What have you learned from the past? What future do you see? Why not write about it and share it with us?
Our Forum section in this issue opens with an interview of General Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, USAF, commander of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command. With arguably some of the most important responsibilities in the joint force, he discusses how his commands work to protect the homeland, defend the airspace above the United States and Canada, and how the joint force is working to achieve the Chairman’s Globally Integrated Operations challenge. Next, with the rise of social media’s use as a weapon, Glenda Jakubowski describes how these modern means of communication can be adapted to information operations as a force multiplier. Continuing one of our most important discussion threads issue to issue, James Kwoun discusses an interesting way to reimagine all-source intelligence analysis.
In JPME Today, we present two important articles that primarily speak to the professionals engaged in teaching in our staff and war colleges. As an early look at a chapter from an edited volume on professional ethics (NDU Press, forthcoming), Thomas Statler tells us how professional military education can renew its focus on the profession of arms and virtue ethics. Recommending the use of historical case studies in our teaching, Gregory Miller then offers us the keys to teaching our future senior leaders about an important but underappreciated civil-military relations moment in the immediate post–Vietnam War period, the Mayaguez Incident.
This issue’s Commentary offers two articles that also continue discussions we have had—and I expect will continue to have in future issues. After spending a considerable time in his day job and as a student at the Eisenhower School last year, Scott Hubinger provides the case for how the F-35 program will not meet the same end as the F-22. In one way it already has, with more than double the number of aircraft produced to date, but the debate continues as to its value. On the other end of the combat spectrum, Steve Hendrickson and Riley Post have developed a simple answer on how best to apply operations analysis to special operations.
Our Features section has a wide range of ideas that emphasize our shift in national security focus to the Indo-Pacific region. Dion Moten, Bryan Teff, Michael Pyle, Gerald Delk, and Randel Clark help us understand the problems surrounding combat casualty care if we were to go to war at sea in the Pacific and how to jointly solve them. Taking joint integration in a different direction, George Dougherty has an interesting view of how land forces can achieve overmatch through control of the “atmospheric littoral.” As nuclear issues and the renewal of our triad of nuclear systems come to the front of the national security debates, Ryan Kort, Carlos Bersabe, Dalton Clarke, and Derek Di Bello help us work through the results of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. With a refocusing on great power competition, Mark Miles and Charles Miller discuss the risks and opportunities the United States faces around the world.
In Recall, we present a fascinating look back at the American Civil War brought to us by two young officers and historians, John DiEugenio and Aubry Eaton, who offer a 155-year-old leadership lesson from the Petersburg Campaign of 1864. We also present two excellent articles in Joint Doctrine focusing on joint functions. Focusing on a growing area of interest to joint planners and operators, Kyle Ernest Goodridge, Kane Janek Kukowski, and Matthew Eric McCay recommend some answers on how best to integrate nonlethal and lethal effects across the joint functions. In an important review and critique, Thomas Crosbie sees the joint functions as needing adjustments to properly work to the joint force’s advantage. We also offer three valuable book reviews and the Joint Doctrine update to round out this issue.
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NDU Press produces Joint Force Quarterly in concert with ongoing education and research at National Defense University in support of the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. JFQ is the Chairman's joint military and security studies journal designed to inform and educate national security professionals on joint and integrated operations; whole of government contributions to national security policy and strategy; homeland security; and developments in training and joint military education to better equip America's military and security apparatus to meet tomorrow's challenges while protecting freedom today.