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Druid's Dance exercise yields major training milestone
For the first time, personnel at U.S. Joint Forces Command and forces in the United Kingdom communicated over a live virtual network during a training exercise. Officials at the Suffolk, Va.-based Joint Warfighting Center say the linking of forward air controllers in one country to simulated aircraft in another represents the next step in the evolution of joint training. Army Spc. Andrew Orillion has the story.
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Narrated by Spc. Andrew Orillion, USJFCOM Public Affairs
Featuring: Steve Kostoff, communications planner for the JWFC and Air Force Lt. Col. Joe Schulz, an action officer with the Air/Ground Combat Division of the Air Combat Command
Orillion: Recent advances in live virtual constructive training and network connectivity, has ushered in a new era of joint training according to Steve Kostoff, communications planner for the Joint Warfighting Center.
For the first time a forward air controller in the U.K. and a pilot in a simulator here, communicated in real time.
Kostoff: We've demonstrated this capability before in the United States. But now, we're extending it from a U.S. network into a British network. It's taken us a long time to solve that problem effectively, but we pretty much have solved it in the case of training. Druid's Dance is the first time we have done this network connection with the United Kingdom.
Orillion: Druid's Dance is a joint U.K. and USJFCOM training exercise designed to train a battlegroup of soldiers to deploy to the Afghan theater. U.S. forces are experiencing Druid's Dance as a simulation, but U.K. troops are living it as a live exercise.
The new network capability provides better and more cost effective training by allowing the U.S. and U.K. forces involved in Druid's Dance to communicate through normal methods of communication without having to be in the same area of operations or needing special equipment in the field.
Kostoff said that the only field equipment required is a standard issue radio, replicating the real world experience. The FAC uses a radio to send out a signal. Software converts the signal to data sent through a U.K. network and relayed to the network in Suffolk. A pilot at a work station here receives the transmission and responds with a simulated airstrike.
All this happens in real time with the FAC and the pilot in constant communication.
Air Force Lt. Col. Joe Schulz, an action officer with the Air/Ground Combat Division of the Air Combat Command, is one of the pilots who provides simulated close air support for Druid's Dance and has high praises of the new network and its potential to improve training.
Schulz: It's nothing but a positive. I used to be stationed over in England and did a lot of work with the U.K ground FACs. Now we have the ability to do the same type of work from the United States. We crawl into our simulators; we make contact with the U.K. forward air controllers and run through a fairly realistic scenario from our home bases. That is going to allow everyone's training to be exponentially better.
Orillion: The network not only brings better training, but helps to conserve training dollars.
Kostoff: It costs a lot of money for a jet to get up in the air and fly around for an hour or two, to do training. This will never supplant [live] training but you can do it a lot more often; you can train with greater frequency when you can do it this way as well.
Orillion: The technology used in Druid's Dance is not completely new. Talisman Saber, a joint exercise last year with the Australian armed forces, used a similar network.
Druid's Dance will wrap up May 16. If it proves a success, Kostoff said the JWFC will expand the program to other allies, including Canada, Norway and other NATO members. Kostoff is also looking beyond just close air support training. NATO battle staff and naval warfare training could be the next areas for the new capability.
For more information on this and other ways U.S. Joint Forces Command is supporting the warfighter, visit us on the web at www.jfcom.mil.
For U.S. Joint Forces Command, I'm Specialist Andrew Orillion.
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