Demonstration offers promising successes
Empire Challenge 09 assessed 38 ISR capabilities to support warfighters at the combined task force level and below. With the results in from the demonstration, the command begins planning for next year's event.
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By MC2 (AW) Nikki Carter
USJFCOM Public Affairs
(NORFOLK, Va., - Oct. 21, 2009) -- U.S. Joint Forces Command's (USJFCOM) Empire Challenge 09 (EC09) was a successful multinational collaboration in resolving interoperability issues among intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, according to the demonstration's director for intelligence operations.
EC09 - the sixth demonstration in the Empire Challenge series and the first to be run by USJFCOM - allowed the command to test sensors, concepts of operations, tactics, techniques, procedures, processes, and software at a variety of sites throughout the world, said Air Force Col. George "Skip" Krakie, EC09's director for intelligence operations.
USJFCOM, along with partners from NATO, Great Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, assessed 38 ISR capabilities and how they could be shared with allies during the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence-directed demonstration in July.
"We used the High-Speed Guard (HSG) that allowed us to electronically pass full-motion video from a U.S.-only network to a coalition network," Krakie said.
HSG is a system that allows U.S. assets to transfer data from their networks to those of allied militaries, Krakie said. EC09 participants at China Lake, Calif., flew an unmanned aerial system (UAS) and captured video to send to imagery analysts in the joint operations center, Krakie said. Once the imagery was in the network, it was passed through HSG to imagery exploiters in the United Kingdom.
"That was very successful as far as the ability to share our data with our multinational partners, which was a key objective to the event," he said.
Krakie said USJFCOM and the Joint Deployable Intelligence Support System Joint Program Office developed an interface between U.S. and NATO collection management systems to enable the two to communicate with each other.
"This is what allows us to task ISR assets to collect certain things," he said. "During EC09, we built an interface between the two and we were able to test it and it worked very well."
Another promising demonstration involved an aircraft's ability to encrypt full-motion video as it was filmed Krakie said. Ground forces using a remotely operated, video-enhanced receiver (rover) system were able to see what an aircraft or unmanned aerial vehicle saw in real time. The warfighters received images acquired by the aircraft's sensors on a laptop on the ground. Krakie said participants were then able to decrypt the video they received.
"We are making sure the warfighter - whether he has a laptop or a rover - is getting the information he needs; not just dumping the data on him, but getting him the tailored data that he needs," he said.
EC09 focused on distributing mission-critical intelligence to the warfighter. Events included specific scenarios to address joint capability needs including irregular warfare, joint ISR management, multi-domain awareness, and ISR-strike integration.
With this year's event finished, concept development plans for next year's demonstration have begun.
Krakie said Empire Challenge 2010 will move beyond "getting the ones and zeros to cross through the networks" - making the systems interoperable - and focus on building a systematic means of providing solutions to the warfighter.
"This year, we're really focusing on near-term capabilities that could be delivered to Afghanistan in short order," he said. "That doesn't mean that we're not going to continue to look at some far-reaching, game-changing-type ISR capabilities, but the focus will be on things that are either going to Afghanistan or could go Afghanistan and [whether we] can get the interoperability piece working so they won't have to figure it out there."
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