News From USJFCOM: Skelton visits USJFCOM to see joint warfighting up close

Skelton visits USJFCOM to see joint warfighting up close

One of the top members of the House Armed Services Committee visited U.S. Joint Forces Command to gain a better understanding of joint operational concepts and the hardware and resources needed to support them.

• See photos from Rep. Skelton's visit

By Jennifer Colaizzi
USJFCOM Public Affairs

(SUFFOLK, VA - Oct. 6, 2005) –- With a responsibility of protecting the American people and ensuring that the U.S. military has all of the resources it needs to complete its missions, members of the House Armed Services Committee pay close attention to warfighting concepts and force modernization.

Rep. Ike Skelton, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, took this responsibility one step farther by coming and seeing the future of joint warfighting during a visit at U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) today.

"It's our job in Congress to support the military," said the Missouri Democrat who has served in Congress since 1977.

Skelton visited the command, which is responsible for military transformation, to gain a better understanding of joint operational concepts and to see the work the command is doing to prepare the joint warfighter for the future.

Skelton had an opportunity to discuss the future of joint mission planning and national campaign planning with two- and three-star level officers, who were attending the command’s Pinnacle course. This course was created to assist senior military leadership understand their role in the joint warfighting environment.

USJFCOM officials told Skelton that as the military continues to move toward a joint future, the command would continue its work to advance the technologies and processes that support joint training, joint experimentation, and overall interoperability.

Skelton received briefings and demonstrations on the command’s recent work and success in a variety of command focus areas such as the Joint National Training Capability, modeling and simulation as well as other integration and experimentation efforts.

Based on what Skelton saw at the USJFCOM Joint Warfighting Center, Joint Futures Lab, and Joint Advanced Training Technology Laboratory, he said that the world is “entering a new age in warfare” and it is absolutely essential to “put additional attention and additional resources into futurist information-type thinking.”

He said that as the world transitions between the mechanical age and the information age, the work the command does represents a “major step into the information.”

Skelton was impressed with everything he saw at the command.

“I’m pleased I came down here to see how the command is applying new joint concepts and technologies all the way from experimental to practical applications.”

“We don’t get much of this advanced jointness in our hearings back in Washington.”

Skelton’s visit resulted from an invitation from previous USJFCOM Commander and current Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Edmund Giambastiani last spring.

Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Jon Gallinetti, USJFCOM’s commander of the Joint Warfighting Center and director of joint training, said that it’s imperative to have members from Congress visit and see what USJFCOM is doing for the services, the international community and the interagency community.

“It is important that they understand how many people it takes to do this; how many resources are involved,” said Gallinetti. The command’s efforts reflect “a lot of hard work and time, but it is going in the right direction because joint warfighters are out there doing business everyday.”

The general went on to say that the command needs to continue joint experimentation, and training and providing prototypes and connectivity with different processes and policy to make it better for the joint warfighter in the future.

When members of Congress visit, they “see the art of the doable and the possible in the future” and the products demonstrate the benefits of putting “people and resources in the right place,” said the general.

Skelton suggested other members of the House Armed Services Committee would benefit by visiting the command.

“They absolutely need to come down and see it and ask questions to have a full appreciation for it. It’s not spelled out in any of the hearings we have in Washington,” he said.