Mission Command
Staying informed is only the first step, however. Proper deterrence needs credible, well-trained forces, deployed in an appropriate posture. Apart from the staff officers who work in the sprawling complex in the Dutch province of Limburg, JFCBS does not directly command its own troops. Instead, JFCBS issues orders and instructions through the relevant component commander or rely on close relationships with Allied and Partner Nation militaries operating in the JOA.
This is Mission Command, an approach to C2 that empowers subordinate decision makers and decentralises the execution of tasks. It is part of what makes the NATO so adaptable, but also resilient - and it stands in stark contrast to the more constrained approach of potential adversaries like Russia, where control is kept at the centre and military operations can easily suffer from a single point of failure. It means that JFCBS, like all NATO headquarters, is able to issue its component commanders with a defined mission and then trust them to execute it faithfully while keeping the higher headquarters informed.
For JFCBS, the most obvious and well-established example of this is the C2 relationship with Multinational Corps Northeast (MNC NE). Following a decision taken at the 2014 NATO Summit in Wales to reinforce the eastern flank of the Alliance, MNCNE received certification in 2017 as a Regional Land Component Command (RLCC) for the Baltic Sea Region. In this capacity, it exercises C2 on behalf of JFCBS over the four NATO enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, as well as the NATO Force Integration Units (NFIUs) in the region.
After the recent invasion of Ukraine, the original four battlegroups multiplied at short notice to eight. The new formations stretch along NATO's eastern border in an unbroken line, from Estonia in the north to Bulgaria in the south. Like the eFPs, these formations are multinational by design, demonstrating that an attack on one is an attack on all.
Two of these new battlegroups (in Slovakia and Hungary) come under Commander JFCBS, while the Romanian and Bulgarian battlegroups come under Allied Joint Force Command Naples Sister Command responsibility.
Integrating these new forces under NATO C2 in such a short period has highlighted the inherent flexibility of the NATO Force Structure. The fact that NATO certifies headquarters and units from across the Alliance to the same rigorous standards means that any one of them should be capable of assuming new responsibilities at short notice, should a crisis arise.
In this case, NATO Rapid Deployable Corps-Spain (NRDC-SP) has taken on the initial responsibility for the new Slovakian and Hungarian battlegroups until a more permanent C2 structure is established. Simultaneously, NATO created a new divisional headquarters in Hungary - Multinational Division Centre (MND-C) - to lead these two new battlegroups.
This rapid reinforcement meant that in just a few months, when combined with very-high readiness elements of the NATO Response Force (NRF), the land forces alone under SACEUR's direct control increased tenfold. As the Operational Commander for six out of eight battlegroups, as well as the NRF Commander for 2022, COM JFCBS is responsible for most of these land forces on behalf of SACEUR - and the numbers are only set to increase.
Putting the 'Joint' in Joint Force Command
As well as the land forces in the east of the Alliance, JFCBS also had responsibility for 2022's NATO Response Force (NRF). Command of the NRF rotates annually between Brunssum and Naples, and 2022 was Brunssum's turn. As the Operational Commander, Commander JFCBS exerts control via Component Commanders, which for NRF 22 were:
- Land: Rapid Reaction Corps France (RRC FRA);
- Air: French Joint Force Air Component (FRA JFAC);
- Maritime: United Kingdom Strike Force (UKSTRKFOR);
- Special Operations: Italian Special Operations Component Command (ITA SOCC);
- Logistics: Joint Logistic Support Group Brunssum (JLSGBS).
These subordinate commands perform the tactical-level coordination required to ensure the NRF is ready at any moment to deploy on receipt of orders. These headquarters interact constantly with Brunssum at the desk level, and the Command Group oversees these interactions via a series of NRF working groups and boards. In this way, the JTF Commander and his Command Group receives a fully fused picture from across all operational domains, helping to ensure the NRF is ready to respond at any time.
Meanwhile, NATO's common standards, combined with the inherent flexibility of the NATO Command Structure and Force Structure, mean that the NRF is scalable and adaptable to any mission. This means that at both the operational and the tactical level, the increase in the size of the NRF to 300,000 troops announced by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in June 2022 should be comparatively straightforward to achieve.
Cooperating with Allies and Partners
This process is simple enough when considering troops under JFCBS' direct C2 chain. However, the JTF's regional expertise also means that it can play a useful role in shaping activities within the JOA that are led by other headquarters, including non-NATO multinational exercises. Exercises COLD RESPONSE, NEPTUNE SHIELD and BALTOPS are all examples of large-scale exercises that took place in Brunssum's JOA in 2022, which involved NATO forces, yet were not organised by NATO.
Nevertheless, in these times of heightened tensions, every action communicates and Western unity has perhaps never been more important than it is today. As such, it is important that NATO take a top-level view of all Allied and Partner Nation military activity in the region to avoid accidentally provoking further tension.
In this context, the JFCBS' role is to encourage the execution of activities in a coordinated way throughout the JOA. Participation in daily video conferences with exercise stakeholders during BALTOPS, for example, gave Brunssum the opportunity to tweak the exercise plan according to real-world events. Sometimes, something small like moving the location of an amphibious landing or changing the date of a live fire exercise make that activity being provocative to a potential adversary, reducing the risk of miscalculation.
This ability to coordinate actions, whether conducted under a NATO flag or not, through dialogue with Allied and Partner Nations, is one of the great strengths of the NATO Alliance. The fact that Allies and Partners can collaborate so closely in response to crises continues to demonstrate NATO's relevance and legitimacy in an unpredictable world.