USJFCOMLive

This is the tenth in a series of blogs detailing the efforts of a deployable training team (DTT) from U.S. Joint Forces Command’s (USJFCOM) Joint Training Directorate/Joint Warfighting Center (J7) as they conduct a staff assistance visit (SAV) with Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti.  The SAV is the final in a series of training events conducted by USJFCOM to prepare CJTF-HOA’s core staff for its mission.  During the visit, the J7 team members will observe operations and provide training to the CJTF-HOA staff, sharing insights and best practices gathered from their experiences with joint units around the globe and gleaning insights to prepare to train the JTF’s replacements later this year. 

In addition to the DTT, J7’s Joint Exercise Division (JED) sent its U.S. Africa Command lead planner on the SAV.  Cmdr. Nick Mungas talked to me about his role here and how his presence will improve the training J7 delivers to future iterations of CJTF-HOA.

Mungas said his primary purpose here is to talk to CJTF-HOA’s staff about the training they received during the mission rehearsal exercise (MRX) portion of the Unified Endeavor Mission Rehearsal Program.  He’s looking for three things:

• What training was useful?
• What training proved not as useful?
• What could be added to the next JTF’s training to improve it?

I think it’s invaluable that a representative from the exercise division comes.  It’s going to pay a lot of dividends for me to have seen the environment they’re working in and better understand their physical environment and what some of their day-to-day limitations are while they’re out here. 

Beyond that, it’s important for Mungas to talk to the JTF staff about their training experience.  He told me that the DTT’s observer/trainers can and do ask many of the questions he does, but they will interact  with other JTFs and combatant commands between now and the time planning for next year’s MRX begins in earnest.  As the man who leads planning for that MRX, he can maintain focus on CJTF-HOA’s training needs.

The O/Ts are very busy and in high demand.  They’re certainly going to pass [the inputs from the HOA staff] on, but they may not remember what was said by their counterparts five or six months from now when we’re deep into exercise planning because they’ll have done a lot since this SAV.  My job is to come out and ask some of the same questions, but my only purpose here is to capture that information and maintain it so as the Joint Exercise Division goes through the exercise development process, that information is still readily available.

Additionally, the JED recently made changes to the training future iterations of CJTF-HOA will undergo.  Being here allowed Mungas the opportunity to brief those changes to Navy Rear Adm. Brian Losey, CJFT-HOA commander.

We have changed the way that we’re going to exercise the core staff training for the next group that comes through.  It was important to brief the admiral personally and tell him directly from the Joint Warfighting Center what our plan is for training his next staff, which  will work for him for some time before he turns over command.