According to Kamiya, who oversees joint training for the Department of Defense, the irregular nature of war against increasingly hybrid threats requires a new triad; one of the warfighter, the leader, and the small unit.
This continues a tradition of describing national security issues in groupings to provide understanding.
Kamiya cited how during the 1960s, the idea of the strategic art of deterrence was cast as a balanced triad of the bomber, submarine and missile.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the operational art was also conceived as a triad, incorporating air, ground and sea power.
Kamiya explained the triads do not replace each other; rather, they are representative of specific times in history and the adaptability of the joint force in response to the ever-changing character of war.
"This is not about tactics, techniques and procedures," Kamiya noted, "it's about a completely different way to think about how small units are formed, organized, and trained."
Kamiya mentioned how several top military and civilian researchers in the behavioral and human sciences, some already working in support of the services, have begun to look into this challenge in an effort to merge the rigor of science with the art of warfare at the tactical level
Kamiya said there is a moral obligation to address this new triad.
"Four out of five killed in action are primarily from small infantry units," Kamiya said, citing a study completed by the Center for a New American Security.
A similar study by the U.S. Fire Administration and National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund says more than 2,000 first response professionals have died since 9/11, a fact Kamiya says shows this is a challenge extending well beyond the military.
"We know that small units do not only come in the form of infanry squads and platoons, but also in the form of fire department crews, federal, state, and local police units, and other like-organizations from the national first responder community," said the general. "Thus, we consider this to be a truly national effort, not one that is unique to, or of singular benefit to the military."
Kamiya said there is a need for joint advocacy, a task USJFCOM fills by serving as the joint force integrator as well as the joint force trainer.
Kamiya said USJFCOM has taken "some pretty bold steps."
Over the past several months, USJFCOM has hosted a variety of mini-forums with science, academia and military to develop this new triad. The areas covered include:
• Assessment and measurement - "How do we know the tool we are providing to soldiers and first responders is having the effect we think it has, on their cognition, on their behavior?"
• Neurological application - "How does the brain react in extremis situations?" In extremis is a Latin phrase that means, "in grave or extreme circumstances."
• Performance under stress.
• In extremis leadership - "What kind of leader do we need, who as a matter of course, begins to feel very comfortable in any in extremis situation?"
• Resilience - "The whole attitude of never quitting, winning forever."
Kamiya also told the audience that USJFCOM's response to the new triad is a proposal for a national center for small unit excellence. He said this proposal has the support of Defense Department leadership and, if approved by Congress, would be stood up in fiscal year 2010.
"The purpose of this center, is three-fold, said Kamiya. "First, it will serve as a hub for framing the operational challenges related to the development of excellence in small units and to ensure the wide array of communities of practice involved share a common understanding of the problems that we are collectively trying to solve.
"Second, the center will serve to rationalize and integrate the enormous amount of superb research and related activities across the services and a wide variety of organizations and disciplines so that the sum of the parts are much, much greater than the whole," said Kamiya.
"And third, the center will focus its resources on activities that complement, vice compete with or are redundant to, the work of the services and other partners. By doing so, we ultimately accelerate the transition and delivery of outcomes that bear the highest impact and value to raising excellence in small units and save lives."
Kamiya continued, "From an organizational design and business management perspective, the center will be very lean and agile with the ability to expand and contract in size depending upon the number, complexity, and scope of the hypotheses that we are working together to solve across the communities. Its focus will be the delivery of high impact outcomes with as little overhead as possible. It will function with a great sense of focus, energy, and urgency as all of us realize that lives are at stake."
As part of a near term effort that will be fully integrated into the center's activities, USJFCOM is sponsoring the Future Immersive Training Environment (FITE) Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD).
Partnered with all of the uniformed services, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, the Office of Naval Research, and several organizations from across academia, industry, and the social, behaviorial, and human sciences, the FITE JCTD will provide small units the enablers they need to train in a realistic, fully immersive, virtual training environment that bears such characteristics as
• infinitely scalable and repeatable in terms of complexity and scenarios,
• has integrated cognitive and physiological measurement and assessment tools that can establish a baseline and objectively measure individual performance and thereby quantify return on investment,
• is easily accessible to soldiers and small units from initial entry training through predeployment training, etc.
The ultimate goal is to provide the individual, leader, and small unit with a training capability that makes their last contact with the enemy no worse than the last simulation.
Kamiya adds that, "it's important to remember that this is not about delivering a 'black box' and then later rationalizing its benefits to individual and small unit performance. Rather, it's about first understanding the art and science of human and group performance and how to measure it, and then making this the centerpiece around which to build the 'black box'."
Kamiya rounded out his discussion with an invitation to industry to help broaden the community of interest to raise the level of excellence in small units.
"We have plans developing now to host what we call an industry day in Suffolk," Kamiya said. "This is our first attempt to help broaden the community of industry interest to help us get at this enormous task."
Susy Dodson
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