News From USJFCOM: USJFCOM sponsors Joint Red Flag 2005

Joint service collage USJFCOM sponsors Joint Red Flag 2005

U.S. Joint Forces Command will sponsor one of this year’s premier joint training events beginning March 14 to evaluate how the Department of Defense will conduct operations in the future.

By JO1(SW/AW) Chris Hoffpauir
USJFCOM Public Affairs

(NORFOLK, Va. – March 11, 2005) -– U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) will sponsor one of this year’s premier joint training events March 14 through April 1 to evaluate how the Department of Defense will conduct operations in the future.

One of USJFCOM’s four component commands, the U.S. Air Force’s Air Combat Command (ACC) at Langley Air Force Base, Va., is the executive agent for Joint Red Flag 2005 (JRF05). ACC is tasked with linking a number of traditionally separate training events and locations. It will primarily take place at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Bliss, Texas.

One key to combat effectiveness is to train forces as they are going to fight. Ensuring interoperability is one of the key goals of JRF05. By integrating and enhancing several exercises normally run by the individual services, the training audience is better prepared to address joint interoperability issues before they deploy to a joint environment.

Approximately 10,000 members from the U.S. armed forces, reserves and National Guard, special operations forces and other government agencies will participate in the event. Several coalition partners will play major roles as well, both as participants and observers.

JRF05 will use the Joint National Training Capability (JNTC) to link live, virtual and constructive (L-V-C) forces and create a computer-simulated battlespace distributed to sites across the country. Live forces consist of real people and real systems in a live environment, while virtual forces consist of real people participating in simulators. Constructed forces are computer-generated.

Adding virtual and constructive forces to the event significantly enhances the interoperability training opportunities while minimizing the costs to the taxpayers.

One example of the L-V-C environment in action will be in the Virtual Flag component of JRF05. Aircraft will fly out of numerous airfields in the western U.S., while participants in the eastern U.S. will fly simulators. Computers will merge the data they generate to create a common tactical picture all the participants can see.

According to USJFCOM’s Air Force Lt. Col. Tom Doster, one of JRF05’s event planners, using a distributed network to link the exercise participants offers many benefits. One of the most evident is that it eliminates the need to accommodate all the players in one location.

“This is a large exercise, with a good portion distributed throughout the country,” Doster said. “Virtual Flag will tie various active bases, guard and reserve units together so they’re flying from their home stations, but actually participating virtually in the exercise.”

The exercise is the result of more than two years of concept development. It will examine 11 different joint experimentation tests and advanced concept demonstrations (JETAs) focused on using transformational knowledge and command and control concepts with present day equipment and weapons systems.

“JETAs are future capabilities we’re trying to test, to see if they’re even possible,” Doster said. “We want to find where these new concepts and technologies fit.”

Doster said JRF05 provides an opportunity for to the services to train realistically in a joint context, and for USJFCOM to test new concepts and technologies in a realistic environment.

“This is a critical opportunity you just don’t have anywhere else. When you have contractors testing in a laboratory, it’s just not as realistic as when you have it out in the desert with soldiers flipping the switches.

“When you have a new capability, you have to test in as realistic a situation as you can to see if it’ll work,” Doster continued. “Maybe it works great in a dust-free air-conditioned lab, but it may not work for a squad in the field.

“The primary purpose of this event is training,” Doster said. “The secondary purpose is getting these new systems tested, because they may solve problems and bring new capabilities to the warfighter.”

Analysis, feedback and assessment are an essential part of JRF05. The exercise has three levels of feedback. In the first level, the service’s observer/trainers will provide continuous feedback to participants, coaching them as the exercise progresses. They will also feed information to the exercise’s managers.

In the second level of feedback, the information collected by the observer/trainers will then go into daily after-action reviews focused on key aspects of joint interoperability training. Senior leadership can then see how the training progresses on a daily basis. They will also be able to see and hear what their people are seeing at the tactical level.

Finally, the third level will provide briefings for flag and general officers at the mid-point and at the end of the exercise, reviewing key interoperability issues. Planners will then use the results of the analysis, feedback and assessment process to shape future exercises.

“We looked at OIF and OEF lessons learned in putting the scenario together and to guide what we’re focusing on in the feedback and analysis area,” Doster said.

Coalition partners include the United Kingdom, Canada and the Netherlands and add to the realism of JRF05.

“We can bring in the real-world communications they would use in the field, and the actual foreign aircraft that would be in the environment they’d have to work in.”

According to Doster, USJFCOM will continue to integrate joint training into the service exercises even more in the future, linking together normal service training into collaborative efforts that provide joint training from the start.