Study emphasizes joint C2

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The armed services need as much as $500 million in fiscal 2002 to develop and field a joint command and control system, a defense transformation panel has found.

At a Pentagon briefing Tuesday, Jim McCarthy, the panel's chairman, called joint command and control capabilities "the most enabling transformation effort, so we recommend a lot of focus [on it]."

And although he didn't mention the Global Command and Control System specifically, McCarthy seemed to take a swipe at it and other existing joint command and control systems. "So far, we have not figured out how to organize, train and equip a joint command and control system. That's why we don't have one," he said.

A retired Air Force general who teaches at the Air Force Academy, McCarthy led a two-month study group of senior retired military, scientific advisers and intelligence specialists through the Institute for Defense Analysis. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld requested the study.

The task force is recommending that Rumsfeld help create a joint command and control system that commanders in chief would operate on a day-to-day basis from their headquarters. However, the panel members said that because their plan would be thwarted by the seven-year Pentagon budget cycle, they are proposing that as much as $500 million to be allocated for such a system in 2002.