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HOLLOMAN AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. - The U.S. Joint Staff sponsored Coalition Capability Demonstration, also known as “Bold Quest”, recently wrapped up the fifteenth installment of joint force capability testing at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, and Fort Bliss, Texas.
Because Holloman, Fort Bliss and White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, have an existing cooperative agreement, southern New Mexico was a perfect fit to host the event. The host military installations provide a similar environment to that of major deployed locations, as well as the space and facilities to test coalition capabilities.
“This Bold Quest we had 14 partner nations and over 1,000 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines that participated from the different partners and the United States,” said Lt. General Mark Bowman, Director, Command, Control, Communications and Computers / Cyber, Joint Staff, J6.
BQ Partner nations include Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden and United Kingdom.
“In this particular Bold Quest, we stressed the network,” said Bowman. “We have never brought a coalition network in before, and this time we had a mission partner environment where people could talk on a coalition network. There were huge advances forward in every other area because they were all connected on the network.”
“The other big event with this Bold Quest was bringing [Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance] in,” said Bowman. “ISR is in huge demand, and was used by all the nations to complete the mission.”
ISR was used in Bold Quest 15.2 to drive operations and target engagement across multiple initiatives and throughout the common joint forcible entry operation scenarios.
Bold Quest 15.2 also focused on several other aspects of interoperability including Joint Fire Support, Integrated Air and Missile Defense, Digitally Aided Close Air Support, Friendly Force Tracking and Ground-Air Situational Awareness and Live/Virtual Environment.
Joint Fire Support had 13 of the nations participating with 27 distinct system types, exercising multiple nation and cross-service threads. Joint Fire Observers from seven nations demonstrated digital interoperability in a live fire event with the U.S. and Norwegian Howitzers and U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems.
Bold Quest’s main focus is to prevent friendly fire-related deaths from happening in future war-fighting scenarios, which automatically makes Integrated Air and Missile Defense a main focus of functionality.
Integrated Air and Missile Defense included demonstration for engagement authority during live and simulated sorties between Blue Force and opposing force events. These demonstrations focused on air-to-air, surface-to-air, and air-to-surface engagements in a complex air and surface environment.
Troops on the ground are what wars have always been about. However, protecting those troops has evolved, along with technology. Digitally Aided Close Air Support now offers a quick response to support aid and protect ground forces during man-to-man conflicts.
During Bold Quest 15.2, 12 of the nations provided more than 70 Joint Terminal Attack Controllers to show interoperability between systems including the use of Digitally-Aided Close Air Support.
The use of friendly nation systems during Bold Quest heavily focused on shared situational awareness between U.S. and Coalition hand-held Friendly Forces Tracking systems. These systems were given working standards and provided ground tracks to fixed wing aircrews conducting CAS for situational awareness and fratricide avoidance.
Bold Quest 15.2 was set in a live and virtual environment. While there were many live fire, simulated fire and field training demonstrations, the coalition hosted many virtual and Augmented-Reality missions.
“We’ve never had opportunities to train in an area like we have had here,” said Bowman. “We’ve had wonderful support from the [Federal Aviation Administration] allowing us to use this gear and these frequencies here. We had hundreds of sorties (many times that simulated) flying around in the airspace, a huge battle space and great contributions from all those that came down to participate.”
| Date Taken: | 10.21.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 11.02.2015 10:10 |
| Story ID: | 180567 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 140 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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