What USJFCOM Does

What is USJFCOM?

Force Provider

Joint Trainer

Joint Capability Development

Joint Enabling Capabilities

Joint Concept Development and Experimentation

Reserve & Command Support

Follow Us (Link will open in a new window)

USJFCOM news service
USJFCOM on Facebook
USJFCOM on Flickr
USJFCOM on Twitter
USJFCOMLive - USJFCOM's Official Blog
	About USJFCOM News RSS

Learn More

Empire Challenge 09

Joint Transformation Command - Intelligence

Joint Intelligence Directorate

Joint Intelligence Lab

Recent Capability Development News

Command completes three-week communication exercise U.S. Joint Forces Command communicators and personnel from across the government and other countries recently participated in a three-week exercise designed to improve joint and coalition communications abilities. • Comment on this article at USJFCOMLive

Command, partners to commence Empire Challenge 09

U.S. Joint Forces Command and its partners will spend the majority of the month of July examining how to better provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to U.S. and allied forces.

---

By MC2(AW) Nikki Carter
USJFCOM Public Affairs

Have your say

• Comment on this story at USJFCOMLive

(SUFFOLK, Va. - June 29, 2009) -- U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) begins the sixth annual Empire Challenge 09 demonstration (EC09) July 6.

EC09, a live joint and coalition intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) interoperability demonstration, runs simultaneously at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif., with distributed locations in the Joint Intelligence Lab here, the Combined Air Operations Center-Experimental at Langley Air Force Base, Hampton, Va., service Distributed Common Ground/Surface System (DCGS) labs, coalition sites in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency in the Netherlands.

This demonstration, conducted by USJFCOM on behalf of the under secretary of Defense for intelligence, focuses on providing ISR support to warfighters at the combined task force level and below. It also examines emerging technologies to ensure they can work with existing equipment and standard procedures.

John Kittle, EC09 operational manager, said EC09 centers on bringing mission critical ISR data to the commanders who need the data at the "tactical edge."

"We are looking for solutions that provide a greater amount of situational awareness and battlespace awareness to the operators that have to make decisions on the battlefield, getting more of the intelligence data to them, better quality, more timely, more precision and all the methods and procedures and technologies that contribute to that," Kittle said.

The demonstration examines questions like what gets the job done better and what still needs to be developed.

Air Force Col. George Krakie, USJFCOM Joint Intelligence Directorate military lead for EC09 also identified another major objective.

"The key thing for us is to ensure that we are delivering mission-critical ISR data to the warfighter; this leader-centric approach means that we have to meet the needs of all leaders, whether they be a three star general in a wired ops center or a platoon sergeant with a lap top computer in a HUMVEE," said Krakie.

"The data, no matter where it comes from, needs to seamlessly flow from service to service and to our coalition partners," said Krakie.

Kittle explained the testing is done in a realistic environment where warfighters most likely will find themselves using these capabilities to work out any interoperability issues they may have with the systems.

"Once a year we go out to the desert to try to emulate to the closest degree possible the environment that our forces find themselves in and bring new systems and capabilities. We basically test them and provide an evaluation. It's really a way of testing where we are with state of the art systems," Kittle said.

The demonstration ends July 31.

Have your say

• Comment on this story at USJFCOMLive