LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. –
Members of the 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing evaluated their capabilities on Day one of SENTINEL FOCUS 09 Aug. 2.
The five-day event allows observation teams to look at Air Force Distributed Common Ground System enterprise-wide operational missions to gain a more complete insight into how effective the system is in meeting the intelligence needs of the warfighter.
Teams consisting of wing personnel evaluated Airmen conducting real-world operations in order to identify best practices and areas for improvement.
On the first day of the event, observation teams of six or seven people looked at critical operational issues that naturally occur in any DGS on a daily basis. The teams evaluated the abilities of Distributed Ground Station-1, located here, and DGS-4, located at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, to process, exploit and disseminate intelligence from a full motion video line, while providing mission coverage to meet all mission requirements.
Simultaneously, halfway around the world, a team evaluated the abilities of the distributed crew operations at DGS-3, located at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, to interact and collaborate, while supporting similar missions.
Specifically, the team looked at how the Wing Operations Center communicates and distributes mission intentions to applicable stakeholders, such as geo intelligence, signals intelligence and DCGS Analytical Reporting Team assessments of products.
These are just two examples of the thirteen critical operational issues evaluated this week in each of the DCGS sites.
At the end of the exercise, and armed with an insight into the DCGS enterprise-wide performance, the wing will focus its efforts on where to align and standardize tasking, execution and assessment processes across the wing's assigned assets and federated mission partners.
The 480th ISR Wing units and ground sites are located throughout the world, including Alabama, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Nevada, Utah and Virginia as well as locations in Korea and Germany.