Interagency Cooperation, Is It Enough to Achieve Unity of Effort: Command and Control Concepts for the Homeland Maritime Domain

摘要

Protection of the Homeland Maritime Domain from terrorist attacks presents unique and complex difficulties for interagency coordination. Cooperation alone is not sufficient enough to allow U.S. Armed Forces and Domestic Agencies to function with the unity of effort that is required to operate within a decision cycle that is sufficiently fast enough to defeat a highly adaptive terrorist threat. Maritime Homeland Defense and Security needs to be married with operational command and control concepts that ensure unity of effort, that are in keeping with the principle of unity of command, and that allow a seamless transition between security and defense. This paper draws on lessons from the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to identify operational command and control principles that can be applied to the task of organizing the defense and security of the Maritime Domain. Finally, this paper proposes that the Joint Interagency Task Force, which was created to fight the War on Drugs, serves as an ideal C2 structure to model.