Prepare for the future at joint course - Updates

NORFOLK, Va. -- What's in your future? Will you soon be serving at a corps- or theater-level G-2 or G-6 staff supporting a joint task force, or will you be working with a JTF joint communications control center executing requirements associated with an information-management plan? Or, are you looking at an assignment to one of the theater Signal commands or to an Army service-component command headquarters as an active-duty or Reserve Component officer or senior noncommissioned officer?

Are you involved in exercise-planning conferences such as Lucky Sentinel, Ulchi Focus Lens, Combined Endeavor or Grecian Firebolt? Are you an action officer or senior NCO supporting signals intelligence, space operations or theater missile-defense command-and-control initiatives? Or, are you a Training and Doctrine Command systems manager, project manager action officer or Defense Department civilian who deals with a myriad of interoperability issues/key performance parameters in the command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance transformation arena?

If any of these situations describe you, then the Joint Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence Staff and Operations Course stands ready to support your joint C4I educational needs. JC4ISOC is four weeks long, is taught seven times during the fiscal year and is sponsored by the Joint Staff/J-6.

First established in January 1978 by the deputy secretary of defense as a joint C3 systems course at the Armed Forces Staff College, JC4ISOC is now one of the resident courses under the Joint Command, Control and Information Warfare School, Joint Forces Staff College, Norfolk, Va. JCIWS's mission is to educate and train company- and intermediate-level military staff officers, senior NCOs and their Defense Department civilian equivalents in the concepts, applications and procedures associated with C4I and information operations in a joint and multinational environment.

To support the warfighter's needs in a network-centric, capabilities-based force, the JC4ISOC curriculum takes a generalist approach. The program meets the school's objectives and supports the college's mission by emphasizing a broad understanding of the joint C4I environment and C2 process, as well as operating, planning and managing current joint C4I systems. The course provides quality C4I instruction for the joint community on topics such as Joint Vision 2020, joint interoperability, battle-space systems, Global Information Grid, information assurance and JTF C4I planning.

Reviews from past students indicate the course's value to their current and upcoming assignments. For instance, an Air Force colonel said, "I would have been 300 percent more effective in the job (I had) if I had attended that (JC4ISOC) course. ... Yes, the information was that beneficial, especially that part about the C4I contacts and points of contact!"

The course accommodates up to 25 students. Remaining available course dates for this FY are Class 035, April 21-May 16; Class 03-6, June 2-27; and Class 03-7, Aug. 4-29. For more information, see the annual JC4ISOC message issued to major commands and joint agencies of all services announcing FY course dates and prerequisites, or the separate message disseminated a few weeks before the start of each class.

Students must possess a top secret/sensitive compartmented information clearance and be cleared for SCI indoctrination before arrival. Students' commands must fund their own travel, per diem and billeting, which includes a five-day field trip to the Washington, D.C., area for "up close and personal" experiences with joint agencies and organizations.

Administrative information is available through the "welcome aboard" and "general information" sections of the JFSC website at https://www.jfsc.ndu.edu/ (click on JCIWS link).

JC4ISOC quota-control point of contact is Lt. Cdr. Katherine Mayer, DSN 646-6320, commercial (757) 443-6320, email mayerk@jfsc.ndu.edu or jciws@jfsc.ndu.edu. Army faculty representatives are LTC Katherine Bryant, DSN 646-6328, or myself, DSN 646-6331 or commercial (757) 443-6328/6331.

LTC Palaganas has been assigned as a C4I instructor with JFSC since September 2002. His previous assignment was as commander, 54th Signal Battalion, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from August 2001 to August 2002 during Operation Enduring Freedom. Other recent key assignments were as joint communications battlestaff officer at the National Airborne Operations Center, Joint Staff/J-38, Offutt AFB, Neb., and G-6, 32d Army Air and Missile Defense Command, Fort Bliss, Texas.

COPYRIGHT 2003 U.S. Army Signal Center
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group