One of the problems increasingly exercising the minds of military commanders is the development of long-range, high-speed strike weapons. Such weapons may be capable of travelling at hypersonic speeds and the (relative) ease with which an adversary may strike with little warning, and over long distances, is alarming.
While it is relatively easy to connect the myriad sensors available to commanders of a joint force – which stretch from undersea to geo-stationary orbit and everywhere in between – together, the volumes of data they are able to provide must be assembled, processed within seconds, and a decision on how to respond – and with which effector – will need to be taken very rapidly in the future battlespace.
Exercise Valiant Shield is a biennial exercise conducted in the US Indo Asia Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) theatre of operations and the ninth in the series concluded in late June. According to the US Navy, Valiant Shield is a joint Field Training Exercise (FTX) “focussed on integration between US forces in current operational plans.”
In 2022, the exercise was conducted in the Joint Range Marianas area, which includes Palau, Naval Base Guam, Andersen Air Force Base and the offshore Mariana Island Range complex. Concluding on June 17, the 12-day exercise comprised over 200 ships, aircraft and vehicles from all four US services and across hundreds of miles of ocean.
While it is a US-only exercise, some of the interesting developments trialled during Valiant Shield 2022 were such rapid-decision-making tools that could be of interest to Australia in the future, as it looks to develop a Joint Air Battle Management System under Project Air 6500.
“Conducting Valiant Shield in the Western Pacific provided precise opportunities to exercise the Joint Task Force’s real-world tactical mission, execute long-range fires, and visualise those successes,” explained the US Navy’s lead planner for the exercise, Lieutenant Commander Logan Ridley. “Valiant Shield provides a venue to test current and new technologies and platforms, such as multi-intelligence source artificial intelligence (AI) experiments.”
The exercise combined the Virtualised Aegis Weapon System (VAWS) being developed by the US Navy in conjunction with Lockheed Martin, with a decision-making tool from Lockheed Martin called DiamondShield. The latter utilises algorithms derived from the gaming world together with AI to rapidly gather and assess threats in a three-dimensional battlespace and across a wide area.
Trials of this Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) initiative in conjunction with Lockheed Martin began in the US-Australia Talisman Sabre 2019 exercise and has progressed through Valiant Shield 2020, Talisman Sabre 2021 and Exercise Northern Edge (a US Army exercise) also in 2021.
“At Valiant Shield 2022, we used DiamondShield multi-domain command and control system to monitor existing blue and red force positions and optimise weapon-target pairings across the theatre. As new threats emerged, it automatically updated pop-up target data – a process that supports Dynamic Targeting – to help analysts monitor the operating picture in real time, determine the best course of action and act quickly,” Andrew Cook, the technical lead for Lockheed Martin at the exercise said.
“If a pop-up threat suddenly appears, you have to know what friendly units are in range, what sensors can deliver targeting details, and who has the best chance of engaging that threat. During the exercise, DiamondShield used AI to automatically analyse hundreds of potential scenarios, and present commanders with the best solutions. That way, analysts don’t spend time chasing down data and can focus on making the best decision quickly.”
Once the DiamondShield system selected a response, the data was passed to one of four VAWS systems being used in Valiant Shield, which in-turn selected the best effector to deal with the threat.
In the Australian Joint Air Battle Management context, Lockheed Martin Australia and Northrop Grumman Australia are currently competing in the second stage of Defence’s Competitive Evaluation Process (CEP).
“Australia has very much been part of the development of this new concept of JADC2. The sorts of capabilities which exist today could very well be the same capabilities the ADF will employ in the future – whichever companies they source it from,” explained Lockheed Martin Australia’s Director of Business Development Neale Prescott.
“Large scale defence exercises like Valiant Shield, Talisman Sabre, and Northern Edge are key to evolving complex, vital military capabilities that contribute to regional and global security.” Further he said, “It allows us to test operational rules of engagement and diplomacy channels in real-time, which strengthens interoperability between Australia, the US and allied nations.”
