U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) kicked off its Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (CWID) at USJFCOM's Joint Systems Integration Center (JSIC) in Suffolk (Virginia) today.
CWID, a global annual event directed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and sponsored by USJFCOM, investigates and assesses command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance technologies as potential solutions to near-term warfighter and agency capability gaps.
During CWID 2009-2010, USJFCOM is the host combatant command for the demonstration.
Navy Capt. Kevin Ruce, CWID host combatant command lead, said information sharing technologies like those under in evaluation in CWID could improve decision-making and operational flexibility on the battlefield and during crisis response on the home front.
He said the demonstration looks for new technologies that are interoperable with both U.S. and allied militaries' current technologies.
"That's where it gets a little more tricky because each country has their own technologies," Ruce explained. "We'll do interoperability testing on say a British technology and a U.S. technology that we may want to deploy."
"One of the big pushes this year is to make it more realistic, operational relevant, the scenario in the past was just a generic scenario of the west," said Ruce.
According to Ruce, the technologies will be evaluated against real world conditions such as those found in Afghanistan, as well as disaster relief scenarios like civilian authority response to wild fires.
The command anticipates conducting more than 20 trials at the JSIC location and approximately 55 trials at each of the five other U.S. locations during the demonstration.
"We have in fact, a U.S. Army trial in this year's CWID that if after receiving an assessment, it meets requirements, then the new capability may be fielded with U.S. forces in support of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan," Ruce said.
In addition to JSIC, U.S. main demonstration locations include:
• Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, Dahlgren, Va.• Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, San Diego, Calif.
• Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass.
• North American Aerospace Defense Command – U.S. Northern Command, Peterson AFB, Colo.
International coalition demonstration locations include:
• Canberra, Australia
• Ottawa, Canada
• Porirua, New Zealand
• Portsdown West, United Kingdom
• NATO at Lillehammer, Norway.
The demonstration ends June 26.
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