Army concludes second Network Integration Evaluation

WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M. — The Army has con­clud­ed its sec­ond Net­work Inte­gra­tion Eval­u­a­tion, mov­ing clos­er to deploy­ing an inte­grat­ed bat­tle­field net­work after col­lect­ing valu­able Sol­dier feed­back on the lat­est tac­ti­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies.

 -
Click to enlarge
 -
Click to enlarge

The three-week event, known as Net­work Inte­gra­tion Eval­u­a­tion, or NIE, 12.1, rep­re­sent­ed the first time that all of the com­po­nents of the Army net­work to be field­ed in fis­cal year 2013 were unit­ed and eval­u­at­ed in a real­is­tic oper­a­tional envi­ron­ment. Sol­diers at the low­est ech­e­lons were brought into the net­work, com­mu­ni­cat­ing through text mes­sages, dig­i­tal pho­tos and chat rooms. 

Com­pa­ny com­man­ders made quick deci­sions using infor­ma­tion received in real time while mov­ing around the bat­tle­field. New hard­ware and soft­ware was inte­grat­ed for the first time out­side of a lab, and put to the test in moun­tain­ous desert ter­rain that mir­rors the com­mu­ni­ca­tions chal­lenges in rugged places such as Afghanistan. 

“We are get­ting a great look at con­nect­ing the Sol­dier to the net­work, and a fan­tas­tic look at mis­sion com­mand on the move — for the first time in an oper­a­tional set­ting,” said Col. John Mor­ri­son, direc­tor of the Army G‑3/5/7 Land­War­Net-Bat­tle Com­mand Direc­torate. “For the first time we’ve got every­thing talk­ing togeth­er, so now we can estab­lish an inte­grat­ed net­work base­line. It’s just been phenomenal.” 

The sec­ond in a series of semi-annu­al field exer­cis­es designed to rapid­ly inte­grate and mature the Army’s tac­ti­cal net­work, NIE 12.1 involved 3,800 Sol­diers of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Divi­sion eval­u­at­ing dozens of sys­tems in oper­a­tional sce­nar­ios. Sol­dier feed­back and test results from the NIEs are direct­ly shap­ing the make­up of the Army’s net­work Capa­bil­i­ty Set 13, which will begin field­ing to up to eight brigade com­bat teams in fis­cal year 2013. 

Addi­tion­al brigades will receive the lat­est net­work assets as part of Capa­bil­i­ty Set 14. 

Those capa­bil­i­ty sets will include greater band­width to trans­mit voice, video and data across the bat­tle­field, as well as the abil­i­ty to bring sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness and mis­sion com­mand infor­ma­tion down to the dis­mount­ed Soldier. 

NIE 12.1 was also host to the Joint Tac­ti­cal Radio Sys­tem, or JTRS, Rifle­man Radio pro­gram of record test. This radio, which is car­ried by pla­toon, squad and team-lev­el Sol­diers for voice com­mu­ni­ca­tions, can con­nect with hand­held devices to trans­mit text mes­sages, GPS loca­tions and oth­er data. Sol­diers with 2/1 AD also infor­mal­ly eval­u­at­ed more than 45 oth­er sys­tems, includ­ing solu­tions pro­posed by indus­try to meet the Army’s iden­ti­fied net­work capa­bil­i­ty gaps. 

“Get­ting infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy to the field in a rapid fash­ion is what we’re try­ing to do here,” said Col. Dan Hugh­es, the Army’s sys­tem of sys­tems inte­gra­tion direc­tor. “Some of the sys­tems that are here are sys­tems that indus­try paid their mon­ey for, that they built, that they brought out, and are in the hands of Sol­diers prob­a­bly five to six years before they would be in the hands of Sol­diers if we had gone through the reg­u­lar (process). And they’re get­ting feed­back immediately.” 

That feed­back, rang­ing from rave reviews to harsh crit­i­cism, will inform the Army’s deci­sions about what equip­ment to pur­chase and make part of the next capa­bil­i­ty set, as well as how some gear could be improved with cer­tain changes. 

That was the case with Nett War­rior, a Sol­dier-worn mis­sion com­mand sys­tem that 2/1 AD Sol­diers deemed valu­able but too bulky dur­ing the first NIE event. Those results informed Army lead­er­ship to revise the require­ment, which result­ed in a slimmed down ver­sion and a reduc­tion of pro­cure­ment costs for the device. This new ver­sion that lever­ages com­mer­cial tech­nol­o­gy debuted at this NIE and pro­vid­ed dis­mount­ed com­bat lead­ers with essen­tial infor­ma­tion, such as dig­i­tal maps, text mes­sag­ing and the GPS loca­tions of friend­ly forces. 

“With a radio you can tell them where you’re at, but with this they don’t even have to ask,” said Pfc. Philip Kerr, one of the Sol­diers using Nett War­rior in mis­sion threads here. “If there’s ever a sit­u­a­tion where I’m down here and I can’t see the oth­er side of a town, I can pop it up on a (dig­i­tal) map. I can then see where every­one else is at, and that can be very valu­able in case some­thing goes wrong.” 

The Nett War­rior devices con­nect to the net­work via the Rifle­man Radio and its Sol­dier Radio Wave­form. They run Joint Bat­tle Com­mand-Plat­form, or JBC‑P, soft­ware, the future ver­sion of the wide­ly field­ed Force XXI Bat­tle Com­mand Brigade and Below/Blue Force Track­ing, known as FBCB2/BFT, sys­tem, which allows units to track friend­ly forces and exchange mes­sages in order to syn­chro­nize oper­a­tions and avoid frat­ri­cide. The soft­ware will host appli­ca­tions devel­oped by the Army and third par­ties — sim­i­lar to the “apps” mar­ket­place used on the Apple iPhone or Google Android oper­at­ing systems. 

“We want to take the same capa­bil­i­ties that we have in our vehi­cles, in our com­mand posts, in our air­craft, and pro­vide them to the dis­mount­ed Sol­dier, specif­i­cal­ly at the team leader through pla­toon leader lev­el,” said Maj. Antho­ny Dou­glas, assis­tant prod­uct man­ag­er for Blue Force Track­ing — Soft­ware. “Right now, Sol­diers in Afghanistan are using (lega­cy) radios and hand and arm sig­nals to com­mu­ni­cate with each other.” 

The cur­rent ver­sion of FBCB2, known as the Joint Capa­bil­i­ties Release, or JCR, for its inter­op­er­abil­i­ty with the Marine Corps, earned pos­i­tive Sol­dier feed­back for its new chat func­tion. JCR Chat works like an online chat room with­in FBCB2, allow­ing users to instant-mes­sage in real time over the BFT 2 satel­lite network. 

“It’s super easy to use — any­body that’s been on a chat room before knows how to use it,” Staff Sgt. Cody Moose said. “You can have mul­ti­ple chat rooms, too. We use it for every mission.” 

The Sol­dier input and sys­tem data col­lect­ed dur­ing NIE 12.1 will be reviewed by a tri­ad con­sist­ing of the Brigade Mod­ern­iza­tion Com­mand, the Army Test and Eval­u­a­tion Com­mand and the Sys­tem of Sys­tems Inte­gra­tion Direc­torate under the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of the Army for Acqui­si­tion, Logis­tics and Tech­nol­o­gy, or ASA(ALT).

The next event, known as NIE 12.2, will take place in the spring and fur­ther solid­i­fy the Capa­bil­i­ty Set 13 net­work. The six-week event will include the for­mal oper­a­tional test for the Warfight­er Infor­ma­tion Net­work-Tac­ti­cal, known as WIN‑T, Incre­ment 2, the Army’s on-the-move, satel­lite-based com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work, which was infor­mal­ly eval­u­at­ed at NIE 12.1.

WIN‑T Incre­ment 2 is a major upgrade to the tac­ti­cal net­work back­bone that will extend satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the com­pa­ny lev­el, allow­ing Sol­diers to com­mu­ni­cate seam­less­ly through voice, data, images and video — even in com­plex ter­rain that can break line-of-sight radio connections. 

Source:
US Army

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →