New US Concept Melds Air, Sea and Land: The Pentagon's five-year-old Air-Sea Battle concept is undergoing a major rethink as it opens its focus to incorporate input from the land services and combatant commanders, senior Joint Staff and Navy planners told Defense News on Jan. 22.
The effort to expand the predominantly Navy and Air Force-heavy concept kicked off last fall when the Joint Chiefs made a recommendation to Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey to open it wider to the other services.
Dubbed the Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons (JAM-GC), the emerging plan "is not trying to replace Air-Sea Battle with Joint Access and Maneuver, and it's not 'throw the Air-Sea Battle concept out and start all over again,' " said Navy Capt. Terry Morris, deputy director for Air-Sea Battle in the Pentagon. "It is an understanding of the environment, and the advances we have made since 2009 when we first started with this."
As part of the change, JAM-GC will be supported by the Joint Staff's Joint Force Development Office, or J7, and is expected to produce a concept paper by this fall.
The original concept for Air-Sea Battle "was focused on a smaller set of the operational access problem" than previous concept and strategic documents had, said Ric Schulz, division chief of joint concept development at the J7 office.
But the move "has opened it up and made it a little easier to create some of the change that the service chiefs" were asking for.
