United States Joint Forces Command

United States Joint Forces Command
Emblem of the United States Joint Forces Command
Active	1999–2011
Country	United States
Type	Unified Combatant Command
Size	At its height, 1.16 million active and reserve soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines
Headquarters	Norfolk, Virginia
Nickname(s)	USJFCOM
Commanders
Combatant Commander	Disestablished

United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) was a Unified Combatant Command of the United States Armed Forces. USJFCOM was a functional command that provided specific services to the military. The last commander was Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno. As directed by the President to identify opportunities to cut costs and rebalance priorities, Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended that USJFCOM be disestablished and its essential functions reassigned to other unified combatant commands. Formal disestablishment occurred on August 4, 2011.

USJFCOM was formed in 1999 when the old United States Atlantic Command was renamed and given a new mission: leading the transformation of the U.S. military through experimentation and education. USLANTCOM had been active from 1947 to 1993 as a primarily U.S. Navy command, focused upon the wartime defence of the Atlantic sea lanes against Soviet Union attack. After the end of the Cold War, a 1993 reorganization gave the Command a new acronym, USACOM, and brought United States Army Forces Command and Air Combat Command under its authority.

In late 2004, U.S. Joint Forces Command assumed the role of primary conventional force provider. This landmark change assigned nearly all U.S. conventional forces to Joint Forces Command. Requirements, for example, for U.S. service personnel to support the transformation of the Armed Forces of Liberia, were fed to JFCOM, in this case via Africa Command, and JFCOM liasied with the service staffs to obtain available forces. Along with this responsibility came the task to develop a new 'risk-assessment' process that provided national leaders a world-wide perspective on force-sourcing solutions.

Its operations and exercises included Noble Resolve, an experimentation campaign plan to enhance homeland defense and improve military support to civil authorities in advance of and following natural and man-made disasters and Empire Challenge, an annual intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) interoperability demonstration.