Military Review English Edition July-August 2015 | Page 79

OPERATION UNITED ASSISTANCE

a result, a number of personnel
from the Joint Staff and U.S.
Transportation Command’s Joint
Enabling Capabilities Command
( JECC) were present for the Lion
Focus exercise at USARAF headquarters in Vicenza, Italy. Once
USARAF received notification to
begin planning OUA, the focus
quickly shifted from the notional scenario of Lion Focus 14 to
real-world planning and execution of OUA. The JECC and Joint
Staff personnel rapidly integrated
with the USARAF staff, providing critical support, guidance, and
subject matter expertise.

Forming the Joint
Force
As an ASCC without assigned
forces, the first step in leading
a JFC was to build one. A theater army’s roles and functions,
however, do not normally include
acting as a JFC.3 When USARAF
needs to obtain forces for steadystate missions, USARAF requirement managers request allocation
of external forces within a rolling
two-year window prior to execution. For OUA, this deliberative paradigm would not work.
The nature of the crisis required
USARAF to organize and resource a JFC by using assigned
and allocated forces within
USAFRICOM. These were aug(U.S. Navy photo by Chief Petty Officer Jerrold Diederich)
mented by JECC planners, whose Navy Lt. Jose Garcia inspects specimen labels and prepares for the first step in sample
processing 6 October 2014 at a Naval Medical Research Center mobile laboratory on
missions were changed through
Bushrod Island, Liberia.
expedited collaboration with
U.S. Transportation Command
and the Joint Staff in accordance with the broadcommand post comprising the remnants of the docer Global Force Management Implementation
trinal contingency command post, which had been
Guidance and Procedures.4
cut from ASCCs as part of force structure reducTo accomplish this, USARAF pursued three lines
tions. Second, USAFRICOM approved integrating
of effort. First, USARAF deployed its expeditionary
the JECC to fill joint manning document positions
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