For the first time, the Joint Staff’s coalition capability assessment known as Bold Quest has aligned with the Army’s Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) in an event known as NIE/BQ 14.2, sharing resources and saving money while using White Sands Missile Range N.M., Holloman AFB, N.M., and Ft. Bliss, Texas.
Photo: Tech Sgt. Joe Laws
At the same time, the events offered a joint training opportunity, as there were NIE soldiers on the ground, a Marine battalion and coalition force personnel and aircraft from different units participating in the events. This offered the 1st Armor Div., based at Ft. Bliss, the opportunity to train as a Joint Task Force headquarters.
John Miller, Bold Quest operation manager for the Joint Staff, said the May 3-22 event and alignment with NIE is a proof of concept to “get as much bang as possible out of the dollar” for test and training involving two established experimentation, demonstration and capabilities assessments.
Bold Quest and the NIE are essentially stand-alone events, and in this first venture are not directly connected and essentially are looking at different things.
Bold Quest involves the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines as well as U.S. Special Operations Command personnel who join representatives from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, United Kingdom and NATO as participants and observers. There are some 875 personnel on-site and a couple hundred more operating or supporting the assessment from distributed locations, Miller said during a media roundtable May 16.
Bold Quest’s operational assessments are now focused on future operations, compared to past years emphasis on improving equipment for current conflict.
NIE/BQ 14.2, for example, is focusing on areas such as: Digitally Aided Close Air Support,
Photo: Sgt. Vincent Byrd, 2nd BCT, 1st AD, Public Affairs
Friendly Force Tracking, Ground-to-Air Situational Awareness, Joint Fires Support Joint Mission Thread, Integrated Air and Missile Defense and the Live/Virtual Capability Development Environment.
Among the Army’s key NIE objectives are assessing the network’s ability to provide timely situational awareness while conducting Joint Force entry operations, and to simplify and protect the network.
The NIE/BQ14.2 draws on military and civilian warfighters, developers, and analysts in a unique problem-solving cooperative that aims to inform current and future investments in proven solutions to help develop Joint Force 2020.
During a Bold Quest roundtable with reporters, Miller said while the assessment is not complete, “we are learning what we are able to do as well as not able to do.” A lot of data is being collected.
Bold Quest is not able to completely combine the network and the coalition network, so technical and policy areas will be examined after the assessments are complete.
A lot of ground position location information is flowing from NIE/BQ14.2, Miller said, with more than 1,000 position locations from soldiers and equipment that is a valuable resource for BQ work and in fleshing out the situational awareness picture.
While BQ information couldn’t feed directly to the NIE, the data could be passed to the JTF, which used it for JTF training.
Miller said some equipment being assessed has been there before, been improved, used and is back again, the combat ID server, for example. It was developed in BQ, deployed to Afghanistan and since has come back repeatedly and improved each time.
Joseph Chacon from the Joint Staff J6 Directorate said, “Technology doesn’t stagnate,” new standards are continually coming out and “new capabilities allow us to continue to exploit Bold Quest to develop and test them.”
U.K. National Lead, Royal Air Force Sqadron Leader Darren Leverton said learning from the BQ assessment will be used to inform the U.K. air-land integration work, and aid development efforts such as their Combat ID server..
Steve Finch, deputy U.K. national lead, said the United Kingdom is still in the research and development stage with the combat ID server, so as standards move on, and technical changes are made, from the U.K. perspective it’s really important to learn from such events as NIE/BQ14.2 as they work to take their equipment R&D into mainstream funded programs.
Italian Navy Lt. Cmdr. Antonio Labbate said for Italy, too, it was important to test systems with coalition systems as they are developing.
Coalition partners agree building interoperability up front is most effective.
It’s hard to quantify how many systems are being assessed in each area of the assessment, Miller said. “There are 37 different U.S. and allied systems in the Joint Fires area alone, and 18 in the digitally aided Close Air Support area.
Focused on the tactical arena, BQ is a multi-layered event. Miller offered a vignette that touched BQ and the NIE. A BQ Joint Tactical Air Control (JTAC) party went to a site on WSMR, and as the scenario developed, they needed to be extracted. A quick reaction force from the NIE was dispatched–live soldiers–to extract the BQ JTAC, who simultaneously was in touch with an AC-130 aircrew at Hurlburt (Field, Fla.) via simulation.
Each BQ cycle, Miller said, pushes the boundaries of information sharing. While all BQ/NIE 14.2 participants weren’t able to get on the same network, numerous agencies were watching how things went, and there’s a lot of interest in the possibilities and opportunities, he said.