U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) just wrapped up a two-week effort called Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (CWID) to evaluate technologies against command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) capability gaps identified by combatant commanders and others.
“We’re trying to focus…on programs to bring us more mature technology focused in areas outlined by COCOMs as needed capabilities and still provide a venue for risk reduction for programs of record, new technology discovery and try to focus on technology to meet the needs of DoD and DHS, Robert Hartling, U.S. CWID Lead at JFCOM, said in a teleconference.
“The objective of the demonstration is to improve leader-centric, network enabled operations in an Afghanistan-based ground scenario and with a littoral Navy war scenario,” said Col. James Bacchus, the Marine Reserve representative to CWID and who also is part of the exercise Senior Management Group that Hartling chairs.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff annual event replicates command center desk tops, whether an Army or Marine operations center. The event crosses 17 time zones, coalition partners around the globe, first response units and involves all the services.
Cmdr. Robert Green, Naval Sea Systems Command program manager of CWID, said that although Afghanistan is the basis of the scenario, the demonstration has a lot of free play to test the technologies.
“In today’s technology world, the best tests are against large complex networks spread across coalition networks, Bacchus said.
CWID enables U.S. combatant commands, U.S. military Services, coalition partners, DoD agencies (C/C/S/As), and Homeland Security/Homeland Defense (HS/HD) organizations to explore and assess products that provide relevant solutions to identified capability gaps. CWIDs day to day operations are run by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) manages CWID’s day-to-day operations.
First Lt. Jon Hayes of the West Virginia Army National Guard is the liaison officer working homeland security, homeland defense issues. The Guard has worked scenarios involving terrorist attack, tracking wildfires, and other situations, he said. For CWID, “really, what we’re doing is trying to find a better way to track and respond to these sorts of incidents.”
Navy Capt. Kirk Hornburg, CWID commander of Task Force Bison, is test driving new technology and assessments running through the scenario as he would in the real world.
“We’re looking for common systems to evaluate,” he said. The demo is also trialing for technology that has been developed elsewhere–“Looking for new ideas, not just homegrown.”
The work is not necessarily to find the definitive answer. A lot of the work is to learn about the technology and finding out if it is something the military wants to look at. Even if the trial is not successful, CWID can identify pieces and parts the military would like to see develop further.
The demonstration started with 41 technologies whittled down to 32, Hartling said.
Hayes said the Guard is looking at three systems; one is now forward deployed in Haiti to see if it would work for the national guard.
Hartling said one of the technologies evaluated last year, the Ready Responders Network, was evaluated to see if it would support multi-net interfaces. It did and was deployed to Haiti supporting non-governmental organizations in the logistics area.
Basically, what happens with data–“how we see it and how we use it”–is at the bottom of much of the work, Hayes said.
Any coalition partner would find value in the ability for data to move around, threat analysis and distribution, Bacchus said.
Hartling said the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Finland, New Zealand, Australia and Germany play in CWID and provide technologies for evaluation.
The outcome of all the CWID effort comes in an annual report from JFCOM.
“The more often we do this, the more often we get input into technology, the better we’re able to field technology that actually works for us,” Hayes said. “CWID prevents purchasing systems that are not up to par.”
“CWID keeps getting bigger, and we see the “tangible results of trust as people share information,” Hornberg said. “The more we look at new technology the more likely we’ll find useful things.”