By Ann Roosevelt
The Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) deems successful it’s ability to shorten the sensor-to-shooter link in its portion of the Air Force’s Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment (JEFX) 2008, program officials said.
“By using portions of the FCS network during a real operational setting Joint Service staff were enabled to share situational awareness between ground and air assets,” Maj. Troy Crosby, assistant project manager (Joint) FCS Network Systems Integration, said. “This near real time awareness between Army and Air Force assets is not available on today’s battlefield.”
FCS, managed for the Army by Boeing [BA] and SAIC [SAI], has participated in previous JEFX experiments (Defense Daily, May 16, 2006, Nov. 15).
FCS provided the ground maneuver–brigade and below–network portion of the JEFX. JEFX is a series of joint experiments, led by the Air Force’s Global Cyberspace Integration Center. It focuses on collaboration and connectivity across the strategic, operational and tactical levels to plan and execute global strike and other military operations.
Experimentation equipment was positioned at diverse locations including FCS sensor and unmanned assets at Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR).
In the last cumulative set of experiments, termed JEFX 08-3, a demonstration was conducted showing full joint connectivity and situational awareness in a live fly operational scenario. During this scenario, target acquisition was performed by FCS soldiers at NTTR using Unattended Ground Sensors and both Class I and Class IV Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs).
This meant that using FCS Build 1 network capabilities, a picture from a sensor, such as a UAV, was sent over the network to the Air Force which could use the picture to acquire a target.
The target information was then sent via the network to Air Force and Army assets at Langley AFB, Va., where the information was processed and forwarded for mission execution.
“In near real time, we were able to direct Air Force assets to put precision fires on a target that the Army Future Combat System sensors acquired,” Crosby said. ” This was a big leap in capabilities compared to target information sharing today.”
Paul Mehney, FCS associate director of communications, said this reduces the kill chain, and timelines, and provides more accurate precision fire effects, and in theory, could potentially reduce civilian casualties, reduce friendly fire concerns and provide better target recognition.”
Right now, if the Army needs air assets to take on a target, they can send grid coordinates, and describe the target, but can’t speak directly to or share a picture with the Air Force.
Results from this experiment will satisfy Technology Readiness Level 6 for several critical network technologies. Additionally, throughout the experiments, communications with joint assets were not optimized, and since those have been identified early in the development phase–Build 1 of the FCS software–tweaks and changes can be incorporated as Build 2 software develops, and thus reduce risk for further joint operations, Mehney said.
Also, for the Ft. Bliss, Texas.-based Army Evaluation Task Force, JEFX 2008 provided a scenario to look at joint operations which will feed into the work the soldiers are doing on the FCS Spin Out 1 technologies.
“This experiment will be used to provide near-term integration lessons to our soldiers and developers currently testing and evaluating Spin Out 1 technology,” Crosby said. “JEFX is just one more step to ensuring that our soldiers and joint service partners are fully integrated in the Army’s evaluation phases of critical FCS technology–ultimately ensuring that our soldiers have a final product that they can use as soon it’s available.”