Joint fire support coordination remains problematic despite the strides toward jointness since Goldwater-Nichols was enacted in 1986. A principal advisor is needed who is tasked with planning and executing joint fires, yet joint doctrine has largely neglected the matter. The need is critical with the Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF), where coordination is bifurcated where it exists at all. Doctrine allows only that a component focused on one function should manage joint fires and air support, with the result that other fire support elements are not included. A Joint Force Fires Coordinator at the JSOTF headquarters will help ensure integration, synchronization, and control of joint fires in support of special operations.

Joint fire support coordination remains problematic despite the strides toward jointness since Goldwater-Nichols was enacted in 1986. A principal advisor is needed who is tasked with planning and executing joint fires, yet joint doctrine has largely neglected the matter. The need is critical with the Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF), where coordination is bifurcated where it exists at all. Doctrine allows only that a component focused on one function should manage joint fires and air support, with the result that other fire support elements are not included. A Joint Force Fires Coordinator at the JSOTF headquarters will help ensure integration, synchronization, and control of joint fires in support of special operations.

The concept of war within the cyber domain is no longer an esoteric topic of interest to small groups of people with unique technical skills. It is not rare to hear public discussions on the efficacy of cyber war, a malicious software exploit (most recently the Stuxnet), whether U.S. critical infrastructure is adequately defended from computer network attack, or if the notion of cyber war is over-hyped. Unfortunately, as this warfighting domain evolves, the immaturity at the strategic level of thought is being revealed: contradictory initiatives in the U.S. Air Force (which added cyberspace to its mission statement in 2005 and planned to create a cyber major command, but then changed direction and established a Numbered Air Force instead); the length of time it took the Obama administration to fill its cyber czar position; the discussion of what level of involvement the Federal Government (U.S. Cyber Command and the Department of Homeland Security) should have in protecting civilian resources