The Army and several of its NATO counterparts are wrapping up an exercise in which they demonstrated a common network architecture into which the 14 participant nations could plug and not only communicate, but share intelligence and targeting information.
During Bold Quest 15.2, the Army hosted 13 other nations and a NATO force at Fort Bliss, Texas, to practice multinational operations focusing on indirect fire in support of infantry during a simulated forced entry operation.
The goal was to establish and test a baseline communication network through which calls for artillery and air support could be sent, and that fire returned, by a unit regardless of the nationality of the unit requesting support or the forces supplying the indirect fire or air support.
During the exercise, which began Sept. 24, a mission partner environment, or MPE, could form a foundation for inter-allied communication during future operations, said John Miller, who managed Bold Quest and is a member of the Joint Staff J-6.
While previous Bold Quest exercises focused specifically on developing capabilities for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Miller said the 2015 iteration was focused instead on no specific war, but how NATO nations will cooperate in future fights.
“In the historical sweep of Bold Quest, where we saw in our early years most of the orientation and focus was on the urgent needs that existed in current operations, more what we’re doing now is focused on future operations,” Miller said. “Most of the participants here are not as focused on current operations as they were earlier.”
The scenario used as the backdrop of the exercise this year was a joint, multinational forcible-entry operation, he said.
During this, the 16th Bold Quest exercise since its inception in 2003, the participants sought to advance the MPE by “establishing a network in which nations cannot just come and plug into the Bold Quest network as they have in the past, but actually bring their own core services and operate as they normally would in federation with others who are doing the same,” Miller said during a Oct. 5 teleconference with reporters.
Jill Klug, who acted as the command, control, communications and computers (C4) planner for Bold Quest, said the MPE established during the exercise was based on documentation from the Afghan Mission Network that coalition allies have used to share information during that conflict.
“That was the genesis for the mission partner environment for the NATO federated mission network concept,” she said. “The mission partner environment was to provide the network foundation that then any of the nations that wanted to could bring their network, their core services and their mission command systems and federate with or larger network.”
Of the 14 participating nations, four–Denmark, France, Norway and the U.S. Army–acted as “network contributing nations” that formed the communications backbone of the MPE, Klug said. Another first for Bold Quest 15.2 was being held in parallel with the Army’s network integration evaluation (NIE) exercise that is developing and fielding the service’s next-generation mobile battlefield communication network. That allowed the Army to contribute the capabilities of its warfighter information network-tactical (WIN-T) increment 2 to the larger MPE, Klug said.
Each nation’s participating unit will produce an after-action report that will be shared and funneled into future operating concepts, though there will be no specific policy or recommendation given based on the findings. Initial feedback indicates that the MPE was a successful baseline communications network for NATO allies to use during multinational operations, though all of the bugs have not been worked out, Klug said.
“The resounding theme of pre-reports…were that the MPE provided a great network foundation for the nations to get at some of the tough interoperability problems related to mission command systems,” Klug said.