for leaders and 

other key personnel expected to deploy to areas about which such knowledge is 

not widespread in the force. 

• Institute mechanisms to prepare general-purpose forces quickly for 

mission changes. The concept asserts the need for joint and Service generalpurpose forces to be able to transition quickly among fundamentally different 

types of operational activities. For example, units that have been engaged in 

intense combat may need to transition into effective security forces. Standing 

mechanisms that facilitate and accelerate these transitions would dramatically 

improve the adaptability of joint forces. 
CCJO v3.0 

33

 Equally important will be improved means of augmenting transitioning 

units with specialized equipment and personnel as required. For example, 

combat formations committed to relief and reconstruction activities might 

require augmentation with logistical, engineering, and medical support. Preconfigured packages enabling rapid assembly and integration of such 

additional capabilities would significantly improve transition responsiveness. 

In turn, that urges maximum modularization and interoperability of those 

capabilities. 

• Markedly improve the ability to integrate with other U.S. agencies 

and other partners. This concept identifies the requirement for integrated 

national and multinational operations, which in turn will require close 

cooperation with partners with potentially very different organizational 

processes and cultures in a variety of standard and nonstandard relationships. 

This broad implication has potentially dramatic impact on manning, 

communications and other technological interoperability, common techniques 

and procedures, and interagency and multinational training, among other 

requirements. 

 Organizational procedures and technologies that improve collaboration 

within ad hoc groups of diverse, often geographically dispersed members will 

help. But the most important requirements of this implication are frequent 

coordination and exercises with interagency and international partners and the 

development of common procedures before an occasion for commitment arises. 

• Improve organizational solutions for protracted missions that cut 

across geographical boundaries. The future will likely produce protracted, 

geographically dispersed challenges that cut across national, cultural and 

regional boundaries. Dealing effectively with these challenges may require 

innovative organizational solutions that allow standing joint task forces or 

other organizations to operate routinely across combatant command 

boundaries without disrupting the integrity of those commands.

• Develop innovative and adaptive leaders down to the lowest levels. 

The broadened range of situations future joint forces will confront, and their 

increased complexity, will put a premium on leaders at all levels who are able 

to respond quickly and flexibly to the unexpected. The quality of their leaders 

must be one of the universal advantages -- if not the enduring advantage -- of 

U.S. joint forces regardless of operational requirements. 

 Leaders down to the lowest levels must be comfortable acting on their 

own authority based on an understanding of the larger situation and an 

appreciation for the broader implications of their actions. The U.S. military’s 

longstanding rhetorical commitment to mission command must be matched by 

action. That includes sharing information through all ranks, granting 

subordinates discretion as wide as strategic conditions will tolerate, and 
CCJO v3.0 

34

encouraging a culture more tolerant of errors of commission than errors of 

omission. 

 The Services must recruit, develop, and reward leaders who acquire and 

demonstrate these skills. Leader development, professional military education 

in particular, must specifically provide training and education that facilitates 

flexible and creative problem solving. 

• Develop senior leaders who are experts in commanding at the 

operational level. Joint operations take place at the operational level, at 

which campaigns and major operations are planned, conducted, and sustained 

to achieve strategic objectives within theaters or other operational areas. 

Because of the growing complexity of the operating environment, future 

operational-level command will be more challenging than ever before, requiring 

the integration of the diverse military capabilities inherent in the components 

of the joint force, as well as the coordination of these capabilities with those of 

interagency and international partners. 

 The commander’s role in this process is absolutely critical. He must 

drive the process of operational design, which conceives the framework that 

underpins all planning and execution, based on an understanding of each 

unique situation in its political and strategic contexts. He must be expert in 

the arranging, balancing, and rearranging of combat, security, engagement, 

and relief and reconstruction activities. He must create a command climate 

that inspires cooperation and trust. He must promote joint synergy by 

establishing proper relationships among the components of the joint force, and 

he must do the same with interagency and international partners. 

 These skills must be developed over a career. There are significant 

requirements here for joint leader development separate from development of 

command and leadership skills within a particular Service. 

• Develop senior leaders who are experts not only in operational art, 

but also in the development and execution of national strategy. While 

operational expertise is essential, it is not enough. In a future requiring 

integrated national effort, joint force commanders cannot afford to focus 

narrowly on achieving assigned operational objectives, but must contribute to 

the development of strategic objectives as well. They must be knowledgeable 

about the use not only of the military instrument, but also all the other 

elements of national power, how those elements interact with military force, 

and how they ultimately might supplant the need for military force. 

Development of that broader strategic understanding must begin early in the 

military education process and continue throughout every military officer’s 

professional development. Incorporation of issues requiring strategic dialog 

with civilian decision-makers should be routine in every major joint exercise. 
CCJO v3.0 

35

• Improve Service and institutional adaptability to deal with rapid 

change. This concept has identified environmental conditions of pervasive 

uncertainty and rapid change. It has also proposed an approach based on 

operational adaptation by the joint force. But there are limits to how adaptive 

joint forces can be with the capabilities they are provided. To support these 

joint forces, the Services and broader Defense institutions must be equally 

agile in addressing new doctrinal, organizational, training, educational, and 

material requirements and lessons learned. 

8. RISKS OF ADOPTING THIS CONCEPT 

Adopting this capstone concept carries with it certain potential risks. 

• Adjusting joint force capabilities and capacities to provide greater 

emphasis on security, engagement, and relief and reconstruction activities 

risks reducing combat capabilities and capacities. This risk can be mitigated, 

although not eliminated, by requiring general-purpose forces to transition 

among those activities routinely in training and exercises, and by improving 

the modularization of enabling capabilities such as logistics to facilitate rapid 

mission transitions without permanent organizational reconfiguration. 

• Adjusting joint force combat capabilities and capacities to provide greater 

emphasis on fighting irregular forces risks reducing combat capabilities and 

capacities with respect to regular forces, a less likely but potentially more 

dangerous security threat. This risk will be mitigated to the extent that combat 

capabilities and organizations are designed from the outset for maximum 

versatility and specialized capabilities essential for success against regular 

forces or for deterrence are preserved. It can also be mitigated by the 

development and application of training techniques and technologies that help 

leaders and their subordinates master new skills more quickly than more 

traditional training methods. 

• The concept’s emphasis on engagement and relief and reconstruction 

activities could lead to overuse of joint forces in these activities, usurping the 

rightful roles and authorities of other governmental agencies, or to the 

perception that the military routinely can succeed in these activities without 

the contributions of other agencies. Mitigation of this risk cannot be assured 

by the joint force alone, but instead will depend on the decisions of political 

authorities and the behavior of other government agencies. 

• Conversely, the emphasis on integration with other government agencies 

could lead to the expectation by military forces that other agencies and 

organizations will always be present and that the joint force can therefore 

concentrate on security and combat activities. Mitigation of this risk requires 

doctrinal and training acknowledgment of the requirement for joint forces to be 
CCJO v3.0 

36

able to conduct all of the four categories of military activity for some period of 

time without interagency assistance. 

 In sum, while none of the foregoing risks can be wholly eliminated -- 

while each, in fact, is an inescapable byproduct of the future operating 

environment -- all can be mitigated by the application of good judgment to the 

institutional implications discussed above, and especially by education and 

training that prepare leaders and those they lead for the challenges these risks 

present. 

9. CONCLUSION 

Reflecting the conditions forecast by the Joint Operating Environment, this 

concept envisions a future characterized fundamentally by uncertainty, 

complexity, rapid change, and persistent conflict, a future in which a broad set 

of compelling national security challenges in peace, crisis, and war will require 

the employment of U.S. joint forces. The most important of these for U.S. 

Armed Forces is war, the ability to wage which should never be sacrificed. 

These challenges are not fundamentally new, but their future occurrence will 

manifest features that are both novel and currently unpredictable. As a result, 

the joint force must be prepared to contribute to the national effort to deal with 

all these challenges, even though preparing for any one may be of limited help 

in preparing for the others -- even, in fact, when preparing for one presents 

problems in preparing for others. 

 This concept proposes a generic process of operational adaptation that 

can apply universally to all joint operations despite the wide variety those 

operations may take. This approach is based on: understanding each 

operational situation on its own terms, in its unique political and strategic 

context; arranging some combination of combat, security, engagement, and 

relief and reconstruction activities based on this understanding; and assessing 

the effects of operations and adjusting the operations accordingly. A key 

precept of this approach will be synergizing the complementary capabilities 

that the Services contribute to the joint force. The construct of four basic types 

of military activity -- combat, security, engagement, and relief and 

reconstruction -- provides the basis for capability development. 

 The institutional implications of taking this approach are potentially 

dramatic. In one way or another, all of them involve making the Armed Forces 

a more adaptive and versatile instrument of national policy. Fundamental 

among them will be building greater competence across all four types of 

military activity and greater effectiveness in dealing with a wider range of 

regular and irregular threats. 
CCJO v3.0 

37

 Ultimately, it is the men and women -- Active, Reserve, and civilian -- 

who make up the joint force that provide its greatest operational strength. It is 

incumbent on the capability development process to ensure they are provided 

with the doctrine, training, education, and materiel they need to fulfill their 

mission successfully. 
CCJO v3.0 

38

 

1 Barry R. Posen defined global commons as areas of air, sea, and space that “belong to no 

one state and that provide access to much of the globe.” “Command of the Commons: The 

Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony,” International Security, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Summer 2003), 

p. 8. The same description can be applied to cyberspace, which provides access to much of the 

globe’s information. Posen attributes the origin of the term to Alfred Thayer Mahan, who 

described the sea as “a wide common, over which men may pass in all directions.” The 

Influence of Sea Power upon History: 1660-1783. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1890), p. 25. 

2 Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of the Rest,” Newsweek, 12 May 2008. 

3 Field Manual 3-0, Operations (Washington: Headquarters, Department of the Army, 

Feb08), foreword. 4 The Major Combat Operations (v2.0, Dec06) and Irregular Warfare (v1.0, Sep07) joint 

operating concepts address the challenges of warfare. The Military Support to Stabilization, 

Security, Transition and Reconstruction Operations joint operating concept (v2.0, Dec06) 

describes military actions in response to a wide range of situations that cause instability, 

including insurgency and factional conflict. Pp. i-ii and 3. 

5 Several terms are used to refer to the type of warfare generally waged between standing 

state militaries. Conventional warfare, perhaps the most commonly used term, suggests 

warfare according to established conventions, which is generally accurate. Conventional 

warfare is not defined in doctrine, however, although conventional forces are: “conventional 

forces—1. Those forces capable of conducting operations using nonnuclear weapons. 2. Those 

forces other than designated special operations forces.” DOD Dictionary of Military Terms, 

http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/ [accessed 8 October 2008]. Based on this 

definition, conventional warfare thus would include irregular warfare not conducted by special 

operations forces. Joint Publication 1, Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States, uses 

the term traditional war, which “is characterized as a confrontation between nation-states or 

coalitions/alliances of nation-states. This confrontation typically involves small-scale to largescale, force-on-force military operations in which adversaries employ a variety of conventional 

military capabilities against each other in the air, land, maritime, and space physical domains 

and the information environment. The objective is to defeat an adversary’s armed forces, 

destroy an adversary’s war-making capacity, or seize or retain territory in order to force a 

change in an adversary’s government or policies.” (Washington: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 14 May 

2007), p. I-6. Traditional warfare, however, implies military methods based on time-honored 

cultural history, which routinely has included irregular warfare and which may have little in 

common with future warfare between regular military forces. The logical alternative to 

irregular warfare is regular warfare, which suggests warfare between regular, uniformed state 

militaries -- although one would be hard-pressed to find an historical example of a completely 

regular war. “Regular” is defined as “of, relating to, or constituting the permanent standing 

military force of a state <the regular army> <regular soldiers>.” Merriam-Webster’s Online 

Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com [accessed 8Oct08]. Compare all these to: 

“irregular forces -- Armed individuals or groups who are not members of the regular armed 

forces, police, or other internal security forces.” [DOD Dictionary, accessed 8Oct08.] And: 

“irregular warfare -- A violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and 

influence over the relevant population(s). Irregular warfare favors indirect and asymmetric 

approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capacities, in order to 

erode an adversary's power, influence, and will. Also called IW.” [DOD Dictionary, accessed 2 

October 2008]. All of which points to the ultimate futility of trying to describe warfare in terms 

of definitive categories. 

6 Frank G. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars (Arlington, VA: 

Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, December 2007). “Hybrid threats incorporate a full range 

of different modes of warfare including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and 
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formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder. 

Hybrid Wars can be conducted by both states and a variety of non-state actors.” [p. 8.] 

7 Including the popular term asymmetric warfare, defined as “armed conflict between 

belligerents having different strengths and weaknesses.” Wiktionary, 

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/asymmetric_warfare [accessed 8 October 2008]. 

8 In classical military theory, the term is strategy of attrition, which is contrasted with 

strategy of annihilation. See Hans Delbrück, History of the Art of War Within the Framework of 

Political History, trans. by Walter J. Renfroe, Jr. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), vol. 4, 

chap. IV. 

9 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, 

NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 77. 

10 The Deterrence Operations joint operating concept (v2.0, December 2006) discusses the 

military contribution to the challenge of strategic deterrence. 11 The Military Contribution to Cooperative Security joint operating concept (v0.99, March 

2008) describes the joint role in establishing cooperative security. 

12 The Homeland Defense and Civil Support joint operating concept (v2.0, October 2007) 

describes the joint contribution to the challenge of defending the homeland and providing civil 

support. 

The Department of Defense is responsible for the homeland defense mission, with other 

agencies in support. Homeland defense differs from homeland security, which is “a concerted 

national effort to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States; reduce America’s 

vulnerability to terrorism, major disasters, and other emergencies; and minimize the damage 

and recover from attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies that occur.” DOD Dictionary 

of Military Terms, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/ [accessed 7 October 2008]. The 

Department of Homeland Security is responsible for the homeland security mission, with other 

departments and agencies, including the Department of Defense, in support. The U.S. Coast 

Guard is the lead federal agency for maritime homeland security per the Homeland Security 

Act of 2002. 

13 Ibid. 

14 The best-known model of operational adaptation is John Boyd’s observation-orientationdecision-action cycle, or OODA loop. See John R. Boyd, “Patterns of Conflict” and “A Organic 

Design for Command and Control,” Patterns of Conflict, unpublished briefing slides, 1988; and 

“The Essence of Winning and Losing,” unpublished briefing slides, 1995. On slide 4 of the last, 

Boyd produced his only diagram of the OODA loop: 

15 That said, it is possible for the joint force to become too adaptive, changing its operations 

precipitously in response to every operational incident. Perseverance and steadfastness in the 

face of difficulties often are also important elements of success. Judgment is required. 
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40

 

16 Current U.S. Army doctrine identifies four defeat mechanisms: destroy, dislocate, 

disintegrate, and isolate. Destroy essentially equates to attrition as described in this concept. 

Dislocation, disintegration, and isolation are different forms of disruption as described here. 

Army doctrine also identifies four “stability mechanisms”: compel, control, influence, and 

support. Field Manual 3-0, Operations (Washington: Headquarters, Department of the Army, 

February 2008), paras. 6-42 through 6-48 and 6-49 through 6-53. 

17 The U.S. military has conducted security operations since the birth of the Republic, from 

the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 to today’s insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Federal forces 

occupied the defeated South from 1865 until 1877, and military activities associated with 

America’s westward expansion included many aimed at enforcing law and order in rough 

frontier communities lacking effective civil enforcement. More recently, military forces have 

performed domestic security missions ranging from riot control and counterdrug operations to 

border control. Since the attacks of11 September 2001, the military’s role in homeland security 

only has expanded. Abroad, security operations have been required in nearly every war the 

Nation has fought, both during hostilities and incident to post-war occupations. The duration 

of these operations occasionally has been controversial but, until fairly recently, not the need 

for them. During the Cold War, however, with U.S. joint forces tasked largely with helping to 

defend allied nations that would be responsible for securing their own populations, security 

capabilities such as civil affairs personnel and military police units were curtailed or shifted to 

the Reserve Components, and both the doctrine and training associated with security 

operations tended to lapse.

18 As evidenced by “The Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency Operations” in the recent 

Army/Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual. FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, Counterinsurgency

(Washington: Headquarters, Department of the Army & Headquarters, Marine Corps Combat 

Development Command, 15 December 2006), paras. 1-148 through 1-157. 

19 A distinction must be made between relief and reconstruction as a basic category of 

military activity and stabilization and reconstruction operations, which are coordinated U.S. 

government operations in countries emerging from conflict or civil strife. The latter are a 

responsibility of the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and 

Stabilization. They tend to be long-term efforts. The joint force contribution to a larger 

stabilization and reconstruction operation likely will include relief and reconstruction activities, 

but may also include security, engagement, and even combat. See “About S/CRS,” U.S. State 

Department Web site, http://www.state.gov/s/crs/c12936.htm [accessed 8 October 2008]. 

20 MG David Fastabend, “Mechanism of Joint Synergy, v2 (unpublished paper, 31 March 

2008), p. 4. 

21 This precept generally coincides with the area of strategic communication, defined as 

“focused United States government efforts to understand and engage key audiences to create, 

strengthen, or preserve conditions favorable for the advancement of United States government 

interests, policies, and objectives through the use of coordinated programs, plans, themes, 

messages, and products synchronized with the actions of all instruments of national power.” 

DOD Dictionary of Military Terms, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/ [accessed 6 

October 2008]. 

The U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Public Law 402), popularly 

referred to as the Smith-Mundt Act, prohibits domestic distribution of information intended for 

foreign audiences.