On Tuesday, January 12 at 16:53, Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, suffered the worst earth-quake in two centuries. It first hit just south of the capital, Port-au-Prince, with two additional strong aftershocks of 5. 9 and 5. 5 magnitude quickly following and more than thirty significant aftershocks of a 4. 5 magnitude or higher throughout the night and into the early morning (Smith 1). The resulting death toll was estimated at over 230,000; decapitating the country’s government and many organizations already assisting them.
Among the souls lost were senior leaders of the United Nations representatives to Haiti, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the Government of Haiti (GoH) (Joint 2). Very shortly after the quakes the orders and requests for military humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations were quickly drafted. From this operation, Operation Unified Response, the US Joint Forces Command, Joint Center for Operational Analysis developed the USSOUTHCOM and JTFHaiti…
Some Challenges and Considerations in Forming a Joint Task Force case study. The study looked at how SOUTHCOM responded to the crisis in the first few weeks and how SOUTHCOM, while working through ambiguous mission requirements and chaotic conditions, formed a joint task force to carry out the Haitian relief efforts (Joint 2). After reading the study and conducted further research on Operation Unified Response, I have found some areas in which the Combatant Commander succeeded and failed in relation to situational awareness.
While producing Joint Task Force- Haiti, General Douglas Fraser’s SOUTHCOM HQ, was not organized correctly nor did it have the appropriate man power to handle such a large mission and it greatly hindered their situational awareness during the early stages of the operation. At the time of the earthquake, the commander of SOUTHCOM, General Douglas Fraser, had been in command for a little over six months and had some concerns about the effectiveness of the unique organization.
A week before the disaster the traditional primary and special staff organization and functions necessary to deal with the response—especially crisis action planning—were not in place and ready. As a whole the SOUTHCOM HQ was only staffed at about 85%. Even in view of the shortfalls, Gen. Fraser still didn’t have plan to acquire the additional personnel needed to make a fully equipped JTF. When the earthquake hit everyone went into crisis action mode and Gen. Fraser immediately asked for augments.
Within 24 hours he received enough personnel to increase his staff to 11 FO/GOs and approximately 274 action officers (Joint 3). Even with this increase SOUTCOM would still have issues getting the desperately needed JTE because these new augments didn’t fall into the traditional J-Code staff organization. The SOUTHCOM organization of the enterprise model does not allow for quick ‘plug and play’ by the rest of the DOD members from throughout the other COCOMs and agencies (Joint 4).
Therefore, even with the new augments and the original staff members at the 72 hour mark the SOUTHCOM HQ still could not properly man a Joint Task Force. According to the Special Report for lessons learned; rapid assessments contribute to situational awareness and allows for informed decision-making (Donohue 4). However, assessing the situation within Haiti was only part of the requirement, because the staff had to also “fight” to gain situational awareness.
For the SOUTHCOM staff they had to gain situational awareness on what all the other US and international contributors were planning and executing in support of the relief efforts (Joint 5). Through strategic mission analysis Gen. Fraser did understand what needed to be done and how to get it done; but he simply didn’t have the pertinent information, time, nor the personnel needed to be prepared for the upcoming mission in the short time before the disaster. Now that SOUTHCOM was given the operational order for Operation Unified Response, Gen.
Fraser and his staff now had to fix a plane while in flight. BGen David Garza, USSOUTHCOM Chief of Staff, felt that SOUTHCOM had lost some of our ‘planning discipline’ [as well as capacity] across several of the staff functions; specifically across the planning horizons: Watch, COPS (current operations), FUOPS (future operations), FUPLANS (future plans). In addition to the complications their staff organization and manning shortfalls were causing, there were still information gaps that could only be filled in by having boots on the ground.
So even if there was a fully equipped staff to include a task force the lack of manpower still left them deficient when it came to situational awareness. One the largest impacts on SOUTHCOMs effort in gaining situational awareness was the lack of an all-inclusive plan; when the disaster his no one knew who to talk too or where they needed to focus. Before the earthquake, SOUTHCOM did developed a functional plan (FUNCPLAN 6150-06) for HADR operations in theater, but the plan was written for a traditional J-code organization and had not been updated to reflect the SOUTHCOM organization just prior to the earthquake.
Moreover, there was no standing Concept of Operations (CONOP) or Operations Plan (OPLAN) with an associated Time Phased Force Deployment Data (TPFDD) built for a HADR event that the staff could use to begin force flow planning. Adding to these complications, SOUTHCOM’s logistics and deployment expertise had been disaggregated under the original functional staff organization (Joint 8). Another element of maintaining accurate situational awareness is rapidly deploying crossfunctional assessment teams in an effort to bridge the gap in mission essential areas (Donohue 4).
Gen. Fraser and other key leaders, were aware of the needed ground analysis, but they also knew that is was currently not their biggest issue. Even with the boots on the ground or assessment teams, the staff was still not organized appropriately so that it could function with maximum efficiency. Therefore, five days into the crisis, amid the immediate demands for information and decisions, the SOUTHCOM Commander directed the staff to reorganize into the traditional “J-code” structure.
The more traditional structure allowed faster integration of and a more immediate contribution by external augments. Nearly overnight the SOUTHCOM staff conducted an in-stride reorganization, simultaneously functioning as a JTF while laying the groundwork to stand-up JTF-H. The in-stride decision by General Fraser to realign to a J-Code Structure was a pivotal decision for US SOUTHCOM and improved the situational awareness for the headquarters (Joint 8).
The final and most important element that affected ITF- Haiti was accurately assessing conditions as quickly as possible and providing flexible equipment packages that support communications and imagery needs (Donohue 4). It was also evident early on that the disaster assessment capabilities of the Office of Federal Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and the Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) were insufficient for the huge task assigned to them.
For the first several days after the earthquake, there was little information coming out of Haiti to inform decision making. Communication systems were down, movement was essentially stopped due to the rubble, and many agencies that would normally be a source of input, such as the country team in the Embassy, Government of Haiti (GoH) officials, the UN, NGO’s, and many others, were equally as devastated by the disaster as the general population (Joint 4).
Without the assessment teams on the ground and no other government agencies with accurate information it was nearly impossible to get a true assessment. Considering the importance of accurate information, receiving it in a timely manner, and its effect on situational awareness the SOUTHCOM HQ, now including LTG Ken Keen, JTF-Haiti commander, continued to make this a priority.
In the second week after the earthquake, with the information sharing capability gaining strength and the ISR architecture beginning to develop. The addition of RQ-1 PREDATORs and RC-26 Air National Guard aircraft and their respective ground stations provided much needed FMV capability to forces on the ground to monitor food distribution efforts, IDP movement, and response to any dynamic tasking directed by the JTF-Haiti commander.
These key additions also included the posting of over 4000 hand-held images from the numerous Navy and Marine helicopter flights aided what would become the longer term recovery stage (Joint 6). In conclusion, while producing Joint Task Force- Haiti SOUTHCOM, was not organized correctly nor did it have the appropriate man power to handle such a large mission, as a whole operating with about 85 % strength.
Lacking the man power and an all-inclusive plan, the SOUTHCOM HQ situational awareness was greatly hindered during the early stages of the operation. The absence of manpower might have hindered situational awareness in a lot of areas such as: rapidly deploying cross-functional assessment teams, accurately assessing conditions as quickly as possible and providing flexible equipment packages that support communications and imagery needs, but Gen. Fraser, LTG Keen and other government leaders made Operation Unified Response an overall success.
