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Multinational communication exercise evolves through years
Posted 9/18/2012
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by Staff Sgt. Angelique N. Smythe
Combined Endeavor 2012 Public Affairs
9/18/2012 - GRAFENWHÖR, Germany -- During the last 18 years Combined Endeavor has evolved from a workshop consisting of 10 nations working together to conduct point-to-point radio testing to more than 40 countries analyzing fully converged networks with command and control systems integration.
"Every year we've come back together, we've gotten a little more complicated," said Navy Cmdr. Jamie Gateau, assigned to Combined Endeavor 2012 Strategic Plans.
Not only has the exercise grown from a small number of people to more than a thousand participants, but there is also an extraordinarily complicated order of battle with command and control systems, battle command systems and all the things participative nations take to the fight.
"We've seen individual nations become more and more advanced in their own capabilities," Gateau said. "Instead of showing up with older technologies or simple systems, they now train, plan and execute, even within their national boundaries, with pretty sophisticated computer systems."
When nations get together in the field, instead of assuming everyone will get on the lead nation's communication systems, everyone brings their own equipment.
"We then have to figure out how to confederate all those computer systems' capabilities," Gateau said . "We have the interoperability problem that we've been solving since this was a radio exercise. Those problems still exist because getting my command and control systems and your command and control systems to talk to one another is a complicated thing."
On top of that, there are also governance problems, doctrine issues and information assurance concerns for these professionals to consider.
"Interoperability is no longer just about getting my telephone and your telephone to sync up and talk to each other," Gateau said. "I also have to get my information assurance process and your information assurance process to work together correctly."
Gateau said in the future, Joining Membership and Exiting Instructions will be developed to allow nations to quickly accomplish processes and procedures on the battlefield.
"Everyone will come and already know what the processes and procedures will be," he said. "They will already know the configurations; and we will be able to very rapidly stand up a coalition capability and go forward."
CE12 is the world's largest multinational command, control, communications and computer systems exercise designed to build and enhance communications and network interoperability.
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