630 ELSS on quest to improve combat identification

  • Published
  • By Patty Welsh
  • 66th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. --  A major key to military decision making is being confident of where your friends and foes are.

The 630th Electronic Systems Squadron from Hanscom Air Force Base recently participated in the Joint Forces Command-led Bold Quest 2009 exercise, trying out a new air-to-ground technology where fixed-wing aircraft now have the capability to help distinguish forces on the ground.

The technology is Radio Based Combat Identification (RBCI). The aircraft implementation of RBCI utilizes a Rockwell Collins Quint Networking Technology (QNT) radio, modified to accept the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS) waveform, widely used by military ground radios.

Incorporated into any suitable targeting pod - for this exercise, a LITENING pod - RBCI has the capability to increase a pilot's situational awareness by interrogating radios on the ground at great ranges to determine if the object is part of a friendly force, ultimately reducing chances of fratricide.

After months of preparing and working out issues through lab tests at Northrop Grumman in Rolling Meadows, Ill., and flight tests at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., the RBCI was put to the test.

Bold Quest 2009 ran from Oct. 27 through Nov. 5 at Camp Lejeune, N.C., although the F-16 Block 30 aircrafts carrying the air-to-ground RBCI capability were staged out of the 158th Fighter Wing Detachment at Langley Air Force Base, Va. More than 800 personnel and coalition partners from Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom participated in the exercise.

Bold Quest 2009 focused on testing air and ground units' ability to exchange information and improve coalition warfighters' ability to identify friendly forces on the ground.

"JFCOM was in charge of Bold Quest and the scripted demonstrations of multiple capabilities," said Capt. John Whichelow, Electro Optical Combat ID Capabilities program manager at Hanscom Air Force Base. "They put together scenarios in which SINCGARS radios were placed on vehicles and individuals and informed the F-16 pilots above to gather battlefield situational awareness as they would normally do, but to use the RBCI capability to the fullest extent to make their assessment easier."

Pilots would fly to a target area and then have the pod interrogate that area, anywhere from 500 meters to two kilometers to determine if there were friendly forces in the engagement area. In a tactical environment, if a friendly ground radio is interrogated, it will automatically respond with GPS coordinates to the pilot's query and be notated on the aircraft's multifunctional display (MFD).

It will show friendlies are in the area with the placement of small green 'X''s at their location. Additionally, the pilot will get a large red 'X' across the MFD and the words: "Don't shoot."

As this new RBCI capability is an added technology within a targeting pod, it makes it easy to implement. The pod attaches as a plug-and-play system on the underside of any military aircraft that has already been certified to carry this type of pod.

The Bold Quest pilots said RBCI was intuitive and required minimal training to use.

"There are already more than 300,000 SINGCARS radios fielded with the Army, making the air-to-ground RBCI capability not only the next logical step in complete situational awareness, but the most cost effective step, since the infrastructure is already present," said Captain Whichelow. "Using this waveform from the air allows us to have a cooperative technology where the radios respond directly to being queried."

Laser Target Imaging tested too

To further improve combat effectiveness and reduce the likelihood of friendly fire incidents, the pilots during Bold Quest had another technology within the LITENING pod, called Laser Target Imaging, which the 630th ELSS has continued to enhance throughout the past eight years. If, for some reason, there wasn't a ground radio response and a pilot still had doubts the area was clear, the Laser Target Imaging Program (LTIP) capability could help him determine what he was seeing.

The LTIP technology is able to image and identify friends or targets at tactically significant ranges in real time. It works to help identify "non-cooperative" targets, ground elements lacking a cooperative technology to allow them to respond to an electronic query.

"On the fourth day of the Bold Quest exercise, the pilot could see something behind some trees at more than five nautical miles, but he wasn't sure what. He turned on the LTIP and was able to clearly determine that it was two HMMWVs," said Captain Whichelow.

The RBCI (cooperative) and LTIP (non-cooperative) capabilities working together makes it simple to distinguish between a 'good' guy and a 'bad' guy.

"When you combine the LTIP with RBCI, it improves a pilot or decision-maker's confidence that they know what they are looking at," said Maj. Abdiel Peart, flight commander, Combat ID Capabilities.

The primary goal of testing RCBI in a tactical environment such as Bold Quest was for a military utility assessment. The JFCOM analysts will review all the data collected during the flying days to see what is the best approach for a fixed-wing pod-mounted interrogator.

Except for one cancellation due to weather, dedicated flights incorporating the technologies ran every day of Bold Quest, except Sunday. Captain Whichelow said everything with the technologies worked as intended.

"Before you could only interrogate ground-to-ground, but now we have the air tied in," he said.

"From our perspective, this has been very successful," said Major Peart.

In addition to acquiring the RBCI military utility assessment, the 630th ELSS also looked to take away pilot recommendations on ways to make the systems even more effective.

According to Captain Whichelow, Lt. Col. John Rahill, a pilot from the Vermont Air National Guard, said that participating in Bold Quest and getting to utilize these cutting edge technologies was an "awesome experience," and he wished he had more time to use them. After his examination of the system, Colonel Rahill provided operation recommendations that the 630 ELSS will use to further enhance the RBCI technology.