Unifying militaries through resilient operations

Militaries are frequently composed of services within their sphere of operations and a self-contained combat capability with a fair bit of overlap. Disjointed services can lead to duplicative efforts, disagreement over strategy, and functional stovepipes. One-way militaries can support the creation of unified commands while avoiding potential pitfalls is by creating unified commands around resilient operations.

Developing resilient operations can take many forms, but a few key elements are essential regardless of format:

1. Coordinated personnel sustainment ecosystem—Militaries should create a sustainment vision that accounts for the personnel needs and how demands for talent may shift. They should be able to should align training, talent processes, and related tools to personnel sustainment goals.
2. Force protection jointly—It involves protecting combat resources, from troops to bases and requires the ability to reach across services to leverage resources at the moment of need.
3. Closely coordinated logistical practices—Military logistics must be closely connected and coordinated from the industrial base to theater supply and the tactical edge.

To reorganize around resilient operations and enable the creation of unified commands, militaries should have a rigorous, articulated, and empirically tested framework that can establish joint culture and processes around a shared mission. What is required is a new joint doctrine to provide a common approach. Becoming a more joint military isn’t just an intelligent thing to do; it’s necessary. Defense challenges today, and likely future challenges as well, necessitate a closely coordinated and organized military. Anything less than that, militaries will likely struggle against an ever-changing defense landscape. As long as defense challenges persist, so should a military’s pursuit of greater interoperability.