Editor's Note: In April, the Joint Staff J6 won the C4ISR & Networks Elite 6 award for C2/Comms for the development of tactics, techniques and procedures to support en-route communications for rapid response forces. In this contributed article, Mike Henry, technical director, Joint Tactical Integration, Joint Staff J6, writes about development of the military's new Enroute Mission Command Capability.

Until the recent onset of new in-flight Secure and Nonsecure Internet Protocol Router Networks (SIPRnet/NIPRnet) and related situational awareness (SA) capability, airborne en-route communications for U.S. military rapid response forces have remained essentially unchanged since World War II. Commanders and soldiers have been flying overseas to intermediate staging bases and then into drop zones with limited awareness of the developing situation on the ground. The only significant modernization has been single-channel UHF tactical satellite (TACSAT) voice and 25K data, which appeared in the field around the time of the U.S.-led invasion of Grenada in 1983.

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Current Marine Corps and Army Urgent Operational Needs statements (UONS) describe requirements for reliable links to en-route troops from the continental United States and/or theater bases. As recently as 2009, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff directed the services to maintain the capability for rapid deployment as part of the Global Response Force (GRF). More recent guidance includes the Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC) and Joint Concept for Entry Operations (JCEO), which require the ability to immediately employ capabilities in the presence of armed opposition, including advanced area-denial systems, while overcoming geographic challenges and degraded or austere infrastructure.

The primary goal of the military's new Enroute Mission Command Capability (EMC2) is to meet these extremely urgent requirements for improved in-flight communications capabilities to conduct planning and maintain SA while en route to an operational area. Specific JOAC and JCEO command and control capability requirements include:

  • The ability to maintain reliable connectivity and interoperability among major war-fighting headquarters and supported/supporting forces while en route.
  • The ability to create sharable, user-defined operating pictures from a common database to provide situational awareness (including friendly, enemy and neutral situations) across the domains.
  • Improvement of the capabilities for joint/multinational en-route planning and visualization tools for entry forces.
  • The ability to access the Global Information Grid at any location on the planet.

"The 75th Ranger Regiment airborne troop commander has historically been cut off from SA capabilities from the time he boards an aircraft until he arrives at the objective, " said COL Vanek, commander, 75th Ranger Regiment. In response, Regiment S-6 personnel developed a system, using mostly commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components to provide an SA display to each aircraft in the operation. Along with this hardware, the 75th Ranger Regiment developed a number of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) to install and operate the equipment, and plan for operational integration of this capability for forcible entry operations. Based on close collaboration with the 75th Ranger Regiment, enhancements were made to their foundational TTP by SOCOM, XVIII Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division and Joint Staff J6. These resultant TTP met the intent of what has been referred to traditionally as the "Abrams charter" and the more recent "Odierno charter":

"In January 1974, [GEN Creighton Abrams] sent a message to the field directing formation of a Ranger battalion. He selected its missions and picked the first officers. He felt a tough, disciplined and elite Ranger unit would set a standard for the rest of the United States Army and that, as Rangers graduated from Ranger units to regular Army units, their influence would improve the entire Army."

  • "The 75th Ranger Regiment will stand ready to execute the most difficult joint special operations and forcible entry missions required by our nation." (GEN Raymond Odierno)
  • The 75th Ranger Regiment's documented EMC2 lessons learned were tailored to meet the operational requirements necessary to support the GRF mission of the XVIII Airborne Corps.

The foundation for EMC2 used mostly COTS components to provide an SA display to each aircraft in the operation. The 75th Ranger Regiment, specifically, used a lightweight carbon-fiber console to set up and connect four laptops on a C-17 and on C-130 aircraft. The laptops belonged to the senior leader on each aircraft, two key leaders and one systems operator from the S-6. Also, a laptop was configured for the pilot/co-pilot to access the common operational picture (COP) and have chat capability in all the C2, fires and air chat rooms. The system used a commercial screen and projector (used at trade shows) that projected images from the front or rear of the aircraft while en route to an objective area.

Initially, the 75th Ranger Regiment team mounted the projector in the bubble at the rear of the C-17's flight deck and used its rear projection capability. The screen was hung (with zip ties and C-clamps) on the bulkhead at the front of the cargo compartment. The projector was connected to the console and displayed full-motion video from any source received at the console (e.g., unmanned aerial aircraft, U-28, etc.). In addition, a commercial "message board" or "stock ticker" displayed information keyed into it by the en-route S-6 systems operator. The "message board" provided visual updates received from troops already on the ground, as well as ISR feeds, execution checklist calls and battle damage assessment updates from the Joint Operations Center.

The EMC2 system on C-17s utilizes the Fixed Installation Satellite Antenna (FISA). The FISA is a Ku/Ka band, high-bandwidth antenna providing three megabits per second of throughput on a C-17 to receive COP, ISR feeds and SIPRNet connectivity. The FISA-enabled aircraft retransmits the same data to C-17s and/or C-130s in the formation using the AN/PRC-117G radio with the Airborne Networking Wideband Waveform (ANW2) waveform. The MC-130 H/J/P utilizes a hatch antenna bringing in the same capabilities.

The EMC2 project recently completed by Joint Staff J6 and Project Manager Warfighter Information Network-Tactical demonstrated enhanced situational awareness and validated TTP tailored to XVIII Airborne Corps missions. This was accomplished through test events with results that provided support to war-fighter acquisition decisions and Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and Education, Personnel and Facilities change requests. The team modified, tested and transitioned materiel solutions to provide an unprecedented level of ISR, full-motion video feeds, COP, chat, email and portal services from multiple manned and unmanned assets, e.g., high-definition ISR feeds (1.5MB at 30FPS). Based on the materiel solution, the team developed EMC2 Installation Guides that were validated by the 75th Ranger Regiment. All architectures and TTPs were tailored to XVIII Airborne Corps mission sets and were designed specifically for transition to the broader general-purpose forces. Primary beneficiaries of the EMC2 project include the Army XVIII Airborne Corps and Marine Corps SPMAGTF-CR both for AFRICOM and CENTCOM.

EMC2 now will be the primary means of satellite communications while the Secure Enroute Communications Package – Improved (SECOMP-I), which used INMARSAT to bring chat and radio over IP, will provide an alternate means of SATCOM. Current fielding includes a Ku band satellite antenna with a Priority Service Subscription plan that includes 1 Mbps off the plane and 4 Mbps to the plane. (The shared data through line-of-sight [LOS]ANW2 is only 1 Mbps due to the limitations of the UHF LOS antennas currently installed onto the aircraft.) Other improvements include Ku/Ka antennas for C-17 in fiscal 2017 and market research for C-130 SATCOM hatches. The Ku/Ka antenna also has been installed on an SLCA aircraft and is expected to be fielded in fiscal 2016 for additional aircraft (non C-17).

The EMC2 project helped eliminate the No. 1 gap/deficiency for Army GRF. Having reliable access to integrated air-ground COP, secure Voice over IP, web portal, chat, email, video teleconference and full-motion video ISR feeds to airborne task force while en route directly enhances the ability of the embarked force to collaboratively plan and react to changes on the battlefield. Prior to entering a tactical objective in a hostile environment, war fighters will now rely on real-time operational SA. This enables dynamic retasking and replanning as late as 20 minutes prior to exiting the aircraft. These advancements in SA have improved efficiency and effectiveness in all phases of the EMC2 mission:

  • Intermediate staging base.
  • Deployment.
  • Execution.
  • Air-land/expand the lodgment.
  • Redeployment.

Combatant Commands and other units that utilize Joint Tasks TA1.2.2 (Conduct Airborne Operations) and OP1.2.4.3 (Conduct Forced Entry) also benefit from this EMC2 solution.

The most challenging cultural change is to modernize joint doctrine as technology rapidly changes on the battlefield. From the chairman's guidance: "We must adapt to be increasingly agile ... Innovative solutions to joint capability gaps must be developed horizontally, across the joint force development enterprise, industry, and academia and vertically, from headquarters staffs to the war fighter."

The EMC2 project fulfilled the chairman's guidance by implementing the requirements identified in the JOAC and JCEO concepts that are necessary to support entry operations.

The deliverables for this project have passed strict and rigorous test procedures in numerous venues including quarterly 75th Ranger Regiment multi-lateral training events and real-world operations. They are undergirded by architecture products that make complex concepts and requirements easy for decision-makers to understand. By breaking down complexities using Department of Defense (DoD) Architecture Framework views that support scientific logic and system/process flow analysis, stakeholders within the EMC2 domain are able to articulate their particular interaction with other system stakeholders through architectural views, supporting documentation, diagrams, scientific logic and flow analysis. Specific results include:

  • Number 1 Global Response Force gap resolved for 18th Airborne Corps.
  • Over 1,000-percent increase in bandwidth available onboard individual en-route aircraft.
  • Marine Corps JUONS #14169A resolved for USMC 26th MEU, MARCENT.
  • 5 additional C-17 FISA installed as of December 2014 for the GRF, with an additional 30 by 2017.

Enhanced SA will support forcible entry missions through more robust en-route mission planning and rehearsal, increased air and ground situational awareness, and increased force protection for ground forces. Further, the GRF will be able to establish an airborne task force command post with wideband reach back to the Joint Information Environment and extend network service to the GRF's subscriber nodes using line-of-sight networking waveforms. The EMC2 immediately enhances DoD-wide communication capabilities, and also represents the innovation, transparency and collaboration required to deliver rapid, operationally relevant enterprise architecture results for the quickly evolving modern battlefield domain in a resource-constrained future.

EMC2 drove tactical to doctrinal change, enabling a far better ability to effectively command and control widely dispersed forces across distributed, nonlinear battle spaces. War fighters can now utilize communications and digital enablers for sharing situational awareness and secure, collaborative planning while en route to the objective. No longer is TACSAT voice the only link to the aircraft. Formation aircraft now form a combination of potentially networked C2 nodes. This dramatically changes en-route planning factors, such as number of FISA and IVE equipment available, flight formation/distance for ANW2, key leader locations, bandwidth allocations and network system latencies. It also drove changes for the en-route communications primary, alternate, contingency and emergency plans both for voice and data.

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