The American people expect the military to win future engagements with greater efficiency to reduce costs. Our National Military Strategy, Joint Vision 2010, and other keystone joint publications seek to answer their expectation by espousing 'jointness' - fighting as a fully interoperable and seamlessly integrated joint force. These publications envision achieving increased effectiveness by creating the best fit of available component forces to harmonize the unique and complementary strengths and capabilities of each of our Services. This monograph examines how well Special Forces and U.S. conventional ground forces in Bosnia satisfied the vision of 'jointness' during both Operations Joint Endeavor and Joint Guard. It adopts a methodology of examining these operations using two criteria that research revealed were common to the documents: service provision of effective component forces and efficient joint employment by the responsible commander. The corresponding measures of merit used to analyze operations are: presence of competent components, fit of forces, command relationships, mission direction, and mutual trust. After describing the joint and multinational environment in Bosnia, and Special Forces operations in the Multinational Division-North sector, the monograph systematically assesses the 'jointness' of Special Forces operations in the Multinational Division-North sector relative to the measures of merit. Research reveals overall success in operations but significant shortcomings in command relationships and mutual trust that improved only after months of turmoil. The monograph concludes that complicated and unclear command relationships caused poor mutual trust between Special Forces and conventional forces and degraded overall effectiveness. It questions the utility of the Tactical Control (TACON) command relationship for long term operations, proposing rather an Operational Control (OPCON) or Direct support relationship based on the requirements of the joint force commander. It also asserts the necessity for special operations expertise imbedded in the joint force commander's staff rather than allowing a subordinate special operations headquarters to provide potentially biased staff recommendations on how special operations forces can assist in the accomplishment of the joint force mission. Finally, the paper makes recommendations to improve current doctrine and future operations.

ADA 357012 Approved for public release; Distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)