Congress, Pentagon at odds over Pacific task force needed to prep for China war

Congress and the Pentagon are battling over a legal requirement to create a joint military task force in the Pacific needed for a possible conflict with China, but lawmakers and congressional aides say the military is slow-rolling the mandate with a lesser force.

A provision of last year’s National Defense Authorization Act called on the Hawaii-based Indo-Pacific Command to create a joint force headquarters as an “operational command” by October 2024. The provision also required the Pentagon to report to Congress on plans for the joint force headquarters by June 2023.

Supporters in Congress argued that the plan is a needed first step in what lawmakers from both parties expect will be a multiservice and multinational task force under the Indo-Pacific Command.

Congress has yet to see the report, and the Indo-Pacific Command has set up a Joint Task Force-Micronesia, a lesser force that critics say is mainly designed to improve military air traffic control on Guam and falls far short of the mandate for a joint warfighting force.

Joint task forces are military units that combine forces from the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force into one unit and, in some cases, can include officers from foreign military services. They are often created to prepare for combined arms warfare, a U.S. military specialty.

The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party first disclosed the brewing political battle over the task force in May. The committee issued a report on what it views as needed steps to deter China from attacking Taiwan.

One recommendation said the Pentagon must “fully implement” legislation on a standing joint force headquarters “focused on crisis contingency command and control.”

“In a crisis, critical time could be lost adjudicating which organization or senior leader is in charge of the day-to-day conduct of various coalition operations,” the committee report said. “This type of planning should be done in peacetime, ideally with the inclusion of personnel from key allies like Japan and Australia.”

The Biden administration is said to oppose the major joint task force as too provocative in light of its renewed engagement policy with Beijing. Policymakers are said to regard the creation of a combat-oriented joint task force led by a four-star officer as upsetting relations with China.

Pentagon leaders, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, have sought to dismiss warnings from senior U.S. military officers that a conflict with China could erupt over Taiwan or from a military mishap in the South China Sea in the next several years.

Mr. Austin and defense policy aides insist that war with China is neither imminent nor inevitable.

A Pentagon spokesman said recently in response to congressional worries over a lack of effort by the Pentagon to deter China from attacking Taiwan that U.S. and allied deterrence of a Chinese attack is “real and strong.”

The Indo-Pacific Command did not respond directly when asked whether a joint task force to prepare for a China conflict would be created.

Navy Cmdr. Matt Comer, a spokesman for Indo-Pacific Command, said the Guam force will meet the legal requirement.

“We are currently identifying personnel for Joint Task Force-Micronesia, which should reach initial operational capability in early 2024, ahead of timeline, meeting the obligations as set out in the [fiscal year National Defense Authorization Act],” he said in a statement.

Delay and the law

Rep. Michael Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the Select Committee on the CCP, said the Pentagon failed to meet its legal obligation to fulfill a bipartisan legislative mandate.

“The Pentagon’s delay in delivering a statutorily mandated plan for how it will implement the fiscal year 2023 NDAA’s requirement for a joint force headquarters in the Indo-Pacific does not inspire confidence,” Mr. Gallagher told The Washington Times.

“We need a permanent joint task force or joint force headquarters that is responsible for the operational employment of forces in the western Pacific. It needs to be at the four-star level, and it needs to include military staff from key allies like Australia and Japan,” Mr. Gallagher said.

Any implementation plan less than that “will miss the mark,” he added.

Sen. Roger F. Wicker of Mississippi, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Austin is “not moving at the speed of relevance” to create the joint force headquarters.

“I appreciate the Indo-Pacom commander’s intent to build out Joint Task Force-Micronesia as an interim step, but the secretary of defense has simply ignored the underlying law,” Mr. Wicker said. “The Pentagon’s failure to follow through on this legal requirement is bewildering, especially during a moment where [Chinese President] Xi Jinping just signaled again that China eventually intends to take Taiwan.”

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, Alabama Republican, said deterring a Chinese attack on Taiwan is the greatest current task.

“Just today, we learned that Xi Jinping told President Biden of his plans to take Taiwan,” Mr. Rogers said.

He said he is concerned about the Pentagon’s failure to fully deliver on last year’s requirements to provide information on the establishment of an Indo-PACOM joint force headquarters.

“The FY24 NDAA includes a provision requiring DoD to finally deliver an implementation plan to Congress,” he said.

Mr. Xi told President Biden last month during a meeting in California that he was unaware of People’s Liberation Army attack plans for Taiwan but then outlined Beijing’s conditions for using military force to take over.

If Mr. Austin needs more resources to meet the legal requirement, “Congress stands ready to work with the Pentagon,” Mr. Wicker said.

Members of Congress and aides expressed puzzlement at the Pentagon’s opposition to the joint task force mandate. They noted that a key advocate was Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks.

When she was a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Ms. Hicks co-authored a 2016 report on rebalancing forces to Asia that called for a joint task force in Asia.

That report said U.S. leaders must bolster regional security with allies by “forming a standing joint task force for maritime security.”

A Pentagon spokesman deferred comment on the controversy to Indo-Pacific Command. The spokesman declined to comment on whether Ms. Hicks supports the creation of a joint task force in the Pacific as recommended in her 2016 report.

Service rivalries

The House select committee’s recommendation for a larger task force was based on what the report said is the need to improve command and control for military operations in the Indo-Pacific.

Lawmakers are concerned that the U.S. military services within the command are battling for leadership roles in future conflicts.

The Navy has dominated the Indo-Pacific theater for decades because of the great expanses of ocean covered by the command.

The Army in the Pacific, led by Gen. Charles Flynn, has been promoting that service as a critical player in any major Asian conflict. Air Force generals also have been seeking a greater role for air power in the region.

The budding rivalries among the services drove members of Congress to seek a joint task force that could iron out differences and develop clear lines of authority and communication.

The select committee report said setting up Joint Task Force Micronesia on Guam and surrounding areas was vital.

Still, the committee said, “It is unclear if the department is on track to resolve the problem that Congress intended to solve in [the bill], which was about establishing a crisis response chain of command.”

The report said the Pentagon was required to inform Congress within six months of enactment into law in December 2022 on plans to set up “a fully equipped, empowered, and standalone joint force headquarters or joint task force in peacetime.” The panel also recommended that the Pentagon be required to explain how the joint task force will employ forces in the western Pacific in a conflict, the report said.

The Pentagon has been “slow-rolling” the creation of the task force for years, a congressional aide said.

“Getting Guam up and running and facilitating the Guam buildup is totally different from a wartime command and controller who is day in and day out … prepping for that war fight in peacetime so that you could ideally deter that conflict from happening in the first place,” the aide said.

Defense Department leaders appear to oppose congressional pressure, but members view the effort as proper oversight, the aide said.

The current National Defense Authorization Act awaiting President Biden’s signature contains language directing Mr. Austin and Adm. John Aquilino, commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, to provide Congress with a briefing in the next three months on progress in creating a joint task force. The required briefing would include an assessment of how the task force will function as a “fully equipped and persistent joint force headquarters that would be responsible for the operational employment of forces in the Western Pacific” — a different role than that of the current JTF-Micronesia.

The briefing also would have to explain how JTF-Micronesia fulfills the 2023 law and whether an additional joint task force or joint force headquarters should be created for “operational employment of forces in the Western Pacific,” the conference report states.

A separate defense bill provision requires a study on improving the command structure and force posture in the Indo-Pacific region, another sign of congressional concerns over unclear lines of authority.

That provision would withhold certain defense funds until Mr. Austin submits the required joint force headquarters plan that was due to Congress in June.

Retired Navy Capt. James E. Fanell, a former Pacific Fleet intelligence chief, said he spent several years working with the Pacific Fleet-led Joint Task Force 519, which operated from 1999 until it was disbanded in 2015.

Eliminating the joint task force, he said, “may have been the biggest organizational mistake the Defense Department has ever made in Asia.”

“It essentially flushed 15 years of true, joint task force coordination and collaboration amongst the four services in the Indo-Pacific in ways that have not been replicated,” Capt. Fanell said.

The lack of a joint task force within Indo-Pacific Command focused on a PLA invasion of Taiwan makes no sense, he said.

Currently, a combined forces command led by a four-star officer operates on the Korean Peninsula, and a three-star commander of U.S. forces in Japan directs defense efforts related to Japan.

“So how is it possible that there is not a dedicated four-star-led joint task force for the most likely and most dangerous scenario in the Indo-Pacific: a [Chinese] invasion of Taiwan?” Capt. Fanell said.