Continental staff system
Most
NATO countries have adopted the
continental staff system (also known as the
general staff system) in structuring their militaries' staff functions. In this system, which is based on one originally employed by the French Army in the 19th century, each staff position in a headquarters or unit is assigned a letter-prefix corresponding to the formation's element and one or more numbers specifying a role.
The staff numbers are assigned according to custom, not hierarchy, traceable back to French practice; i.e.,
1 is not "higher ranking" than
2. This list reflects the
SHAPE structure:
[10]
- 1, for manpower or personnel
- 2, for intelligence and security
- 3, for operations
- 4, for logistics
- 5, for plans
- 6, for signal (i.e., communications or IT)[11]
- 7, for training (also the joint engineer)
- 8, for finance and contracts. Also known as resource management.
- 9, for Civil-Military Co-operation (CIMIC) or civil affairs.
Since the original continental staff system only covered branches 1 through 6, it is not uncommon to see 7 though 9 omitted or having various meanings.
[12] Common variation include merging of
3 and
5 to
3, Operations and Plans; omitting the training branch and utilizing
7 for engineering (as seen in US Military Sealift Command
[13] and Multinational Forces-Iraq (MNF-I)
[14]) and replacing
9 with a legal-branch (making CIMIC a part of another branch, i.e. 2 or 4) as seen with the UK Permanent Joint Headquarters.
[15]
Derived from the Prussian
Große Generalstab (Great General Staff), traditionally these staff functions were prefixed by the simple
G, which is retained in place for modern army usage. But the increasing complexity of modern armies, not to speak of the spread of the staff concept to naval and other elements, has demanded the addition of new prefixes. These element prefixes are:
- A, for air force headquarters;
- C, for combined headquarters (multiple nations) headquarters;
- F, for certain forward or deployable headquarters;
- G, for army or marines general staff sections within headquarters of organizations commanded by a general officer and having a chief of staff to coordinate the actions of the general staff, such as divisions or equivalent organizations (e.g., USMC Marine Aircraft Wing and Marine Logistics Group) and separate (i.e., non-divisional) brigade level (USMC MEB) and above;[16]
- J, for joint (multiple services) headquarters;
- N, for navy headquarters; and
- S, for army or marines executive staff sections within headquarters of organizations commanded by a field grade officer (i.e., major through colonel) and having an executive officer to coordinate the actions of the executive staff (e.g., divisional brigades, regiments, groups, battalions, and squadrons; not used by all countries);[16]
On some occasions the letter
E can also be observed, though it is not an official term. In that case it is for
element and it will be used to identify a small independent element, that is a part of a non-staff organization; i.e., an E3 is an operational element on a logistics site or an E4 is a logistics element on a forward medical support site.
Thus, the personnel officer of a naval headquarters would be referred to as
N1. In reality, in large organizations each of these staff functions will require the support of its own large staff, so
N1 refers both to the office and the officer in charge of it. The continental staff system can be carried down to the next level:
J1.3 (or
J13, sometimes the dot-separator is omitted) is thus the operations officer of the personnel office of a joint headquarters, but the exact definition of the roles at this level may vary. Below this, numbers can be attached following a hyphen, but these are usually only positional numbers assigned arbitrarily to identify individuals (
G2.3-2 could be the budget officer in the operations section of the intelligence department;
A1.1-1-1 might simply be a receptionist).
Manpower or personnel (1)
The
manpower or
personnel officer supervises personnel and administration systems. This department functions as the essential administrative liaison between the subordinate units and the headquarters, handling personnel actions coming from the bottom up (such as a request for an award to be given to a particular soldier) or from the top down (such as orders being received from the army level directing that a particular soldier be reassigned to a new unit outside the command). In army units, this person is often called the
Adjutant. The S1 also works with the postal mailing office. S-1 deals with awards and ranks as well.
Intelligence, security, and information operations (2)
The
intelligence section is responsible for collecting and analyzing intelligence information about the enemy to determine what the enemy is doing, or might do, to prevent the accomplishment of the unit's mission. This office may also control maps and
geographical information systems and data. At the unit level, the S2 is the unit's security officer, and the S2 section manages all
security clearance issues for the unit's personnel. Other duties of the S2 often include intelligence oversight and
physical security.
Operations (3)
Main article:
Operations (military staff)
The operations office may include plans and training. The operations office plans and coordinates operations, and all things necessary to enable the formation to operate and accomplish its mission. In most units, the operations office is the largest of the staff sections and considered the most important. All aspects of sustaining the unit's operations, planning future operations, and additionally planning and executing all unit training, fall under the responsibility of operations. The operations office is also tasked with keeping track of the weekly training schedules. In most military units (i.e.,
battalion,
regiment, and
brigade), the operations officer carries the same rank as the
executive officer (XO), but would obviously rank third in the unit's
chain of command while the other staff officers are one rank lower. For example, in a battalion, the S3 would hold the rank of
major (like the battalion XO), while the remaining staff officers are
captains or
lieutenants.
Logistics (4)
Main article:
Military logistics
The logistics office is responsible for managing the wide scope of
materiel, transport, facilities, services and medical/health support:
- Design, development, acquisition, storage, distribution, maintenance, evacuation, and disposition of materiel.
- Transport of personnel and materiel.
- Acquisition or construction, maintenance, operation, and disposition of facilities.
- Acquisition or furnishing of services.
- Medical and health service support.
By
NATO doctrine, the logistic staff is tasked with overseeing logistic aspects and principles, where the focus is that
logistic support must be focused towards ensuring the success of the operation and prescriptions of elements such as responsibility and authority.
[17] A logistic staff may be divided into sections based on branch or geographic area. Each section may in turn also be divided into tasks and roles. The size of the logistic staff can vary greatly, depending on the environment and complexity of operations. NATO in example work with a
Multinational Joint Logistic Centre,
[18] which exists outside of the force commander's staff, but runs as a separate entity/unit, with only a few logistic personnel in the commander's staff who act as liaisons.
Plans and strategy (5)
The plans and strategy office is responsible for civil military operations (CMO) strategy planning. At the unit level, the S5 is the primary adviser to the commander on the civilian-to-military and military-to-civilian impact of the mission/operation within the host nation's (HN) area of interest (AOI), area of operations (AO), or the target area of interest (TAOI). The G5 serves as the mission support office (MSO) at the division level and HHC for civil military plans and strategy.
Signal (communications and IT) (6)
The signal office directs all communications and is the point of contact for the issue of communications instructions and protocol during operations as well as for communications troubleshooting, issue, and preventative maintenance. Communications at this level is paired with digital as well as voice (radio, computer, etc.). At the unit level, S6 is also usually responsible for all electronic systems within a unit to include computers, faxes, copy machines, and phone systems.
Training (7)
The training branch will organize and coordinate training activity conducted by a Headquarters and also supervise and support subordinate units.
Finance (8)
The finance branch, not to be confused with Administration from which it has split, sets the finance policy for the operation. Operationally, the Administration and Finance may be interlinked, but have separate reporting chains.
CIMIC (9)
Civil-Military Co-operation or
civil affairs are the activities that establish, maintain, influence, or exploit relations between the military forces, the government or non-government civilian organizations and authorities, and the civilian populace in a friendly, neutral, or hostile area of operations in order to facilitate military operations and consolidate and achieve mission objectives. See
Army FM 41-10