Photo By Pfc. Savannah Olvera | Industry partners supporting the 10th Mountain Division (LI) and United States Central...... read more read more
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U.S. Central Command senior leaders and industry partners conducted Exercise Desert Guardian, Sept. 30 through Oct. 4, on Fort Drum. Exercise Desert Guardian focused on innovating the way the U.S. Army responds to unmanned aerial systems in large-scale combat environments.
To bring this vision to life, Soldiers from 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (LI), operated tracking interfaces fed by several different sensor systems and confirmed congruent data between their systems.
“We’re on computers looking around these systems flying around the area,” said Spc. Vanquez Adams, an indirect fire infantryman assigned to 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team. “We’re using those capabilities they have to read the signals they send and gain a picture without an actual camera.”
The desired end state of the exercise is a streamlined method of identifying, assessing, and reacting to adversarial UAS threats. Exercise Desert Guardian aimed to achieve this by having several different systems feed into the same interface, in which 10th Mountain Division (LI) Soldiers must properly discern the attributes and classification of the UAS entity.
“Desert Guardian is a proof of concept,” said U.S. Army Maj. Bryan Cercy, a U.S. CENTCOM operations officer. “When focusing on counter-UAS specifically, there are a lot of systems that are out there at Soldiers’ fingertips, but a lot of those systems do not talk to each other.”
“What we’re doing right now requires a bunch of different people looking at a bunch of different data,” said U.S. Air Force Col. Nate Huston, U.S. CENTCOM director of innovation and capability integration. “If we can get all this information onto a single pane of glass, we can start pulling that data all together.”
A refined process of appropriately recognizing and responding to such conflicts is more important than ever due to the growing prevalence of UAS systems on the modern battlefield.
“Counter-UAS is not just the threat of the future, it’s the threat of the present,” said Sky Moore, U.S. CENTCOM chief technology officer. “For us, the importance of narrowing those screens to as few as humanly possible isn’t just a matter of efficiency, but it’s because it will save people’s lives.”
When Soldiers facing UAS threats can have anywhere from two hours to two minutes to coordinate the correct identification and countermeasure to the object, condensing information to one system eliminates unnecessary action and stimulus in situations where every second counts more than the last.
“When you have only one screen to look at instead of 12, that means the decision space that you have is entirely different, and that’s why this is such a critical problem to address,” Moore said.
Moore also emphasized the importance of Exercise Desert Guardian being held in collaboration with the 10th Mountain Division.
“To us there was no other place that we could do this, there was no other partner,” Moore said. “There is a mentality of innovating on the ground and innovating in contact that the 10th Mountain Division (LI) has always embodied.”
Moore also insisted on how valuable it was to specifically have the input of 10th Mountain Division (LI) Soldiers for the success of the exercise.
“10th Mountain deploys to the CENTCOM area of responsibility frequently; they are the users of this system,” Moore said. “We’re not trying to play pretend about who will be using this. Here we have the actual people who are going to be dealing with one of the most active regions on the planet for counter-UAS activities.”
Adams agreed that the technology in combination with the tactics, techniques, and processes established in Exercise Desert Guardian would provide life-saving efficiency.
“Because of the user interface, it’s way simpler than our previous systems,” Adams said. “Now it’s as simple as saying ‘Hey do we both see this?’ and then taking action on it.”
| Date Taken: | 10.15.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 10.15.2024 15:21 |
| Story ID: | 483094 |
| Location: | FORT DRUM, NEW YORK, US |
| Web Views: | 261 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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