By Ann Roosevelt
Host U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) today wraps up its Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (CWID), an annual global event that evaluates technologies to improve how militaries communicate and pass information with each other and understand their surroundings, officials said.
” All the trials are looking at technology gaps…how does the U.K. system in Afghanistan talk to the U.S. Army system,” Navy Capt. Kevin Ruce, CWID host combatant command lead, told Defense Daily. “If it doesn’t exist, is there new technology? And also to assess technology maturity and how it fills gaps.”
CWID looks at areas of command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) to improve coalition military interoperability, and the United States also is looking at how it might better communicate with civilians and officials in emergencies at home.
U.K. Royal Navy Lt. Cmdr. Rob Roscoe said, “The idea is to break or prove some of these systems.”
The focus is on the real world; real events are used in the scenarios, he said.
Command and control is of interest to the U.K., particularly with the surge in Afghanistan bringing more U.S. troops into Afghanistan, he said.
CWID offers a background look at future requirements, and can influence requirements for future equipment, said Roscoe, a U.K. liaison to JFCOM, who was given the role of operations officer in CWID. Also, contractors learn the type of issues militaries want to address.
“We try to find those technologies and approaches out there to feed back into our acquisition programs, he said.
CWID is examining three scenarios. While some activities are scripted, there is free play in which younger warfighters have brought an “enlightening different way” of using the technologies, Ruce said.
In one, the United States concentrates on Afghanistan, at the request of commands in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) there.
A second scenario involves NATO CWID in a Horn of Africa scenario involving the NATO Reaction Force.
The third scenario involves U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and a homeland security and homeland defense scenario.
“The scenarios overlap,” Ruce said.
CWID, with headquarters at JFCOM’s Joint Systems Integration Center, is linked to coalition members in various places. For example, the air component is doing trials at Hanscom AFB, Mass., and the land component is at Dahlgren, Va., involving the U.S. Army and Marines. The maritime component is spread between Colorado Springs, home of NORTHCOM, San Diego and Dahlgren.
NATO CWID is conducted at Lillehammer, Norway, Canada is playing at Ottawa, and New Zealand is also taking part.
The trials involve looking at ways to improve existing systems such as command and control coalition interoperability, cross-domain solutions, and IP software, Rice said. Another aim is to improve how information gets to troops who are disconnected, have intermittent connectivity or low bandwidth, something the military refers to as DIL.
Another push is aimed at a whole of government approach, how does the U.S. Defense Department work and communicate with other government agencies, local first responders, the Coast Guard, and non-governmental entities on disasters and in humanitarian operations, for example.
CWID is not just for the most familiar coalition nations. Since the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff directs CWID, any nation that wishes to be part of it makes a request via the regional combatant commander, and that request moves up to the Joint Staff.
Australia will play next year, Ruce said, and both Japan and South Korea are interested in participating in the future. The more nations are familiar with equipment and software, the better prepared a coalition will be, and not slowed by working out the bugs in something new when they arrive on scene.
The challenge always may be to have the site and infrastructure to be part of CWID, Roscoe said. The tools being demonstrated are not country-specific. In an ideal world, the capabilities for, say, targeting and missile planning, would be generic and eventually, “I would hope, agnostic.”
C4ISR tools must have a wider utility or you wind up with “stovepipes between countries,” he said. The more countries that participate in CWID, the less likely such stovepipes become.
Another issue CWID examines in a broader sense is the possibility of reducing the myriad terminals and displays involved in command and control that goes to any joint task force.
“The [coalition task force] CTF is very keen to try to get into those issues, reducing terminals,” Roscoe said.
Ruce said reducing the number of screens and “boxes” through cross domain platforms can speed decision making. It is easier for staff, for example, if there is only one “box” and display screen instead of one terminal for the United States, a separate one for the United Kingdom, another for unclassified information, or U.S.-only displays. Additionally, if technology can be brought to a national system an operator is comfortable working on, it expedites situational awareness.
The outcome of the CWID trials will be three assessments. One is a warfighter assessment, covering things such as how hard the technology is to use. Technical assessments come from the Defense Information Systems Agency, and an information assurance assessment comes from the National Security Agency. There will be a final report and something new this year, a report on the top performing technologies.