Community Joint Training Effort Unveiled

Written by Marty Kauchak

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USSTRATCOM and USJFCOM are leading an effort
to establish an "all things missile" joint training environment.

U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM), in support of U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) and in partnership with all combatant commands and services, has begun work to synchronize missile training with the goal of improving exercise coordination, reducing costs and providing a consolidated training environment. The consolidated training environment will bring together the currently separate simulation environments of survivable, integrated tactical warning/attack assessment; ballistic missile defense systems; and tactical engagement simulations to create a joint training environment, which is All Things Missile.

REQUIREMENTS

The All Things Missile effort is addressing the warfighter’s joint training requirement in strategic missile warning and other missions. While state-of-the-art modeling and simulation (M&S) capabilities allow the training audience to conduct training and exercises, there are some important shortfalls. These training gaps are expected to widen as the Ballistic Missile Defense System matures. The system’s new elements and increased numbers of community members will need to train as they operate—in a joint environment with other U.S. services, and allies and friends.

“We have found as we matured the missile defense capability, we needed a more integrated, more distributed capability to do modeling and simulation support for that mission,” Pat McVay, director, Joint Exercises and Training Directorate, U.S. Strategic Command (J7), said during a media availability attended by MSMF. McVay cited one training gap. “When we had a missile shot it would populate some of those modeling and simulation screens, but it would not populate the missile warning screens. It was very confusing for the training audience—from the combatant commander level all the way down to the young sailor on the ship or the soldier in the brigade on the shooter end with an interceptor.”

SOLUTIONS

USSTRATCOM, the lead organization for this effort, has formed a very inclusive team to develop joint training solutions. In addition to Missile Defense Agency serving in an advisory role and USJFCOM in direct support, the joint training effort has also enlisted USNORTHCOM, USPACOM and USEUCOM and other DoD subject matter experts. The collaborative effort was gaining momentum during a meeting at USJFCOM as this issue went to press.

“Work currently under way will investigate, review and apply the best current practices to bring together disparate systems to provide the warfighter with a realistic and cost-effective training environment. This is a challenging Department of Defense-wide training issue and critical to consolidated joint training,” noted a statement provided to MSMF.

The effort’s M&S-supported joint training capabilities are envisioned to support Tier 1 (senior civilian and uniformed leadership) through Tier 5 (individual warfighters on the weapons platforms) training requirements.

A number of maturing training infrastructure under the oversight of USJFCOM may be tapped to improve the missile community’s joint training program. Joint Knowledge Online allows joint courseware to be distributed globally, 24/7 to learners. A second delivery vehicle may be the Joint Training and Experimentation Network. “This is a distributed, network environment which connects all major service and combat commander training programs in a seamless, integrated environment,” Gregory F. Knapp, executive director, Joint Warfighting Center and Joint Training Directorate (J7), USJFCOM, explained. JTEN is the underpinning of the DoD Joint National Training Capability, which helps increase the warfighters’ prowess in joint missions and tasks.

For its part, USJFCOM and other program participants are initially defining the training program’s operational architecture. “Then we’ll go to the second part, to understand the training requirement—what is actually required to establish a distributed training environment for certain training audiences to train to certain tasks with a certain periodicity,” Knapp said. Finally, a solutions group will present a training environment, which will consist of M&S, object models that integrate the live and virtual and constructive training domains together, and other foundations. “In the end we’ll be able to stimulate any training audience against the All Things Missile task set, whenever and wherever we need,” Knapp concluded.

McVay pointed out that this initiative has “an aggressive timeline.” A fully operational All Things Missile capability is “about two years away—during the summer of 2011,” he predicted. ♦