The four aspects of joint: a model for comparatively evaluating the extent of jointness within armed forces

In the past 30 to 40 years, several Western militaries have undergone substantial joint reforms. Joint operations and permanent joint organisations have become the norm. Joint professional military education courses are now common and joint doctrine has proliferated. Yet underlying these and other joint reforms there remains a theoretical void. Put bluntly, the theory of joint military activities has not kept pace either with practice or with the development of theory for military activities in the maritime, land, air or even space domains.

This paper takes a step towards filling this void by establishing a joint theoretical model labelled 'the four aspects of joint'. This model is then applied to conduct a comparative evaluation of jointness in the US, British, Australian and Canadian armed forces, enabling identification of areas where each armed force may learn from the joint reforms of the others and highlighting several areas for further research. Accordingly, it is hoped that this paper will prompt the further development of joint military activities theory in the near future.

”Aaron Jackson's study is a timely exercise in theoretical analysis, which seeks to illuminate the state of contemporary joint military activities in several English speaking Western militaries. Dr Jackson posits a theoretical model of joint military activities based on four pillars, operational, organisational, educational, and doctrinal. In doing so, he challenges what he calls the 'common historical narrative' of joint military activities as having deep roots in the history of warfare since antiquity—a scholarly consensus that has been in place since the 1990s. Not all readers will agree with this approach, nor will others share his parallel belief that that joint warfare theory today is where maritime warfare theory was in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet, it is a truism that only through the collision of ideas can scholarly progress be made in any field of study” – Professor Michael Evans.

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