National Security Council (Cjcs)

1. CJCS fulfills the role of principal military adviser in the National Security Council system. The CJCS is the senior most military advisor to the President and in such provides that guidance directly to the President, and by participating in National Security Council Principals meetings in person. During these meetings he provides his best professional military advice to the President and the other cabinet members of the NSC. Additionally, he will send his senior most policy advisor the Joint Staff J5 to sit in on Deputies committee meetings and give his guidance at this next level down. The CJCS also outlines and writes the National Military Strategy provided to Combatant Commanders as military context and translation of the National Defense

GEF and JSCP guide the Geographic Combatant Commander in the development of Theater Strategy. The GEF signed by the President and issued by the Secretary of Defense provides political and military guidance in context of the National Defense Strategy and based on strategic goals of Combatant Commands which forms the basis of the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP). The JSCP issued to combatant commanders, service chiefs, Combat Support agencies, and other relevant DOD agencies and field offices by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS). The JSCP provides functional planning guidance, contingency planning requirements to meet military objectives and outlines resource and force allocations and apportionments for each respective agency or command. The Theater Campaign Plans are then developed by the combatant commands using the GEF and JSCP as the higher headquarters guidance. The GEF in this context provides your strategic end states and goals. While the JSCP translates those end states into military objectives and tasks, and the resources available to achieve

Planners as they develop strategies for achieving military objectives will war-game their strategies according to three separate criteria- feasible, acceptable and suitable. Each distinct in its criteria. First applying the test of feasibility to your strategy is to validate whether the plan you’ve developed is something that actually “can be done.” In other words, with the forces and resources available could the mission be successful. Secondly, you must look at the acceptable criteria, even though a plan may be feasible, if you were to lose 80% of your forces achieving the mission it may not be acceptable based on how important the objectives you are trying to achieve. The last criteria is suitable, and while the other two criteria may be ok, the suitable is the standard in which we judge the solution as appropriate to a given situation. An example would be given a mission to defeat a certain adversary, and the solution proposed would be apply nuclear weapons to achieve the mission. While this solution may be feasible and acceptable from a purely military standpoint, it would not be suitable, and considered overkill. All three criteria are considered when building strategies and plans to achieve military objectives. All three must be found to be collectively in concurrence for planners to recommend a strategy to a commander. As planners work at increasingly higher levels of responsibility including at a geographic Combatant Command the last criteria becomes the hardest