Weapons: Towards a hard-hitting joint fires capability | ADM July 2009
Tom Muir | Canberra
The ADF has been more than capable of delivering ‘effects' through air strikes, naval gunfire and the Army's artillery and mortars, but it has never been able to coordinate such fires, other than at a very basic level, when complex engagements call for Joint Offensive Support (JOS) operations.
Indeed, the coordination of an offensive fires capability across the three services is an aspect of Land 17 that has been largely overshadowed by the proposed introduction of new artillery systems.
But with the planned introduction of the new artillery systems came the realisation that significant improvements to current and planned systems would need to be implemented to improve the ADF's ability to undertake JOS in a complex warfighting environment.
What was singularly lacking was a command and control system that addressed the automation, situation awareness, de-confliction, fires allocation and planning for joint fires.
The quest for a means to plan and coordinate such fires began back in 2005 with a reference from Defence to the collaborative Defence/Industry RPDE program, which speeds the uptake of new capabilities in the NCW environment.
Accepting the challenge, an RPDE Joint Fires
study team set out to determine what improvements were needed to existing and planned systems.
It wasn't long before they discovered that there were major problems ahead:
• ADF communications and C2 systems were insufficient or non-existent,
• In regard to training, culture and so on, the ADF organisation needed to further evolve to fully enable joint offensive support, and
• The coordination of the planning and execution phases of JOS operations in complex warfighting was seen as less than optimal.
On the first point, it was clear that the problems with the provision of a digital bearer system to support the automated exchange of data for joint fires were wide ranging.
The Army had no digital bearer capability and while this was to have been resolved by JP 2072, Battlefield Communications System - Land (BCS-L) with the first capability set for introduction around 2010, there was little confidence in the delivery of such a capability within the required timeframe.
This was evident insofar as project staff from both Land 17 and Land 75 were independently investigating bearer systems for their respective battle management systems (BMS), while Land 125 had already acquired a number of digital EPLRS radios to trial their dismounted C2 system.
Their misgivings were borne out when, the prime systems integrator for JP 2072, General Dynamics Canada, had their contract terminated in late 2007.
Army also lacked connectivity with Air Force assets operating radio systems, such as HAVEQUICK II, and had to rely on voice transmissions for air support operations.
Similarly Navy does not operate radios compatible with military VHF systems, the predominant land radio.
To cap these drawbacks, Army at the time had very limited ability to exchange digital information over tactical bearers.
This was due to a dearth of systems capable of digital output, a lack of adequate digital radios, and no automated tactical information exchange systems (tactical data links).
Although the longer-term integration of land-based radio systems was seen as the responsibility of JP 2072, it nevertheless was felt that the project would not be able to provide the bearers to support a modern C2 system, along the lines of those under study.
Joint Fires C2
The lack of a C2 system capable of the effective coordination of fires from land, air and maritime assets turned out to be the prevailing issue for an ADF joint fires capability.
Enabling the ADF to become a more informed customer for command and control systems, together with suitable training, were seen as the most pressing needs for the development of ADF Joint Fires C2.
C2 systems are the basis for integrating the effects of joint fires and land based indirect fire weapons with ground and air operations.
Such a system comprises personnel, procedures required to plan and execute fires, and the communications network.
Personnel exercise command, select targets, plan, execute and assess the results of fires from joint and indirect fires, and administer the field artillery system.
Procedures address the tactics and techniques used to employ the field artillery system.
The communications network distributes orders and reports, in accordance with the tactics, techniques and procedures, throughout the field artillery system.
While the ADF was more than capable of deploying individual units to conduct single service elements of Joint Fires capability, it had failed to exercise, train or maintain a Joint Fires C2 capability.
This meant that the Battlegroups in the new Army structure had to rely on a supporting artillery unit for the provision of JOS coordination expertise.
And while Infantry units were structured for this capability through the Mortar platoon commander, units such as Armoured Regiments did not have JOS coordination capabilities.
A warfighting experiment was designed to investigate and demonstrate the benefits of a modern tactical command and control system to Joint Fires with the intention of aligning experimental results to timely advice for the milestones of major and minor projects in related areas.
Related market surveys for available Joint Fires tactical C2 systems were also reviewed including a trade study on potential candidate items.
These included the US Army's Advanced Field Artillery Data System (AFATDS), Kongsberg's ComBatt - Artillery Fire Support, and another would have been the ATLAS system offered by Thales Australia as part of the Caesar SP 155mm howitzer package, withdrawn following changes to the Land 17 requirement.
It was anticipated the outcome would provide the ADF with costed options for the Joint Fires tactical C2 system to be investigated within the experiment.
How far the study team went with the warfighting experiment ADM doesn't know, beyond demonstrations, with support from Raytheon Australia, of the US Army's AFATDS artillery fire support system.
And while the release of the RPDE Joint Fires Study report was restricted to those government and industry personnel contributing to (and paying for) the task, it was evident to us that there was only one system that would be able to satisfy the ADF's ambitions for effective coordination of fires in joint and coalition operations, and which could provide all the C2 capabilities sought by Land 17.
AFATDS was duly selected as the BMS-Fires C2 component of Land 17 and has now been acquired through an FMS case.
Procurement of the system was approved on 31 March 2009.
Compatibility testing with the M198 gun system configuration with the Excalibur projectile, using AFATDS and the Australian portable Excalibur fire control system, have been successfully completed.
AFATDS manages complex fire support integration and control and allows Naval Fire Support and Close Air Support to be called for fire missions.
An illustration of its utility (and pervasiveness) is that the same software running at a platoon fire unit is the same as that which runs at a US Corps Fire Support Element.
The system can be operated using numerous protocols and message formats including VMF.
Indirect Fire training
An Army Minor Project was raised to provide for the replacement of the existing indirect fire simulators at the Combined Arms Training Centre and Land Command units, along with a Forward Air Controller training capability.
This is being achieved through the acquisition of the Indirect Fire Trainer (IFT) and the Indirect Fire Forward Air Controller Trainer (I-FACT) systems from Meggitt Training Systems which is also providing training to client units.
The Indirect Fire Trainer (IFT) provides realistic artillery, mortar and naval gunfire training without the added expense of ammunition or real estate.
The system accurately supports the forward observer's real world duties and responsibilities.
Training is conducted in three dimensional terrain databases providing the trainee full and unrestricted movement over scores of virtual kilometres.
Instructors may create their own offensive and defensive scenario operations or develop basic forward observer range courses of varying degrees of difficulty using the built-in scenario generation tool kit.
The tool kit comes with over 300 targets ranging over armour, infantry, wheeled vehicles, aircraft, man-made objects, obstacles and civilians.
The I-FACT supports training for Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC), Joint Forward Observers (JFO's), Naval Gunfire Observers and Fire Support Planning.
These training objectives are achieved through a variety of solutions that include classroom and laptop based training as well as add-on options that can be bundled with other systems.
Virtual training missions are many and wide-ranging and include fixed and rotary wing close air support missions, close air support using bomber aircraft, AC-130 Gunship close air support, close air support planning, coordination and de-confliction of aircraft, simultaneous attack of targets using both fixed and rotary wing aircraft, and Naval Gunfire Support missions.