LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va –
Representatives from the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps, as well as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Japan and other partner nations recently participated in the annual Empire Challenge 10 here and at locations worldwide simultaneously. The exercise, which ran July 26 to Aug. 13, was an annual joint and coalition intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance interoperability demonstration.
"EC10 showcases emerging ISR capabilities and provides vital lessons learned to improve joint and combined ISR interoperability to support warfighters at the tactical level," said Andy Florence, 480th ISR Wing exercise planner. "Over 30 capabilities were selected for EC10 demonstration with the intent of delivering successful technologies to commanders in Afghanistan."
According to Mr. Florence, the exercise was organized to focus efforts on five joint capability threads that address the theater commander's ISR capability needs: Distributed Common Ground System enterprise interoperability, command and control ISR data integration to support operations in a complex environment, command and control ISR management to achieve persistent surveillance over key terrain, ISR support to joint close air support, and information sharing to support multi-national government interoperability.
The Air Force Distributed Common Ground System consists of global sites capable of receiving, processing, storing, correlating, exploiting and disseminating intelligence feeds from multiple sources. Those sources can be based on the ground, in the air or at sea.
"The Air Force ISR Agency and 480th ISR Wing presented the Air Force DCGS capabilities as an enabler for integrating emerging technologies across each of the joint capability threads, as well as demonstrated the next generation in web-enabled tools developed for Air Force DCGS weapon system," said Mr. Florence.
The primary physical location for the exercise was Ft. Huachuca, Ariz., because the range there provided a close approximation for the terrain found in Afghanistan. Langley is the site for the Air Force's DCGS experimentation lab, DGS-X.
Airmen from 480th manned crew positions at DGS-X, mirroring the capability of the Air Force DCGS weapon system. During the exercise, analysts provided U-2 Dragon Lady and RQ-4A Global Hawk imagery and feeds, as well as tested data interoperability with other service's DCGS elements. They also shared data with coalition ground stations through the DCGS.
One feature allows users to customize alerts that meet specified criteria. This capability allows for incoming data, once tagged, to be sent directly to users via e-mail, eliminating the time and effort needed to search for the data. By eliminating the need to hunt for information or request special permissions to view data, it dramatically cuts down the time needed to search out that information.
According to Mr. Florence, the technology used during the demonstration was selected based on its ability to address combatant commander's current ISR needs, and mature enough to be put into use in areas such as Afghanistan as soon as possible.
1st Lt. Josh Cutino, 30th Intelligence Squadron mission operations commander, said the exercise gave everyone involved a chance to try new things.
"It's great to be in this environment because you can go out on a limb and take risks during an exercise that you wouldn't dare try in a real-world operation. If it works out, then we can implement that action to improve how we operate," he said.