Military Capabilities

Stronger Joint Staff Role Needed to Enhance Joint Military Training Gao ID: NSIAD-95-109 July 6, 1995

U.S. military strategy today emphasizes that air, land, sea, and special operations forces must be capable of working together in large-scale combat and noncombat operations. Operation Desert Storm, humanitarian relief efforts in Rwanda and Somalia, and the effort to restore democracy in Haiti illustrate the diverse missions that U.S. forces can expect to carry out. This report examines (1) the scope of the Defense Department's joint training activities, (2) the effectiveness of the management of these activities, and (3) the actions that have been taken and any additional steps needed to improve joint training.

GAO found that: (1) inadequate Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) oversight has perpetuated limited joint training of U.S. forces; (2) most joint training exercises are conducted to maintain U.S. access or presence in a region, promote regional stability, or foster relations with foreign military forces; (3) although these objectives are important, they have taken precedence over joint military training activities; (4) the JCS Operational Plans and Interoperability Directorate (J-7) has failed to critically review planned exercises to ensure that they emphasize joint training and to correct past problems, develop meaningful standards for evaluating exercises, or monitor enough exercises to ensure that training problems are identified and corrected; (5) J-7 needs to take a stronger coordinating role for joint training, since several entities have responsibility for joint training activities, but its staffing level is not sufficient for it to conduct all its oversight tasks; (6) it would not be practical to shift the J-7 coordinating role to either the Joint Warfighting Center or the U.S. Atlantic Command (USACOM); and (7) the Secretary of Defense and JCS have taken steps to improve joint training, such as developing uniform policy guidance and strengthening the roles of the Joint Warfighting Center and USACOM, but other units have reservations about new USACOM training strategies.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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