HOHENFELS, Germany (Aug. 30, 2015) -- After years of conducting training within the confines of the Army's major training areas in Germany, the 7th Army Joint Multinational Training Command, or JMTC, is branching out with a new way to connect training throughout Europe.
JMTC has been exporting training in Europe for decades, but what once was limited to small mobile training teams or isolated exercises is now becoming massive operations, which span across the borders of multiple nations to create realistic and dynamic scenarios.
It's a seismic shift for military training in Europe. Multinational exercises, which include thousands of participants, sometimes thousands of kilometers apart, are now being executed seamlessly and simultaneously.
Exercise Swift Response 15 is the latest in the series of these new trans-European exercises, and it may be the most ambitious. The U.S. Army Europe-led exercise is built around a multinational airborne joint forcible entry operation spanning four European nations.
More than 4,800 participants from 11 NATO nations will demonstrate the alliance's ability to operate from intermediate staging bases in Europe while conducting simultaneous airborne operations and follow-on missions in Bulgaria, Germany, Italy and Romania. It's the largest airborne training exercise on European soil since the Cold War.
Connecting the dispersed training events of Swift Response 15 is a challenging task, but the planners and trainers from the JMRC here - the Army's only overseas combat training center - have come up with an interesting solution. They are leaning heavily on a combination of boots-on-the-ground trainers and digital instrumentation to present, influence and analyze the battlefield - all within a single operational scenario.
Before the start of Swift Response 15, Army trainers - known as observer/coach-trainers, or OCTs - deployed from Hohenfels to Bulgaria, Italy, Romania and western Germany to provide the ground-level feedback typical of an exercise at a combat training center.
With them came a Raytheon-developed system, known as the Mobile Instrumentation System, or MIS, which is now living up to its motto of "Extending Connected Training Anywhere." The core of the MIS is a network of audio-visual capture and transmitting devices that monitor and track the progress of the training, both in isolated locations in eastern Europe and exercise control back in Germany.
"This is all about providing the tools to an OCT on the ground - to deliver training feedback," said Carl Giles, director of the Instrumentation Training Analysis Computer Simulations and Support, or ITACSS, Branch in Hohenfels. "The dynamic of providing feedback to a unit is something you have to show, and having an instrumented common operating picture changes the conversation between OCTs and training units."
The MIS also changes the conversations during after-action reviews, also known as AARs. "When OCTs are able to show video of the operations and radio conversations to training units, they [OCTs] are able to hold conversations with units about what they did well or not so well and how they can get better, instead of arguing about what happened."
The MIS, which is extending the instrumentation systems located at the Hohenfels Training Area, is able to connect a live combat training center, or CTC, exercise with multiple allied and partner nation CTC locations into one integrated exercise in real time, Giles said.
This is dramatically helping the limited number of OCTs on the ground by providing assets like integrated battle tracking via GPS radios, live video feeds, and monitoring of night and low-visibility operations, which were once only available at home station CTCs, said Capt. David Sherck, JMRC maneuver plans officer for Swift Response 15, from M.K. Airbase in Romania.
"What the MIS allows us to do especially during complex training scenarios, operations during the night and low visibility, or with limited OCTs, is we are able to monitor and play video and GPS tracking feeds throughout the operations," Sherck said. "This allows us to stay connected to the larger operation happening at multiple European nations. It enables us to show what actually happened on the ground compared to their plan and provide them with a much more robust AAR then if we didn't have that capability."
The link that ties this system together for the OCTs and exercise control, or EXCON, are the behind-the-scenes training analysis feedback, or TAF, analysts. The TAF analysts are able to break down exercises like Swift Response 15, with its many moving pieces, and package it into usable bits of information for the OCTs and EXCON to understand and connect the massive multinational operation.
"This system is what makes connected training possible for our multinational partners," said James Martinez, TAF operations analyst and team lead during the training exercise. "Having a direct link to our OCTs on the ground, wherever they are in the world is priceless, considering the value added to the training units."
The MIS was active to follow night airborne operations in Balchik, Bulgaria, and into daytime airborne operations at Hohenfels, Germany, during Swift Response 15 - all the while connecting these events under one umbrella for the exercise.
"It's being able to project our simulations footprint further throughout Europe while providing coverage as seen here at JMRC," Martinez said.
"We really are learning a lot about what we can do with our deployable instrumentation capabilities, and Swift Response was really a validation to be able to go to multiple locations and deliver this capability," Giles said. "We have done our proof of principle with this exercise and I think that the next step will be much more complex with more deployed instrument capabilities to be employed. We intend to really connect the future of multinational training."
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