 Initial
trial of Urban Resolve 2015 wraps up
The
first phase provided
U.S. Joint Forces Command the opportunity to work with
its partners during the initial
trial of Urban
Resolve 2015 aimed at improving the warfighters’ ability
to operate and control the urban environment and isolate the
adversary.
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By Robert Pursell
USJFCOM Public Affairs
(SUFFOLK, VA. - Aug. 18, 2006) -- U.S.
Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) and its partners wrapped up
the first trial in a
series of experiments here today to help improve the warfighters'
ability to operate in an urban environment.
Urban
Resolve 2015 (UR 2015) consists of a series of experiments that look at
solutions to close joint urban warfighting capability
gaps. Once researchers look at the solutions, they pass them
along to the warfighter to help improve their capacity to
maintain the urban environment in which they are fighting.
“It’s an experiment to help us adapt to the
changes that are taking place in the battlespace of the
long war, more specifically
addressing the challenges of the urban environment,” explained
David Ozolek, executive director of the Joint
Futures Laboratory. “There’s
also considerable work going on to do experimentation better
and adapting the way we do experimentation.”
Ozolek
added that there are two elements that play a major role
in guiding the effort of UR 2015.
“The first is we are assessing our current capabilities
to determine what gaps we have to fill immediately, and secondly
we’re
looking at the 2015 situation to determine what capabilities
we need to build now so that we can adjust and be ahead of
the threat that we’re anticipating we’ll have to
face in the urban environment in 2015,” he said.
Participants
included USJFCOM, Special Operations Command, the Joint Staff,
the Institute for Defense Analysis, Defense
Threat Reduction Agency, Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, the services, and other U.S. and multinational agencies.
Ozolek explained that UR 2015 “is truly a joint experiment” and
that the experimentation environment is evidence of it.
“What we have here are about 1200 players participating
from 18 sites around across the country in which all of the
services
are participating and very important combat support agencies
along with players from 14 different nations,” said
Ozolek. “For
the first time, we’ve wrapped a set of really important
service experiments into the joint experimentation environment.”
USJFCOM's
Air Force Col. Terry Kono explained that the productivity
of the past two weeks will allow participants to focus
on integration.
“The good thing about the first trial is that it
allows us to stress or really make the federation of models
and sims
work,” said
Kono. “It allows the organizations, the joint task
force, the component commands plus the outside players to
get a sense
of integrating in an experimentation environment versus a
real world environment.”
Kono also explained the advantage
of having everyone confined in an experimentation environment.
“What we’re doing is trying to make a play at reality
without requiring a real world joint task force. So it’s
a focused environment, refined for the experiment. You can
look over your shoulder and see what’s going on,” he
said. “We’re trying to create that virtual reality
of a joint task force, that virtual reality of the component
commands, responding within the virtual environment and proceed
from there.”
According
to Kono, the first trial of experiments ran smoothly. “For
the base case, the architecture of the modeling and simulations
is working very well,” he said.
“All areas of the
personnel, from the joint task force to the component commands
as they’re involved at this stage in the game, and
the coalition support. All of the pieces are coming together
nicely
in the experiment.”
The
next trial, Sept. 11-22, will focus on the integration
of the future capabilities.
“You’ll see those new tools being put into what was originally
a base case and now we have something to measure against,” said
Kono. He added that the same thing will take place in the
third trial, Oct. 16-27, where organizational changes will
be added
to the experiments.
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