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Commander, congressman welcome attendees
to Industry Symposium 2006
Commander,
U.S. Joint Forces Command Air Force Gen. Lance Smith
and Rep. J. Randy Forbes of Virginia discussed warfighting
and modeling and simulation as U.S. Joint Forces Command
opened its Industry Symposium 2006 in
Hampton,
Va.
• Read
our blog of the first day of Industry Symposium 2006
By JOC(SW/AW) Chris Hoffpauir
USJFCOM Public Affairs
(HAMPTON,
Va. – April 4, 2006) –- Key civil and
military leaders briefed more than 500 attendees at Industry
Symposium 2006 at the Hampton Roads Convention Center here
today.
Commander,
U.S. Joint Forces (USJFCOM) Command Air
Force Gen. Lance Smith and Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) addressed
the group of industry leaders about the command’s relationship
with industry to open the two-day event.
The symposium
is the sixth cosponsored by USJFCOM and the Hampton Roads
Chapter of the National Defense Industrial
Association. The theme for this year’s event is "Building
Knowledge for the Warfighter,” focusing on situational
awareness and understanding in joint, coalition, and interagency
operational environments.
Smith spoke first, outlining how partnering with industry
helps the command accomplish its mission of transforming
the military, while delivering capabilities to the warfighter.
Topics he touched on included enabling technologies to support
joint, coalition, and interagency operations, modeling and
simulation, and training, among others.
Smith
emphasized technological solutions for the warfighter must
be “born joint,” meaning they should be
designed from the initial planning stages for use by all
the services, rather than having each service develop its
own solutions and then try to make them work together after
the fact. He cited his previous experience as deputy commander
of U.S. Central Command as an example.
“We can’t continue to do what we did in Iraq,” Smith
said, “where people brought systems into the battlespace,
and the next thing we had to do was figure out how to make
those systems talk to each other.”
He said that lack of interoperability continues to be a
source of frustration for warfighters operating in the field.
“There are more than 300 data systems in Iraq,” Smith
said. “You cannot set up a search engine that can go
in and look at all those 300 databases and build a coherent
picture of what’s going on. That’s because what
was brought was service-centric and couldn’t talk to
each other.
“We have to deal with how we’re going to resolve
this,” he continued. “We have to figure out how
to make a bunch of programs fall into the right place, in
the right priority, within the DoD budget.”
Smith
said creating and enforcing data standards were the key
to solving the problem. He cited the lack of standards
as a barrier to interoperability. However, he also stressed
that those standards can’t be so restrictive that they
limit innovation.
“First you have to establish standards that are fair
and that aren’t so expensive that people want to go
around them,” Smith said. “They should allow
people to operate on a road where the lanes are pretty wide.
“The best way is to incentivize industry and those
of us who deal with industry to build these systems joint
in the first place,” Smith said. “There are standards
out there, but they don’t have the teeth they need
to force all of us to comply, and that’s what we’re
looking at right now.”
Rep.
Forbes discussed the results of February’s Modeling
and Simulation (M&S) Leadership Summit, held in Suffolk,
Va. The summit brought together more than 350 delegates from
the government, industry and academia to discuss and identify
the strategic needs for the future advancements in the M&S
industry.
The summit
produced a list of items for the Congressional Modeling
and Simulation Caucus to take action on. Forbes
founded the caucus to showcase military M&S training
initiatives and promote the M&S industry.
“First of all, we recognized that we have to do a
much better job of educating the public about what modeling
and simulation does,” Forbes said.
Forbes
said another item resulting from the summit was the need
for a nation-wide survey to clearly identify the entire
national M&S community of practice, its various constituents,
and its national economic impact.
“One of the difficulties we have when we look at the
people who work in modeling and simulation is they talk about
what it’s doing and the capabilities that are there,” Forbes
continued. “But we want to show the country the money
its producing, the money its saving, the lessons we’re
learning from modeling and simulation that are saving lives
and equipment and the overall impact, which we’ve never
really done.
“We think a study like that would probably cost a
half million dollars. That was a suggestion from the summit
in Suffolk, which brought in experts from around the country,” Forbes
said. “We would like to get it in the budget this year,
and we’re optimistic we’re going to be able to
do that. That’s what we’re working on right now.”
Another
item resulting from the summit was for the caucus to find
ways to provide incentives for the M&S industry
and local governments to more actively use M&S to train
emergency management personnel.
“We need to begin using M&S for urban planning,” Forbes
said. “If we can model areas like Louisiana, and make
sure we’re predicting what will happen with hurricanes
and storms, it would be absolutely phenomenal. And we have
that capability to do that.”
Following the opening remarks, the symposium presented a
series of panels designed to raise industry and academia's
awareness of USJFCOM's joint operational capability focus
areas and to provide a venue for discussion of capability
advancements.
The symposium continues Wednesday.
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