The Director of Joint Force Development is the principal advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) and Director of the Joint Staff (DJS), on all matters pertaining to the J7 enterprise. The J7 trains, educates, develops, designs and adapts the globally integrated, partnered, joint force to achieve overmatch in the competition continuum under conditions of accelerating change in the character of war.
The Vice Director's central responsibility is leading the adaptation and innovation of the globally integrated, joint and partnered force--under the conditions of disruptive technology, great power competition, contested environments, and the accelerating pace of change in warfare. Duties and responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
- Leading on behalf of the Deputy Secretary of Defense and Vice Chairman, an external network of governance bodies and innovation groups across Services, COCOMS, OSD, the defense innovation base and the Joint Staff. The Vice Director leads the fundamental process change in the POM and JROC to ensure that OSD resource decisions are informed by creative concepts, asymmetric CONOPs and campaign outcomes. Paired with the J8 Vice Director and OSD counterparts, the Vice Director will implement Joint Concept Driven, Threat Informed Capability Development as the method for OSD resource decision-making.
- Recommending key issues for resolution to all senior leader decision bodies involving the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This position is intended to lead fundamental change across organizational lines to achieve all domain, joint, combined arms capability with the framework of global integration, information and DoD resource decisions.
- Providing executive level vision, direction, and support to ensure the successful day-to-day operations of the J7 and the seamless transition and integration from strategic direction to execution. Oversees the development and assessment of appropriate executive level metrics to provide for broad organizational analysis both internally and externally for the J7.
- Directly supervising the development, testing, assessment, and validation of concept required and threat informed capabilities, joint concepts, and solutions focused on specific threats and problems identified in the joint operating environment reported by the CCMDs and Services as gaps in capabilities, doctrine, or captured as lessons learned.
- Leading the adaptation and integration of concept required threat informed capabilities into the curriculum
of the National Defense University's Pinnacle, Capstone, Gateway, and Keystone JPM courses. Providing executive oversight of wargaming, experimentation, modeling and simulations required to validate concept required capabilities for the purpose of influencing and guiding Department of Defense material and non-material investments.
