News From USJFCOM: International conference discusses current operations

$U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Monica Shephard demonstrates an inflatable radio antenna. The antenna is capable of replacing most mobile communication antennas at a fraction of the size and weight.$

U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Monica Shephard demonstrates an inflatable radio antenna. The antenna is capable of replacing most mobile communication antennas at a fraction of the size and weight (Photo by MC2 Tyce Velde)

International conference discusses current operations

Attendees to U.S. Joint Forces Command's and Allied Command Transformation's Concept Development and Experimentation (CD&E) Conference in Athens, Greece examined how the concepts of today are impacting both current operations and the operations of the near future.

By MC2 Tyce Velde
Allied Command Transformation Public Information Office

(ATHENS, Greece - Oct. 31, 2006) -- During the first day of the Concept Development and Experimentation (CD&E) Conference in Athens, Greece, attendees met to discuss how CD&E can improve current operations and operations in the near future.

This breakout workshop, co-chaired by Allied Command Transformation's U.K. Army Lt. Col. Nicholas Keen, of the Operational Concept Development Branch and U.S. Joint Forces Command's Monica Shephard, director of the Joint Innovation and Experimentation Directorate's Innovation Group, covered six current or recent projects from the two commands, and invited discussion among the attendees as to how the nations should move forward.

Keen opened by introducing ACT's Coalition Combat Identification program. The need for combat identification devices predates the strategic command, says Keen. He added that by developing NATO standards for the device, nations would be able to design and field their own units, with assured interoperability.

"Battlefield identification devices built separately by France, the U.S. and the U.K. by different companies came together for the first time in 2004 and worked instantly together," he said. "This is because the standards ACT had recommended had been applied when they were built."

Friendly forces trackers (FFT) were the next topic. U.S. Army Lt. Col. Joe Chacon, of ACT's Operational Experimentation subdivision, described the process of fielding a NATO FFT device, and the challenges of integrating it with individual nations' devices.

"NATO developed an FFT kit and deployed it to Kosovo, when most nations were still developing, or did not have FFT," he said. "When we deployed it to Afghanistan this year, we found that many of the nations have caught up and are using their own, national FFT capabilities. What we think is a solution for NATO is we find a way to integrate the information from the national FFTs using a NATO standard. In the future we may have an overall NATO architecture to link those national systems so that they can communicate both horizontally and vertically."

A key issue under development right now at ACT is the counter improvised explosive device concept. The need for a program to counter this tactic arose quickly and ACT staff reacted quickly to meet the immediate needs, said Italian Army Lt. Col. Alessandro Ortolani.

"IEDs are a real threat for NATO troops, so we had to develop a counter IED capability very quickly," he said. "The counter IED concept is based on three pillars. First we defeat the system, or what is behind the attack. Education and training is another pillar of the concept. Training allows our troops to operate on the ground properly to counter this threat. Then we defeat the device. In this third pillar, we neutralise, mitigate or attack the devices."

Before explaining the three USJFCOM topics, USJFCOM's Shephard showed the audience an inflatable antenna, capable of replacing most mobile communication antennas at a fraction of the size and weight. This is an example of the capabilities which come from CD&E to solve problems in the near term, she said.

Following the demonstration, she discussed interagency cooperation. USJFCOM has developed a concept called the Joint Interagency Coordination Group to help military forces interact with interagency elements, she said.

"In 2000, it was agreed that there was a need for some coordination of interagency efforts," she said. "The concept was developed in 2001 to attempt to harness the available capabilities and harmonize interagency efforts. This is a concept and organizational prototype which has received the most intense scrutiny in the United States. Every single organization within the United States military has been involved in experimentation on this particular idea."

One of the most significant challenges in interacting with interagency elements, is a difficulty in communications. National and organisational constraints make it difficult, if not impossible to cooperate in a meaningful way, especially when multiple nations are involved, said Shephard.

"One of the things that we recognized in this effort was that this collaborative network of not just multinational partners, but non-governmental partners and agency partners, it became very difficult to work with them," she said. "Within each nation, each of the agencies had their own different standards of information security. When you put four or five nations together, you're talking about hundreds of organizational standards for both network and physical security standards. This led us to develop the Cross Domain Collaborative Information Environment (CDCIE) to facilitate information sharing across physical domains, across releasability domains and across classification domains."

The CDCIE system allows direct information sharing between different organizations which will aid the communication issues, she added.

"We realized very quickly that to actually solve this problem, it had to be simple and it had to be understandable," said Shephard. "Basically what it involves is a guard with a gateway on both sides of the guard and then national systems on the other side of the gateway."

The final project was a response to questions raised during last year's CD&E conference. Attendees asked what uses the modelling and simulation technologies had in delivering actual capabilities to operational units, beyond aiding experimentation. USJFCOM collected a group of capabilities and fielded them in operational environments, demonstrating to the commanders what uses simulation may have in the field, said Shephard.

"In response to a question from last year's conference, we've actually taken our modelling and simulation capability and deployed it forward," she said. "The collection of capabilities is called GAPS, or geospatial analysis and planning support. It's a highly complex modelling and simulation tool that runs on supercomputers both at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and in Maui, Hawaii, even though the units were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan."