Photo By Master Sgt. Daryl Knee | The Command and Control Expeditionary team for Combined Joint Task Force – Resolute...... read more read more
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A small team working out of a10-by-15-foot cramped office space on loan in the back of the Combined Joint Task Force – Resolute Sentinel 2024 headquarters made history as it published the air tasking orders from June 4-6, 2024, for every air asset belonging U.S. Southern Command’s joint force air component commander.
And to create this vital sitemap for all of South America’s airspace, they used equipment that took just over two hours to set up, and some pre-approvals from the very top to get the job done.
“We proved we can be given conditions-based authorities from the JFACC to approve the flying schedule for all assets under 12th Air Force (Air Forces Southern),” said U.S. Air Force Maj. Jacob Ferris, the lead for a newly created function called Command and Control Expeditionary, or C2X. “I didn’t have to report back and say, ‘Hey, this is what I’m doing – are you OK with it?’ I understand his intent, and I understand the mission, and I know what right looks like.”
U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Evan Pettus, AFSOUTH commander, dual hats as the JFACC and gave conditions-based approval for Ferris to test this new capability during RS24, a three-week long partnership-building event aimed at honing South America and U.S. allies’ capabilities to support humanitarian assistance, combat operations and disaster relief in the southern hemisphere while enhancing force readiness, strengthening partnerships and increasing interoperability.
Part of the exercise included testing participating nations’ abilities for Agile Combat Employment, a concept that encourages small, mobile and highly trained teams who can rapidly respond to a threat and then leave immediately to set up operations in a new location. These are newer concepts, and it can be difficult to break the mindset of always having a large, established base of operations in reach for resupply and persistent communications.
To get after that mindset, AFSOUTH developed C2X to deliver on-site support directly to the RS24 senior leadership team, to move forward in the absence of direction without having to wait for reach-back approval or support.
“C2X is a means to be a distributed operational level of command and control,” said Ferris, who leads the 12-member team of experts. “It’s tailorable and customizable to what is needed. This new function is paramount, because when we think about what the next fight could look like, communications are going to be an issue. We have to be able to be small and agile with Multi-Capable Airmen to reduce the footprint of our operations.”
That “typical” C2 footprint can be rather large. For instance, the U.S. Air Force uses a complex weapon system called the Air Operations Center, which has evolved over the last three decades into a static facility with a multi-million dollar building infrastructure for a group of sometimes more than 200 Airmen to plan, produce and execute operational C2 of assigned air assets.
One of the more visible products of the AOC is the ATO, a document that plans out missions in a 24-hour period, to include the assignment and tracking of aircraft, calls signs, times and targets.
During a portion of the exercise, the C2X team and the AOC back at AFSOUTH planned a period to switch off communications completely, leaving the players of RS24 without a direct line to senior leadership decisions. However, the support the C2X team provided replicated that same level of support with zero disruptions in flying status.
The intent was to be 100% disconnected from the AOC, but the current architecture and systems don’t allow for that fully, Ferris said about the current limiting factors. The team is still net-scaled into the AOC to use their available software, but the next step would be to field a communications fly-away kit that uses a cloud-based and or standalone version of the software. That way, if the AOC was destroyed or they lose the weapon systems data, the C2X team, as that mini-AOC forward, could continue the mission.
“The ability to federate or distribute Command and Control is something that AOCs across the Air Force are currently testing, and it’s driving innovation across all commands,” Pettus said. “We’ve had the unique opportunity within AFSOUTH to field test our concepts. We’ve proven that it can work, but we’re not there yet – we’ve got a long road ahead of us. The needs of tomorrow require us to be agile in thought and courageous in implementation, and I know we’ve got the right Airmen working on the future of C2.”
That future of C2 isn’t exclusively a U.S. problem, either. Expeditious C2 capabilities and sleek modern methodology can impact certain parts of how the global community links aircraft communications, tracks data and assigns aircraft to targets, and interprets and shares intelligence.
“Resolute Sentinel 2024 is the perfect example of how having this mobile capability can reassure allies and build trust and support among the international community,” Ferris said. “Peru is interested in increasing and making their AOC capabilities more robust. They know that the U.S. has many examples of different AOCs to look at, but in the future, maybe we don’t need these giant buildings. We can have a smaller footprint while still achieving the desired end state.
“The C2X team is proving that the capability can be done with an extra-small team,” he added. “There’s a middle ground that makes sense for each country in relation to the size of their area of operations and military end strength. Our success here shows our partners that we can reduce the cost of infrastructure while encouraging all our buy-in to Agile Combat Employment concepts.”
The hope, Ferris said, is that the concepts proved during RS24 resonate with the mid-level senior leaders in charge of the exercise now. These officers will very likely be the future military decision makers for the participating countries, and all are stronger together when sharing best practices for command and control.
| Date Taken: | 06.14.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 06.14.2024 10:38 |
| Story ID: | 473984 |
| Location: | LIMA, PE |
| Web Views: | 323 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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