LtGen Jim Mattis to US Joint Forces Command (Updated)
Update 12 September 2007: Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates announced yesterday that the President has nominated U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis for appointment to the rank of general with assignment as Commander, U.S. Joint Forces Command, Norfolk, VA. NATO has also agreed to appoint LtGen Mattis as Supreme Allied Commander Transformation.
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A rumor we have been hearing since May was reported on yesterday in the North County Times — Lieutenant General James Mattis (USMC) has been nominated for his fourth star and slated to take over US Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.
Camp Pendleton’s Lt. Gen. James Mattis will be nominated for the rank of general and appointed commander of a high-level military planning and strategy unit based in Virginia, the North County Times has learned.
Mattis, whose present job is commander of Marine Corps Forces Central Command and head of Camp Pendleton’s I Marine Expeditionary Force, will become head of the Joint Forces Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Transformation.
Multiple sources within the military and in Washington, D.C., confirmed that Mattis, who has overseen Marine Corps forces in the Middle East for the last 15 months and is regarded as a “warrior monk” for his intellectual acumen and war-fighting skills, will be nominated for a fourth star by President Bush.
An announcement of the nomination is expected to come from the Defense Department within days. The move is subject to Senate confirmation.
While this nomination will remove one of our most capable generals from command of operationally deployed units it does hold good tidings for the future of Joint operations capabilities, concepts, and doctrine and training development.
USJFCOM was the command that, in 2002, served up the experiment, war game, computer simulation, live field exercise (one-size fits all) Millennium Challenge (MC02). Setup by JFCOM to showcase Joint Vision 2020 (JV 2020), Effects Based Operations (EBO), Rapid Decisive Operations (RDO) and Operational Net Assessment (ONA) — and there were other ornaments on that Christmas tree — MC02 came to a grinding halt when the ‘Red Team’ (enemy) commander, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper (USMC Ret.), conducted his own rapid, decisive operation to achieve desired effects based on information superiority and soundly defeated the Joint Force of the future – using asymmetric tactics and commercial-off-the-shelf technologies.
The Mattis nomination is one small step for sound Joint capabilities, one giant leap for a future firmly grounded in reality.
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Tom Barnett on this post:
A good sign for the evolution of the force. The ultimate “monk of war” takes over the primary “force generating” command, whose Area Of Responsibility is “the future”!
Abu Muqawama – First blog catch honors:
You can all file this story in among those Abu Muqawama very much hopes are true.
