Description
Book SynopsisExamines cases of institutional jointness among US military services from the late nineteenth century into the twenty-first century. The book draws actionable conclusions for practitioners in the defense establishment while giving examples of successful joint cooperation that overcame the difficulties inherent in pursuing it.
Trade Review"This unique study will be of great value to scholars and defense practitioners alike, particularly in staff and war colleges where there is always a need for rigorous, relevant, and informative case studies. Birch and Svedin offer penetrating insights why in the past the US military either failed to achieve jointness or to sustain if it was achieved for a time. This is a timely book that will challenge assumptions, fuel arguments, and do tremendous good for the joint force."—J. P. Clark, author of Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815––1917
"The Collaborative Fight provides one of the only scholarly treatments of a word that dominates life in the million-person trillion-dollar defense industry: jointness. Since the Goldwater-Nichols reforms of 1986, jointness has been the coin of the realm for the US military, whether aspirationally or actually. Matters of budget, operations, doctrine, and education all esteem jointness as a predominant virtue—yet there is little robust understanding of what it is or why it is so difficult to achieve and sustain. Birch and Svedin offer a strong theoretical and empirical treatment of the subject, with novel case studies and appropriately eclectic theoretical antecedents. In short, far too little is known about a ubiquitous Pentagon buzzword—this book helps bridge the gap."—Jeffrey Donnithorne, Colonel (Ret.), USAF, and author of Four Guardians: A Principled-Agent View of American Civil-Military Relations
Table of Contents
- List of Tables
- Series Editor’s Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
- 1. The Collaborative Fight: US Armed Services’ Ambivalent Relationship to Jointness
- 2. Factors in Organizational Collaboration and Success Cases
- 3. The Army and Air Force Collaborate on AirLand Battle, 1973–1991
- 4. Cooperation in Peacetime: The Joint Primary Aviation Training System, 1988–Present
- 5. Air Support in Counterinsurgency, 2001–2012
- 6. Joint All-Domain Command and Control
- 7. An Empirically Informed Theory of Jointness
- Conclusion: Jointness Is a Collaborative Fights
- Appendix. Research Method and Case-Study Selection Criteria
- Notes
- Reference List
- Index
