News From USJFCOM: USJFCOM assessing digital Joint Close Air Support capability

Technology under assessment at U.S. Joint Forces Command may take passing targets from ground troops to aircraft from the audio world to the digital world.

USJFCOM assessing digital Joint Close Air Support capability

U.S. Joint Forces Command's (USJFCOM) Joint Systems Integration Command has began assessing new technology that will allow warfighter on the ground to digitally request air support to bomb ground targets. The assessment is a part of USJFCOM's Joint Command and Control Capabilities Portfolio Management program, designed to help identify opportunities to improve joint interoperability and to meet joint warfighter needs.

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By Robert Pursell
USJFCOM Public Affairs

(SUFFOLK, Va. - July 25, 2007) -- U.S. Joint Forces Command's (USJFCOM) Joint Systems Integration Command (JSIC) began assessing this week a developing technology that allows a warfighter on the ground to digitally request air support to bomb ground targets.

JSIC, with support from USJFCOM's Joint Fires Integration and Interoperability Team, will evaluate the Joint Command and Control Joint Close Air Support (JC2 JCAS) technology, one of the joint capability requirements identified by the Joint Command and Control Capabilities Portfolio Management (JC2 CPM) program.

The purpose of JC2 CPM is to deliver integrated JC2 capabilities, improve their interoperability, identify and capture efficiencies, reduce capability redundancies and gaps, and increase joint operational effectiveness.

Army Maj. Michael Jackson, JSIC's project lead for JCAS, said this effort represents a substantial step forward from the way personnel identify targets for attack now.

"It's all voice, for the most part," he said. "It's a guy on the ground picking out a target saying, 'I need a bomb on that target.' He calls to his next higher headquarters to get planes in the area so they can drop a bomb on their target. This is all done by voice."

Jackson said this process can be confusing and could lead to errors regarding the exact location of a target.

Jackson said the upcoming assessments will look at the digitalization of JCAS, which is done by machine, rather than voice and cuts out the possibility of human error. By digitalizing the close air support process, the warfighter on the ground punches the coordinates into a machine and hits a send button. The coordinates go through the system and then go up the chain through other machines automatically.

"Digitalizing this CAS [close air support] process is the benefit… reducing the error and, in turn, you reduce the risk for fratricide," he said.

Jackson said that is the first part of the initial technical assessment. The second part is testing the interoperability of JCAS systems across service lines. The technical assessment, which runs through Aug. 1, will identify gaps, shortfalls, and overlaps with current systems and assess solutions to issues involving JCAS, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and friendly blue force tracking.

"We're looking at systems from all four services plus special operations," said Jackson. "What we're looking at is not just a stovepipe way of doing CAS but CAS where it's going across service lines."

He said one such scenario to test this interoperability will have an Air Force system talk to an Army system, which will talk to a Marine Corps system. The goal is to make sure each system, not only works on its own, but works smoothly with the other service's systems.

USJFCOM won't be the only ones contributing to the technical assessment. Others playing a role in the JCAS process include the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Charleston, S.C., Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., Langley Air Force Base, Va., Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif., and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

Jackson said getting used to working with these other labs will help open up lines of communication for now, as well as the future.

"We're all doing something different but if we can pull all of these labs together, we have the beginnings of a persistent test environment," he said.

Once the technical assessment is finished, the JCAS team will focus its attention on September's Bold Quest, an exercise designed to assess the overall effectiveness of Coalition Combat Identification technologies and their ability to support the warfighter.

The operational assessment will run in conjunction with Bold Quest, where actual planes will fly similar scenarios used in the technical assessment to look at the operational feasibility of JCAS.