Command assesses joint task force in the Horn of Africa
U.S. Joint Forces Command sends a deployable training team to assist and assess the current combined joint task force in the Horn of Africa.
By Susy Dodson
USJFCOM Public Affairs
(SUFFOLK, Va. - May 22, 2009) -- U.S. Joint Forces Command's (USJFCOM) Joint Warfighting Center's deployable training team (DTT) recently arrived in Djibouti to assist and assess the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) this month.
The CJTF-HOA core element of 55 personnel deployed earlier this year after going through USJFCOM's mission rehearsal exercise (MRX) as well as a host of pre-deployment training beginning back in the fall of 2008.
With CJTF-HOA in country over 100 days, USJFCOM sent out a deployable readiness training team to evaluate the effectiveness of the training and the capability of the current JTF staff.
The DTT's Marine Col. Doug Stilwell said his deployable training teams constantly are on the move to train and evaluate joint force commanders and their staffs from the four star combatant commander level down to the one star CJTF level like CJTF-HOA.
"I bring along a total of 26 folks on my team," Stilwell said. "It is a joint and interagency team. We have the benefit of year round traveling, as deployable training teams, and observing best practices and gathering insight from every joint command that's in existence worldwide representing the United States."
Navy Rear Adm. Anthony M. Kurta, commander, CJTF-HOA, said from day one on the ground in Djibouti, the success of their training was evident.
"[The training] allowed us within days of our arrival to conduct the operational planning assigned to us and, in order to do that successfully, you have to be able to work with the embassies and you have to have cultural awareness of the Horn of Africa region," said Kurta. "You have to have situational and political awareness of what's going on in the HOA and all of those were gained, for this staff, through our training process at 2nd Fleet and [U.S.] Joint Forces Command."
Kurta said their mission is to build the security capacity of African partners in HOA.
"We do that for a reason," Kurta said. "We do that because our mission here is to counter violent extremist organizations. We do that through an indirect approach working with the partner nations to build their security capacity so that when security challenges in the Horn of Africa arise, the nations in Africa have the capacity and the capability to deal with those situations themselves."
Dr. Kathleen List, CJTF-HOA political advisor said that in addition to working with partner nations, CJTF-HOA uses the whole of government approach, that the military cannot solve the government's challenges.
"We need to use entire government, the whole of government approach and that includes the FBI and the [department of] Commerce, Agriculture and Energy, all of our government talents, to address what we are interested in supporting in terms of our foreign policy in the world. What we're doing here in HOA is very much reaching out," List said. you run into different cultures when you try to work with embassies."
Army Brig. Gen. D. Christopher Leins, deputy commander, CJTF-HOA, said the CJTF-HOA mission statement leads down the path of indirect activities, while military forces are out and about in Uganda, Kenya or Ethiopia, their presence works together in a 3D approach; development, defense and diplomacy, to engage with each individual country.
"In Jinja, Uganda, we have about 12 noncommissioned officers (NCOs) who last August were put on the ground at the beginning stages of an NCO development academy for the Ugandan military," Leins said. "Those guys took the skills that they had as Army NCOs and went to work, developed a curriculum for the Ugandan NCOs and in the course of staying there a whole year, have become part of the local community and have influenced the culture of the NCO academy."
Leins said these 12 NCOs also go out and work with several local orphanages in the area.
"Out of their own pocket they've planted over 600 fruit trees and helped some of those local orphanages as well, basically become involved the community, demonstrating in every way that you can possibly imagine good examples to the NCOs that they are training," Leins said.
According to the USJFCOM deployable training team leaders, CJTF-HOA 2009 is a testament of how training for the joint task force has evolved.
Dr. Earl Eaddy, USJFCOM's lead planner for MRX planning, said in 2002 USJFCOM began to have the requirement to train forces deploying to the HOA. The command went through various forms of training approaches and, in 2007, identified a 55-member core command element that the Navy provided.
"The program has continued to evolve to where we now have a full program where the 55 people who are identified as the core element are assigned in the Suffolk area to be trained at the JWFC [Joint Warfighting Center]," said Eaddy. "That training consists of academics, combined with an MRX event, that prepares the commander and his staff to deploy here in the Horn of Africa," Eaddy said.
Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Buck Bedard, former deputy chief of staff for plans, policies and operations for the headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, put things into perspective of how far things have progressed by relating back to some of his previous experience.
Bedard said in late 1992, he was designated as the operations officer for the U.S. JTF in Somalia. They began with a nucleus staff of about 15 personnel.
"We met there, received our orders and headed over to Somalia and we would join one by one the JTF headquarters over the next 30 days," Bedard said. "When I take a look at that experience and what we did and take a look at where we've progressed and the training that we have now to get JTFs prepared to go out the door, we have climbed a mountain in terms of how far we've come.
"We can always make it better. The preparation the JTFs have going out the door now to prepare for their mission is, as Adm. Kurta stated today, really something very professional and with their forces, not with everything, but certainly to be able to assume their mission and be able pick it up and run hard the day they step off the airplane or step off the ship and arrive," said Bedard.
"That's really a testimony to the contribution that our country has determined that if we're going to put forces forward to do the mission of our country, we ought to do everything we possibly can to prepare them for success and that's what this program is all about," Bedard said.
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