Melhuish, Christopher A. NATO Combined Joint Task Force. Department Of Operations, Naval War College, Newport RI, Mar 1995.
One operational NATO initiative that seeks to address how the Alliance will conduct out-of-area (OOA) operations in conjunction with non-Alliance members is the NATO Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) concept. As many of the building blocks for the CJTF concept may be attributed to the U.S. experience in conducting JTF operations over the past decade, this paper compares U. S. JTF key lessons learned with the NATO CJTF concept under development. A brief discussion of U.S. JTF characteristics and lessons learned is followed by an analysis of NATO's requirements for conducting OOA military operations. An examination of the adequacy of the CJTF concept as currently outlined by the Major NATO Commanders (MNC) results in three principal conclusions regarding the CJTF concept and implications for future CJTF commanders.