CPT Alexa Andaya (left, leaning on table), National Security Law Judge Advocate for the 173d Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), discusses the principle of proportionality with brigade commander, COL Michael Kloepper (right, seated at table), during Saber Junction 22, a multinational exercise held at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany. (Credit: MAJ Michael Myers)
Azimuth Check
Embrace the Crucible Exercise
An Intentional Approach to Training Opportunities
By Colonel Andrew M. McKee & Lieutenant Colonel Jason M. Elbert
The ongoing conflict in Ukraine keenly illustrates the likelihood that future warfare will challenge the usefulness of our counterinsurgency experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. National security law practitioners should practice for future warfare in anticipation of a need for mobility in sustained operations, force reconstitution, and the ability to operate in degraded environments.1 Technological advances in artificial intelligence, information dominance, and the use of drones will test our assumptions, create friction, and impede our ability to maneuver.2 These elements of the battlefield will also serve as command decision tools and force multipliers.
The fifth Major General John Fugh Symposium, hosted by Lieutenant General Stuart Risch, The Judge Advocate General, highlighted the importance of the laws of armed conflict (LOAC) fundamentals to an audience of prominent academics, Army and Department of Defense senior leaders, and senior judge advocates (JAs) from partner nations.3 Despite the symposium’s future focused exploration of “Multi-Domain Operations and the Rule of Law in an Era of Evolving Warfare,” the value of LOAC principles served as a common thread throughout the events three academic panels.4 There was overwhelming agreement amongst the participants that the current LOAC is sufficient to govern future conflict.5 Similarly, the panel experts often referenced the importance of factual analysis and circumstances in LOAC application.6 The message resonated—JAs must be confident in LOAC fundamentals, train on them, and practice their application.
Arguably, we must take our practice further to ensure all special staff come away from interactions with JAs with a shared understanding of LOAC. It is the only method of providing “multi-functional legal support simultaneously at multiple command posts while anticipating minimal access to digital communication and information” at the speed of relevance.7 In combat, the pace of battle will move too quickly for on-the-spot legal advice. Success will require LOAC considerations during planning, a deep understanding of the commander’s targeting philosophy, and iterative war game discussions that involve legal considerations. Adequate preparation for large scale combat operations (LSCO) requires the JAG Corps’s commitment to LOAC fundamentals and large-scale exercises. This commitment should include educational training and assignment opportunities within the JAG Corps’s National Security Law Expertise Objective,8 inclusion of LOAC fundamentals and national security law topics within local leadership development programs, and staff presence throughout the unit’s road to war planning and preparatory command post exercises. This model allows JAs to strengthen and practice LOAC principles, expand into specialized areas, and adequately integrate into the staffing process.9 On a tactical level, it prioritizes JA warfighting preparation and encourages the development, testing, and refinement of analog products.10
Accordingly, the JAG Corps’s priorities and training plans must prepare judge advocates with a thorough foundational understanding of LOAC. To achieve this, leaders within the JAG Corps must approach training requirements such as Combat Training Center (CTC) rotations and Warfighter Exercises (WfX) with intentionality, devoting serious thought and their own time into ensuring every member of the team gets the most they can out of these opportunities.
The Opportunities
The Army designed the Combat Training Centers (CTCs) to test, train, and build combat-ready leaders, Soldiers, and formations by immersing units in a highly realistic, decisive, action crucible experience.11 The CTCs replicate combat by “stressing every warfighting function with operations against tough, freethinking, realistic, hybrid threats under the most difficult conditions possible.”12 The Warfighter Exercise (WfX) is a distributed, simulation supported, multi-echelon, tactical command post exercise fought competitively against a live-thinking regional adversary.13 The WfX scenario environment is complex in order to prepare Corps and Division Headquarters for future Decisive Action missions.14 Directed by the Chief of Staff of the Army and scheduled by the Commander, U.S. Army Forces Command (FORSCOM), a WfX is major multi-echelon training event focused on developing Corps and Division level staffs for future large-scale combat operations.15
Combat deployments are diminishing, and candid reflection persuades national security law practitioners that counterinsurgency experience can hinder analysis during LSCO. Because of this, the exercise learning environment is essential to building expertise within the JAG Corps national security law core legal competency.16
Preparation
JAG Corps doctrine requires readiness to provide legal support “in austere conditions, to rapidly maneuvering and mobile unit headquarters, in a contested digital environment.”17 In order to provide principled counsel in support of a “ready, globally responsive, and regionally engaged Army,” JAs must have LOAC fluency and challenge their understanding in realistic environments.18 The stress and friction found during exercises test knowledge, presence, and leadership. If JAG Corps leadership emphasizes well-thought training objectives, participation in command post exercises, and post rotation learning, there is no better preparation environment.
Judge Advocates Legal Services (JALS) personnel will not get the most out of these exercises unless their leadership is deliberate about maximizing the learning potential of the events. During these exercises, unit commanders and staff will practice Mission Command, the Army’s approach to command and control.19 Training audiences will also hone the operations process, the Army’s framework for putting command and control into action.20 The operations process consists of four activities performed iteratively: planning, preparing, executing, and continuously assessing.21 This process facilitates the organization, integration, and synchronization of complex activities in combat.22 As JAs, our own preparation and planning efforts should mirror this process.
Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) preparation for these events should start well in advance of execution. To guide planning and preparation activities, SJAs should develop questions they will use to assess their team and their efforts. Table 1 is an example of some questions an SJA might ask as exercise planning and preparation begin.
In the months leading up to a WfX or CTC rotation, units will engage in several planning events punctuated by a series of increasingly complex preparatory, smaller-scale exercises.23 These events provide built-in gates to assess progress towards readiness for the exercise and the SJA’s desired end state and to modify the plan as necessary. As the large-scale exercise nears and the JALS personnel assigned to the exercise gain experience, preparation should become more granular. Table 2 is an example of what questions an SJA might ask and what tasks exercise personnel might take up after the initial preparatory exercise.
Presence during these preparatory events is critical and must be a point that leadership emphasizes. The presence of JALS personnel provides space to build trust, integrate, and hone staff LOAC understanding. It also helps the JA to improve competencies outside of legal advice that are critical to the practice in an austere environment. Presence may build fitness; develop systems understanding; help JAs appreciate the primary, alternate, contingency, emergency (PACE) communications precedence; guarantee a seat within the operations center; or open opportunities to learn about combat capabilities. Moreover, encouraging legal participation in all phases of exercise preparation creates space to test systems and analog redundancy.24 It also cultivates a trust with the command that will enable LOAC specific discussion, flesh out targeting philosophies, and create informal training opportunities. For example, adequate presence in the run-up to an exercise may allow a JA the access necessary to run a hypothetical driven targeting discussion with the command and members of the staff with fires decision authority.
Conclusion
The JAG Corps mission remains constant, to “provide principled counsel and premier legal services, as committed members and caring leaders in the legal and Army professions, in support of a ready, globally responsive, and regionally engaged Army.”25 Readiness for high-intensity conflict and near-peer adversaries remains critical to future success.”26 This no-fail strategic requirement necessitates the study of LOAC, the assessment of varying LOAC applications during planning, and the practical application of LOAC in challenging environments like the CTCs and WfXs. TAL
COL Mckee is the senior legal observer coach trainer at the Mission Command Training Program at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
LTC Elbert is the director of the Center for Law and Military Operations at The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Notes
1. See, e.g., Army Mad Scientist, How Russia Fights 2.0
with Brigadier General (Retired) Peter B. Zwack, Brigadier
General (Ret.) Peter L. Jones, Ian Sullivan, Dr. Mica Hall,
Samuel Bendett, and Katerina Dedova, The Convergence (July 21, 2022), https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-convergence-an-army-mad-scientist-podcast/ id1495100075.
2. Id. See generally MG John Fugh Symposium, Center for Law and Military Operations, The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School, June 15, 2022 [hereinafter MG Fugh Symposium].
3. MG Fugh Symposium.
4. Id.
5. Id.
6. Id.
7. U.S. Dep’t of Army, Field Manual 1-04, Legal Support to Operations para. 3-41 (8 June 2020) [hereinafter FM 1-04].
8. U.S. Dep’t of Army Judge Advoc. Legal Serv. Pub. 1-1, Personnel Policies fig.7-3 (Feb. 2022) [hereinafter JALS Pub. 1-1].
9. FM 1-04, supra note 7, at para. 2-14. (requiring Judge Advocate Legal Services personnel to be “integrated into the staff and operations process during all phases of decisive action”).
10. Colonel (Retired) Gail A. Curley, Leading Lawyers and Advising Senior Leaders During Crisis: Reflections on the Army’s January 2021 Civil Disturbance Operations Response, Army Law., no. 5, 2021 at 18, 20 (emphasizing the importance of preparing an analog Smartbook).
11. U.S. Dep’t of Army, Reg. 350-50, Combat Training Center Program para. 1-5 (2 May 2018).
12. Id.
13. MCTP, Warfighter Exercise Overview WFX 101, MCTP, https://cacmdc.army.mil/cact/MCTP/PLEX/ WFX%20101%20Internal/Forms/AllItems.aspx (last visited Aug. 30, 2022).
14. Id.
15. Id.
16. U.S. Dep’t of Army, Field Manual 1-04, Legal Support to Operations para. 1-6 (8 June 2020).
17. Id. at para. 3-41.
18. Id. at para. 1-1 (articulating the Judge Advocate General’s Corps mission).
19. U.S. Dep’t of Army, Army Doctrinal Publication 5-0, The Operations Process para. 1-12 (July 2019) [hereinafter ADP 5-0].
20. Id. para. 1-15.
21. Id.
22. Id. para 1-16.
23. This assertion is based on Colonel Mckee’s recent professional experiences as the senior legal observer coach trainer for the Mission Command Training Program from 9 June 2021 until present.
24. FM 1-04, supra note 7, at para. 3-44 (requiring JAG Corps leaders to prepare to deliver legal support through analog means, execute off-network document production, and have hardcopy or off-network reference materials on-hand).
25. FM 1-04, supra note 7, para. 1-1.
26. See generally The Army’s Vision and Strategy, U.S. Army (Sept. 6, 2022) https://www.army.mil/about/.