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Chapter 12: The Military Command Structure The Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) Concept A CJTF is a multinational (combined) and multi-service (joint) task force, task-organised and formed for the full range of the Alliance's military missions requiring multinational and multi-service command and control by a CJTF Headquarters. It may include elements from non-NATO Troop Contributing Nations. The CJTF concept was launched in late 1993 and was endorsed at the Brussels Summit of January 1994. On that occasion, Alliance Heads of State and Government directed that the further developments of the concept should reflect their readiness to make NATO assets available, on the basis of case-by-case decisions by the North Atlantic Council, for operations led by the Western European Union (WEU), thereby supporting the building of the European Security and Defence Identity. In addition, they linked the development of the CJTF concept to practical political-military cooperation in the context of the Partnership for Peace (PfP). The need which the concept was created to fulfil arose from the changing security situation in Europe and the emergence of smaller but diverse and unpredictable risks to peace and stability. In particular, it was agreed that future security arrangements would call for easily deployable, multinational, multiservice military formations tailored to specific kinds of military tasks. These included humanitarian relief, peacekeeping and peace enforcement, as well as collective defence. The forces required would vary according to the circumstances and would need to be generated rapidly and at short notice. At the core of the CJTF concept which was evolved to meet these needs are the command and control arrangements essential to allow such forces to operate effectively. The wide variety of circumstances under which CJTFs might operate places considerable demands on the command and control arrangements for such operations. The role of CJTF headquarters is therefore crucial. A CJTF headquarters will be formed around core elements (the "nuclei") from selected "parent" headquarters of the command structure. It will be augmented from other NATO headquarters and by nations and contributing Partner countries as necessary, using a modular approach, in order to meet the requirements of the specific mission. A number of trials of the CJTF concept have been completed, for example, in the context of the Exercise Allied Effort in November 1997, in which a number of Partner countries participated as observers; and in the context of the Exercise Strong Resolve in March 1998, in which Partner countries participated and were integrated throughout the structure of the CJTF. The aim of the trials was to validate the evolving CJTF Headquarters concept. Based on these trials and other relevant staff analyses, the Alliance began the full implementation of the CJTF concept in 1999. This process, which includes the acquisition of necessary headquarters support and command, control and communications equipment is scheduled for evaluation in late 2004. The implementation process is taking fully into account lessons learned from NATO-led operations in former Yugoslavia. Work also continues in the training and equipping of the headquarters contributing to CJTF. The final phase of implementation of the Concept will provide the Alliance with an important tool for crisis management in the 21st century.