Empire Challenge pulls worldwide resources for exercise

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Randy Redman
  • 633rd Air Base Wing Public Affairs
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 many more partner nations, recently participated in the annual Empire Challenge 10 here and at locations worldwide simultaneously July 26 through Aug. 13.

The exercise is an annual joint and coalition intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance interoperability demonstration.

"(Empire Challenge) 10 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, a 480th ISR Wing exercise planner. "Over 30 capabilities were selected for (Empire Challenge) 10 demonstration, with the intent of delivering successful technologies to commanders in Afghanistan."

The exercise was organized to focus efforts on five joint capability threads that address the theater commander's ISR capability needs, Mr. Florence said. Those capabilities include distributed common ground system enterprise interoperability; command and control, or C2, ISR data integration to support operations in a complex environment; C2 ISR management to achieve persistent surveillance over key terrain; ISR support to joint close-air support/strike; and information sharing to support multinational/whole of 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 officials 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 weapons systems," Mr. Florence said.

The primary physical location for the exercise was Fort Huachuca, Ariz., because the range there provided a close approximation for the terrain found in Afghanistan. Langley Air Force Base is the site for the Air Force's DCGS experimentation lab, known as DGS-X.

Members of the 480th ISRW manned crew positions at DGS-X that mirrored the capability of the Air Force DCGS weapons 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 Integrated Backbone.

One feature of the DCGS Integrated Backbone 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, thus eliminating the time and effort ordinarily 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.

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, Mr. Florence said.

1st Lt. Josh Cutino, the 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," he said. "If it works out, then we can implement that action to improve how we operate."