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 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.
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