Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO)
The Capstone Concept for Joint Operations is a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) document that describes the chairman’s vision for how the joint forces circa 2016-2028 will operate in response to a wide variety of security challenges. The document uses work completed by U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) and other partners in the Department of Defense.
The primary purpose of the CCJO is to guide force development and experimentation by:
• establishing a common framework for military professionals for thinking about future joint operations,
• visualizing future joint operations for policymakers and others with an interest in the employment of military force,
• establishing a conceptual foundation for subordinate joint and service concepts, and
• motivating and guiding the experimentation and evaluation of joint concepts and capabilities.
The CCJO uses a USJFCOM product, the Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008), as a separate companion document. The JOE 2008 outlines the strategic framework and forecasts possible threats and opportunities that will challenge the future joint force.
Major tasks the CCJO envisions:
National security challenges likely will require the employment of the joint forces to:
• Win the nation’s wars
• Deter potential adversaries
• Develop cooperative security
• Defend the homeland
• Respond to civil crises
What CCJO says about how the joint force will operate:
Designing joint operations: Each concept of operations must 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.
Integrating activities: 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.
Assessing results: The joint force commander must expect that, however carefully conceived, his initial operational design will prove inadequate in some respects. His plan 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.
Adapting to the situation: As both a concession and response to pervasive uncertainty, all joint operations are fundamentally and explicitly an adaptation based on learning about the situation through action.
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