Officials focus on ‘art-of-war’ decisions

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HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. (AFPN) --  A new capability demonstrated by Electronic Systems Center officials here drives right to the heart of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen John P. Jumper’s quest for “machine-to-machine” automation of command and control.

Known as Synchronized Air Power Management, this process gets air battle managers out of the data-entry business and allows them to concentrate on the more important facets of the job.

“With SAPM, operators can focus on making art-of-war decisions,” said Col. Bill Nelson, director of the center’s mission planning system program office.

“Since data flows are automatic and synchronized, mission planners and decision makers don’t have to worry about getting the information they need,” he said. “Instead, they can drive directly toward the solution, deciding how to best use the information.”

Better yet, they can do it much faster, Nelson said. He said he estimates the timeline between publishing an air tasking order and “flying out the package” can be reduced by more than 60 percent.

“What now takes more than five hours can be done in about two with SAPM,” he said.

The synchronization and subsequent time savings result primarily from Web-based services and workflow-management tools, said 2nd Lt. Tom Oristian, the SAPM project lead in the mission planning SPO.

Together, these allow all information to be published to a database that is not only instantly accessible by the next group in the sequential process, but which automatically notifies each person in the process when new data have been added.

When the tasking order, which lays out targets for the day, is published, those responsible for establishing detailed taskings are immediately notified. Once their inputs are in the system, data and notification travel to those responsible for scheduling the assets to carry out the mission.

This process continues through to intelligence officials who conduct threat analysis, then to weather officials and finally to the mission planners who build detailed routes for the pilots to fly.

At any point in the process, the joint forces air-component commander can check the progress status.

“He can instantly see what’s been done, what the next step is and where to put his emphasis,” Oristian said.

Also, as information rolls from machine to machine and the process nears completion, the wing commander’s report is automatically generated.

“This represents a huge time savings, because there is no (waiting) for the briefing,” Oristian said. “The report is built as part of the process behind the scenes.”

The SAPM demonstration shows how commercially available products can be applied quickly to improve critical-military processes and timelines. The MITRE Corporation, which functions as the center’s lead engineer, provided overall technical direction and coordinated vendor development.

“(Officials from the center) and MITRE undertook this effort to evaluate ... state-of-the-art technologies and establish partnerships with commercial vendors,” Oristian said. “(They) also allowed us to test out some key command (and) control integration standards and strategies.”

A major goal for SAPM was to demonstrate how programs that use significantly different computer language architectural standards could work together.

SAPM did “exactly that,” by adhering to established Web service industry standards, Nelson said. This demonstrated that it can be easily achieved regardless of the underlying architecture, he said.

SAPM’s success has sparked a transition plan now being developed to integrate SAPM into the real-world operational environment. This means building in security to support the military environment and integrating it in a wide-area network with all the proper controls, Nelson said.

“This is not an easy task,” he said. “But we’ve definitely taken the first step to push data machine-to-machine, so our operators automatically have what they need right at their fingertips, freeing them to … concentrate on military tactics to win wars.”