As Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, and commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr. oversees the mission of military transformation for the NATO alliance and U.S. armed forces. Joint Forces Command is also responsible for providing combat ready U.S.-based Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps forces to support the military requirements of U.S. combatant commanders around the world.
Adm. Giambastiani's assignments have included several in which he was responsible for development of new technologies and experimental processes, as well as four previous tours in command. He commanded Submarine NR-1, the Navy's only nuclear powered deep diving ocean engineering and research submarine. He also led Submarine Development Squadron Twelve, an attack submarine squadron that serves as the Navy's Warfare Center of Excellence for submarine doctrine and tactics.
The admiral also served as the first director of strategy and concepts at the Naval Doctrine Command. In addition, Adm. Giambastiani commanded the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Richard B. Russell (SSN 687). He also served as the commander of Atlantic Fleet Submarine Force, commander of Submarines Allied Command Atlantic and commander Anti-Submarine and Reconnaissance Forces Atlantic in Norfolk, Va. Giambastiani's other shore and staff assignments include duties as an enlisted program manager on the staff of the Navy Recruiting Command Headquarters, Washington, D.C., in the early days of the all volunteer force; special assistant to the deputy director for intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency; and, a one-year fellowship with the Chief of Naval Operations' Strategic Studies Group. As a flag officer, he served as the deputy chief of staff for resources, warfare requirements and assessments for the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet; director of the Submarine Warfare Division on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations; and finally as the deputy chief of naval operations for resources, requirements and assessments (OPNAV N8).
Prior to his current assignment, he served as senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Adm. Giambastiani graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with leadership distinction in 1970. His decorations include the Defense and the Navy Distinguished Service Medals.
Text edited from remarks given at AFCEA West 2004, Feb. 5.
"Jointness" is a term that is still not well understood — not only within the military but also within industry and by the public. And here I mean the BIG "J" in joint, which refers to a seamless integration of joint forces, interagencies and multinational/coalition partners.
I will give you a sense of what jointness is from the perspective of our recent combat operations. Let me first state right up front three of the key operational insights we have learned:
• The United States DOES NOT send any individual service to conduct major operations but instead deploys its military as a joint force.
• The power of a coherently joint force is now greater than the sum of our separate service, interagency and coalition capabilities.
• "Speed kills" — not just physical speed, but mental speed and situational awareness. It reduces decision and execution cycles, creates opportunities, denies enemy options and speeds his collapse.
Arriving at these insights, which are now taken almost as articles of faith with our forces overseas, was actually not all that easy. They had to be proven in the caldron of actual combat. And it took a significant change in service culture to accept the message that the power of a joint force is far greater than that of any individual service.
This brings me to a discussion of Lessons Learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom. The insights and observations shown in Figure 1 are listed under three categories:
•Capabilities that worked