Fire Control

Sea Power, Mar 2006 by Klamper, Amy

Joint fires has become such a hot area in recent years that the U.S. Joint Forces Command in February 2005 stood up a subordinate command with the sole mandate of improving it. The group, dubbed the Joint Fires Integration and Interoperability Team (JFIIT) aims to develop a new model for joint fires that can be incorporated into training, standards and doctrine, according to JFIIT's operations officer, Army Lt. Col. Dale Ringler.

He said the JFIIT staff, comprising some 140 uniformed, civilian and contractor personnel at Eglin Air Force Base, FIa., is charged with breaking the broad issue of joint fires down into subsets that can be tackled individually through experimentation and analysis.

For example, integrated command and control for joint fires is one area singled out for attention in a November 2004 Defense Science Board study. The study was critical of the fact that, at the time, there was no concentrated effort to improve inter-service joint fire support. Today, as the services work these and other problems, Joint Forces Command is trying to help shape and guide their efforts, Ringler said.

Marine Lt. Col. Steve Banta, JFIITs command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance division chief, said one of the group's largest initiatives is the Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment 2006 (JEFX-06), which will take place at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev, in late April and early May. With the Air Force as the lead service, JEFX-06 will address gaps in joint fires based on lessons learned from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Banta said JFIIT's role will be to act as the analytical arm to help the Air Force look at these gaps and the initiatives proposed to fix them. One unique aspect of this experiment, he said, is that it aims to aid military leaders in making informed decisions in fielding equipment related to the experiment in the 18 months following it.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Shannon Coulter said the Navy's role in JEFX-06, the sixth in a series of large-scale multiservice experiments to evaluate new operations and concepts, will involve a look at how they use Army and Air Force assets to prosecute time-sensitive maritime targets when there is no Navy intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance or weapon systems of their own in the vicinity to handle a call.

Hypothetically, "if the Navy has a need for fires, they would have to call them from a Navy asset, despite the possibility that a carrier might not be available," said Coulter, the group's air targeting division chief. However, if there were unused Air Force assets in the area, Navy commanders need to know how to call on those assets, and the supporting service needs to know how to quickly process that request for fires to get warheads on target quickly.

"It all just doesn't happen," said Joint Forces Command spokesman Lt. James Krohne. "We have to conduct exercises jointly and JFIIT is the objective observer to monitor and support exercises to make recommendations to improve the joint fires process."