Standing Joint Task Forces: Resourcing Relics

The Standing Joint Task Force today serves as an enduring organization of the national security environment. Of the numerous Standing Joint Task Forces operational around the world, this paper examines two whose missions support defense of the homeland. The United States Northern Command subordinate Army component command, U. S. Army North supervises these organizations: JTF-North and JTF Civil Support. The primary purpose for writing about these two organizations is to understand their unique mission, evaluate the cost of their sustainment, and to present options that may improve their effectiveness and ensure they meet the challenges of the 21st Century. The standard answer to a national security challenge in the 1980s and 1990s was to create a Standing Joint Task Force. This monograph challenges America to reexamine the roles, functions, and missions of the current Standing Joint Task Forces and develop alternative solutions that decrease costs, increase effectiveness, and place responsibility upon the whole of government and not solely on the Department of Defense.