By Ann Roosevelt
Planning is already under way for next years Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) Empire Challenge (EC)–the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) interoperability demonstration, a command official said.
The concept development conference has been held and, by the end of this week, there will be an Empire Challenge 2011 capabilities call posted on FedBizOps, according to Air Force Col. Jacqueline Walsh, director of the Joint Intelligence Operations Center at JFCOM, at the 10th annual C4ISR Journal Conference in Washington, D.C.
There already is an early list of what EC 11 will examine, though it is by no means final.
Among other items on the list: a continued focus on Afghanistan, counter IED, force protection and fratricide avoidance, addressed in EC 10 as well.
Additionally, there would be an effort to engage non-governmental interoperability, the “unstructured data,” such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter activities that can “sometimes be critical to combat operations,” she said. “This is a fact of life today.”
By Nov. 12, responses must be in. Proposals must follow specific criteria, such as having a sponsor and funding to participate in the demonstration, and agreeing to an assessment of their capability.
The live portion of EC 11 is now scheduled for May 23-June 3, earlier than EC 2010, which ran July 26-Aug. 13. The event will be held at Ft. Huachuca, Ariz.
The demonstration of capabilities available today is funded and sponsored by the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USD/I) and executed by JFCOM (Defense Daily, July 29, 2009).
Before the first public airing of the EC 10 after action report, Walsh said, “Empire Challenge 10, was, to my mind, the most successful Empire Challenge to date.”
The demonstration is an opportunity for the entire ISR community to come together to demonstrate their capabilities, she said.
The centerpiece of the demonstration is the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS). The aim is to see if everything can plug into the DCGS Integrated Backbone, or DIB.
The goal is “making data agnostic so that it can flow through the DIB…regardless of where it’s coming from so people can access it, can exploit it and can disseminate it,” Walsh said.
Additionally, intelligence functions must be fully integrated. “The tactical level is the most difficult part–these are bandwidth challenged people,” she said.
Information architecture is required to move collected data to the users rather than using that deployed person to the data.
But will there actually be an Empire Challenge next year, an audience member asked, in light of Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ announcement that he’d close JFCOM.
Walsh said the Gates announcement came during EC 10 while representatives of USD/I were at the demonstration. They said “regardless of what happens to JFCOM, Empire Challenge will continue.”
Also, though funding is under the continuing resolution, Empire Challenge is funded for fiscal year 2011, she said.