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Urban Resolve 2015 (UR2015)

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Recent Experimentation News

Experiment looks to inform future joint force operations USJFCOM's Joint Concept Development and Experimentation Directorate recently completed an experiment to develop and assess processes and technical capabilities to improve the execution of joint future joint distributed operations. The experiment, running for almost two years and ending soon, brought a human element together with previous simulations conducted during the project. • Comment on this article at USJFCOMLive

Urban Resolve 2015 comes to a close

U.S. Joint Forces Command and its partners brought Urban Resolve 2015, a series of experiments designed to improve the warfighter's ability to operate in an urban environment, to a close as they revealed some initial insights.

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By Robert Pursell
USJFCOM Public Affairs

(SUFFOLK, VA. - Oct. 27, 2006) -- U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) and its partners from across the U.S. government and 12 other nations brought Urban Resolve 2015 (UR 2015), aimed at improving the warfighters' ability to operate in an urban environment, to a close here today as they briefed the experiment's initial results.

UR 2015 consisted 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 operate in the urban environment.

David Ozolek, executive director of the Joint Futures Laboratory, said the most important finding through UR 2015 was that it confirmed USJFCOM's hypothesis in the urban operations concept: the need for transforming how force operate in the urban environment. This conclusion was made through a number of scenarios focused on the people living in the experiment's cities.

"Our conceptual work in this experiment really focused on isolating threats within the urban environment from the population, protecting the population and assisting with the restoration of the services," Ozolek said.

He said the other key emerging insight was the power of some of the modeling and simulation tools.

"They performed, not only beyond our expectations in being able to support the experiment, but also revealed during the course of the experiment that they have some real potential as decision support tools for the forces that will be operating in the future environment," said Ozolek.

"They have great potential for increasing our abilities in battlespace awareness, and perhaps the most important thing is they show great potential in being able to compress the decision cycle so that we can make better decisions faster in the very complex urban environment."

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 mentioned that great progress was made throughout the military community not just in the service capabilities but in the joint capabilities. He also highlighted the role of the international community in UR 2015.

"It was another pleasant surprise. We had 12 nations that participated in this experiment with us," he said. "Their insights into urban operations and the conducting of stability operations in an urban environment were immensely valuable to us because they gave us perspectives that our culture would not allow us to create on our own."

Ozolek explained that in the near future, a two-part push will occur in response to the findings of UR 2015. The initial phase will focus on further examining the capabilities the joint and interagency force need to be able to successfully operate in an urban environment.

The second part involves partnering with U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) on an experimentation series called Noble Resolve. Ozolek says the series will take the insights from UR 2015 in the overseas environment and apply them to determine what relevance they have to homeland defense and to support reacting to natural disasters.

"Over the next year, we'll be partnering with NORTHCOM and, through NORTHCOM, with the Department of Homeland Defense and the domestic interagency community to take this methodology and the insights that we've gained from Urban Resolve 2015 and use them to work together to move ahead on increasing our national responsiveness to both natural and man-made disasters," said Ozolek.