CHIPS Articles: Interview with Rear Admiral John M. Richardson, USJFCOM Strategy and Policy Directorate

In addition to numerous sea tours aboard the attack submarines USS Parche, USS Salt Lake City and the ballistic missile submarine USS George C. Marshall, the admiral commanded the attack submarine USS Honolulu and Submarine Development Squadron 12, where the six submarines assigned to the squadron made seven extended deployments including six deployments in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Ashore, he has served on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations, Attack Submarine Division, as Naval Aide to the President of the United States, and as the Prospective Commanding Officer Instructor for the Commander of Submarine Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet.

A 1982 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Richardson also holds master's degrees from MIT and the National War College. He reported to U.S. Joint Forces Command in November 2007.

In December 2008, U.S. Joint Forces Command released a strategy document that forecasts possible threats and opportunities that will challenge the joint force in the future. The report, the 2008 Joint Operating Environment, has been in the forefront of discussion by the media and defense strategists since its release.

JOE 2008 examines trends and disruptions in the geopolitical and military landscape, such as: demographics; globalization; economics; energy; food; water; climate change and natural disasters; pandemics; cyber; and space.

These trends form the framework for exploring the following types of scenarios: competition and cooperation among conventional powers; potential challenges and threats; weak and failing states; the threats of unconventional power; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; technology; the battle of narratives; and urbanization.

JOE 2008 is meant to be read in conjunction with the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (CCJO), which was signed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) Navy Adm. Mike Mullen Jan. 22, and developed with assistance by USJFCOM. Representatives from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, as well as U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Strategic Command, also assisted in the JOE and CCJO development.

The CCJO describes the chairman's vision for how the joint forces circa 2016-2028 will operate in response to a wide variety of security challenges which are discussed in JOE 2008.

JOE 2008 contributes to USJFCOM's central mission to develop a vision for how our military forces will conduct future operations and tests this vision in the most realistic and challenging ways possible. CHIPS met with Richardson in January to discuss the JOE.

CHIPS: Can you explain what the JOE is?

Rear Adm. Richardson: The nature of the Joint Operating Environment is to provide an operational framework to outline the challenges and opportunities that will face the joint force in the future. Gen. Jim Mattis, USJFCOM's commander, points out in the Foreword that making predictions about the future is always risky.

The JOE does not propose to be any better than past predictions, but the process is important because if you don't do it, you're almost guaranteed to be caught by surprise if you haven't thought your way through the potential challenges.

The Joint Operating Environment document itself may not be as important as the process of getting senior leadership in national security to consider and discuss the possibilities — what are the potential threats and opportunities, and then what are the signposts along the way as we chart our course into the future?

We think it is important to consider not only those things that will change, but also those things that are going to be enduring, particularly with human nature which has been an enduring feature. The fundamental nature of war has been enduring since Thucydides or Sun Tzu wrote thousands of years ago about the nature of conflict and human behavior. Many of those things hold true today.

The nature of war will stay the same, but the character of war will change quite a bit as technology changes and as the enemy adapts. As the strategic environment changes, that will change the character of war.

We look at those trends and how they may potentially affect change on the character of joint force operations, how those trends may combine to form what we call contexts. The contexts we see are a little more robust and complex than individual trends.

Finally, the unique contribution to the Joint Operating Environment is that it focuses on the joint force, and the final step in the logic is discussing the implications of these trends and contexts on joint force operations of the future.

CHIPS: What I found so compelling about reading the JOE is that in the 21st century, there continues to be profound competition for basic human needs such as food and water. The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development could do much to help poor countries. Is JFCOM engaged in discussion with these agencies?

Rear Adm. Richardson: The Joint Operating Environment proposes the problem statement. The natural next step is to decide what you are going to do about it and how the joint force is going to operate in response to the environment discussed in the JOE. That response is discussed in the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations.

The Joint Operating Environment document sets the problem, and the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations talks about how the joint force will respond to meet the problems and opportunities that the JOE talks about.

Many of the problems posed in the Joint Operating Environment are going to require solutions that certainly go beyond the military.

Joint Forces Command is closely involved with other branches of our government, other elements of national power — the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the Department of Agriculture for interagency solutions — extending even further into a multinational realm, because we are not going to fight alone; we are not going to face these challenges alone.

[There are] lots of opportunities and Joint Forces Command is looking at the future towards ways we can bring these partnerships together and craft productive solutions.

It may be that in a number of these areas, for instance, in engagement, or reconstruction in response to a crisis, where the military is not in the lead. We may provide support to another government agency or multinational coalition that is much better suited to take the lead.

CHIPS: Who is the audience that you are targeting — the joint force, Congress … Is the JOE intended to convince an audience about the threats? Would the average citizen benefit from reading it?

Rear Adm. Richardson: Our target audience are the leaders and professionals in the national security field. Our approach is if the idea is compelling, it will start the conversation about these ideas. So we hope to provide a compelling case for discussion for some of these potential futures. It is just a perspective.

We tried to make it readable; it is unclassified, and it has gotten plenty of distribution online. It is on our Web page (www.jfcom.mil), and anybody can download it.

CHIPS:The JOE discussed how the power of a few individuals, or single person, can cause global instability. Do you put a lot of weight on the power of one individual to do that?

Rear Adm. Richardson: When we talk about the role of the individual, we come at it in two different ways. We can talk about trends and plot those from point to point and draw a nice curve, but one of the enduring things about the future is that no matter how hard or how diligently we prepare, we are never going to be able to eliminate surprise from our future. We will be surprised.

We have to design a force built to sustain surprise, so we will have the fewest regrets when that surprise comes — not if it comes. In terms of the features of the joint force for the future, that's where the ideas about balance and resiliency and adaptability enter the discussion.

If you take a historical look, one of those areas where you can see surprise come in, where history is fragile, where you can see these disruptions, is in the role of very powerful individual leaders. You can pick them out — both good and bad — throughout history and see that one single individual personally made a tremendous difference. Things could have been very different with a different person in charge — leaders matter a great deal.

Winston Churchill would be a great example of a leader that made an essential difference in the outcome of World War II. On the other hand, if Hitler had not risen to power, we might have seen a much different situation in Germany.

If we talk about discontinuities or potential surprises, who rises to power, how much power they have, and how they use that power, can be hard to predict.

The other place where the JOE talks about individuals is through globalization and the Internet; those forces give a single individual tremendous reach now. You can literally be sitting at your computer and reach out across the world. An individual can have significant effects; we call it a 'super-empowered' individual or 'super-empowered' guerilla.

Another way to look at this is that the cost of entry is very cheap for many disruptive and high-end types of systems. It is literally the cost of a piece of hardware, a computer and an Internet account to launch something with severe effects.

It is becoming affordable to have high-end technology, and if you extrapolate that into the weapons business, you can easily see that in the not too distant future, a weapon with precision guidance is achievable by anybody who has cash.

It used to be that only a nation-state would have that kind of weapon capability. Now some drug cartels have enough resources that they are building submarines in the jungle. Any cash-rich entity can just as easily turn that kind of cash into other emerging weapons systems, say precision-guided munitions.

CHIPS: In writing the JOE, did you have any current leaders in mind?

Rear Adm. Richardson: This is a historically informed approach. If the future of conflict is going to remain a human endeavor, the best school of human nature is our past. We look at how people faced analogous situations in the past and used those as models and scenarios and vignettes to illustrate how they might face similar situations in the future.

The scope of the document is projected eight to 25 years out. We try not to comment on the present-day situation except as it might be consistent with or the starting point of a trend.

CHIPS: There is a cautionary note repeated in the JOE that states that despite the high-tech advances in weapons and communications systems war remains a human endeavor with the same aspects of fog, friction, mistaken assumptions, uncertainty and unpredictability since human history began. It doesn't appear that advanced technology has made a difference at all.

Rear Adm. Richardson: It is important to have an understanding of the enduring nature of warfare. You can talk about future war, and you can talk about technology-enabled warfare. The character will change. Precision-guided munitions have changed the character of warfare.

But there are still fog, friction and uncertainty. The human elements are not going to change as long as this is a human challenge. It is not a weakness; it is the nature of the problem. There is always going to be uncertainty, and there is always going to be a human element no matter how many satellites or how much ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) we have. We are never going to be able to know everything.

That is why we think it is important to have an appreciation of what is enduring and what will change as technology advances and the strategic landscape shifts. It [war] is human-centric and leader-centric — enabled by technology.

CHIPS: Do you think there can be a game-changing technology development that can change the JOE's presumptions?

Rear Adm. Richardson: One way is that you could have a single disruptive technology that nobody saw coming, a new invention that could have an unanticipated game-changing effect.

Looking back in history, we have also seen that it is not a new technology but some new way to combine tools in a way that we didn't foresee, for example, the radar warning system in Britain [during World War II].

Even though the Germans had better technical radars, it was the operational concept of Britain commanders combining those radars into a network they used as a system that was defining.

The IED (improvised explosive device) is an example of a simple technology used in disruptive and asymmetric ways.

CHIPS: The JOE discusses the effects of globalization and the inter-connectiveness of the world economy. It says that countries are very much interdependent and have too much to lose in lives and national treasure to engage in a major war. Will that be a factor in maintaining global stability?

Rear Adm. Richardson: That has always been a factor in whether a nation chooses to go to war. Is the risk worth the gain? Globalization has tied us all together in new ways and accelerated the problem. Now we have tremendous amounts of information and tremendous amounts of capital being transmitted around the world in quantities and speeds that were previously unforeseen.

The processes that control those transactions have to adapt to a much higher bandwidth and a much higher response time. Things can avalanche a lot more quickly.

CHIPS: The JOE discusses the possibility of nations forming anti-American alliances? Do you see this as likely?

Rear Adm. Richardson: It is a possibility. You can almost see the beginnings of it forming. We are naïve if we go into the future thinking that everybody is going to like us. As our enemies connect with each other they are going to find ways to foil our plans and disrupt what we are trying to accomplish. There is the potential for them to link together and form some kind of alliance.

CHIPS: The JOE talked about the rise in the militaries of Russia, China, other Asian countries, and the disarmament of some European countries. Can you talk about how these instabilities and tensions create situations in U.S. military operations?

Rear Adm. Richardson: It comes to that question of balance that we have mentioned a couple of times. That is the ultimate end-state. One of the enduring natures of war is that the enemy is going to focus on your vulnerabilities. He is studying us as much as we are studying him. They are going to try to find out where we are weak, and they are going to direct their attack into that weakness.

Right now, I would say that we are superior in conventional, state-on-state and fleet-against-fleet warfare. Nobody is going to take us on. Up in the blue sky, nobody is going to take us on there.

Where we need to achieve the balance is to maintain that conventional superiority even as we improve so that we are just as superior in irregular, unconventional types of conflict. That is where the importance of intelligence is, in watching what that balance is in the conventional force area so that we don't let the enemy steal the march on us as we are improving our capability in irregular and unconventional war.

CHIPS: How would you recommend your colleagues view the JOE?

Rear Adm. Richardson: It is a starting point for discussion. If you want to make practical use of the ideas in the study, you would take the context of the potential futures and use them in your war games, in scenarios for experimentation and for future concept development …

CHIPS: The JOE calls for reform in the acquisition process and personnel systems. Do you have any recommendations?

Rear Adm. Richardson: That is in a specific section of the study called 'Leading Questions.' We have focused this study at the operational level of war. It is not the strategic level, and it is certainly not a policy document. Those two topics are policy matters, but they have operational implications.

If we think about the types of capabilities we need to face the challenges and opportunities in the Joint Operating Environment, just from an acquisition standpoint, it is getting expensive to do business. Some of our competitors have different economic systems.

We use the example of space programs. Compare the cost of our space program to the space program in China. It would be interesting to see how different those are. China is able to put together a capability for a lot less cost.

A lot of people would be in agreement that our system needs to be more responsive. Our enemy is adapting very quickly. He does not have the defense industrial base, the bureaucracy, and all the processes we have to field a new capability. We need to stay up with his adaptation, and beyond that, be able to generate some uncertainty in the enemy — to inflict some difficulty in his thought processes and create some uncertainty about what he thinks about our future. That requires a more responsive acquisition approach.

CHIPS: How? It takes a long time to field major weapons systems.

Rear Adm. Richardson: Being able to field capabilities more quickly and being able to prototype more capabilities so you can keep the enemy guessing about what sort of things you are going to bring to the fight. What sort of things can impose costs on him so that he has to think about spending some of his capital to hedge against these uncertainties. Cost-imposing strategies would be a great goal for acquisition reform.

CHIPS: What about the changes to the personnel system?

Rear Adm. Richardson: [We need to] think about the sorts of skill sets that are required to improve our capabilities and to become superior in some of these human types of warfare. We need to have a better understanding of some of the people we are going to be working with, what their culture is, what their language is, what their motivation is, and what their history is.

We need to think about how our personnel system is geared to train and incentivize the joint force for the future. Do we need a new construct for how we build the joint force?

But again, these are leading questions. The answers will come from changes to policy, but they will have implications on the way we operate the force.

CHIPS: The military is required to do so much more than in the past.

Rear Adm. Richardson: Some of the skills are not traditionally the ones that we have developed. How do we educate those leaders for this new type of fight? The senior enlisted are going to be making important decisions in very complex scenarios. How do we train that person to have the awareness and the tool-set to make an informed decision in that type of environment? That is beyond the scope of the JOE, but we want to pose the problem; the details about potential solutions are the next step.

CHIPS: Is there anything more that you would like to add?

Rear Adm. Richardson: It's important, as we consider the entire document, to understand the context in which we produced it. We are not making any hard predictions, as we said, these are always risky. It is certainly not policy — we went outside the bounds of policy to stretch the range of possibilities for people to think about. It is these possible threats and opportunities, posed in the Joint Operating Environment, that are the starting point for a discussion about national security.

The Capstone Concept for Joint Operations then describes how the joint force will operate in the future to meet the challenges described in the JOE.