FORT SILL, Okla. (Nov. 19, 2015) -- When a forward operating base is attacked through an air assault, perhaps through a missile or rocket, air defense artillery is designed to respond to the attack by identifying the incoming round, warning others of the potential for an incoming threat and then destroying it midflight, before it impacts and causes damage.
From there, a motivated leader can share information about the point of origin to the field artillery, or FA, units, which can respond to the attack in kind.
There is not a standard communication method between air defense artillery and FA. When these units deploy, the system is created ad hoc through voice communications often simply yell across a tactical operations center or a base defense operations cell. First Lt. Cassandra Steiner, commander of D Battery, 2nd Battalion, 6th Air Defense Artillery, has plans to change that.
"I [was assigned] from Fort Campbell [Kentucky], and it's a long drive from Fort Campbell to the Fires Center of Excellence so I had a lot of time to think," Steiner said. "I thought, 'if we have air defense and field artillery on the same post, why are we not doing combined exercises?' So I brought that up with my leadership when I took command in July."
Steiner believed Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar, or C-RAM, was the best way to integrate with the community. With its ability to receive real-time point-of-origin on rounds, Soldiers could communicate that information to field artillery units, a tactic used in theater but not practiced in training and not yet taught to Soldiers.
"It's been executed in theater but a lot of smart people work those things out [during deployments] and we lost the information of how to do it," Steiner said. "We've had a lot of people come together for this exercise and work in a completely different way. We've done successful tests where we've actually pushed acquisition data that we get from a point of origin. We push that to field artillery units and they're doing a live fire with the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System or the Multiple Launch Rocket System."
One of the people who helped make the training a reality was Capt. Nicholas Palesky, battalion fire direction officer for 3rd Battalion, 13th Field Artillery. As he and Steiner began to design the training, they realized they were deployed together at Forward Operating Base Shank, Afghanistan.
While at the base, they shared information, literally shouting out to one another in the base defense operations cell, performing the very thing they were trying to recreate digitally in a training environment.
Steiner calls the joint training between the two fires branches a "target of opportunity" because Palesky was already preparing for their annual field exercises with a unit from Singapore. Normally because the annual training requires live fire, the units would have to resort to internal simulations, however Steiner requested to work with the Singapore unit to test interoperability. But, first she would need to be able to demonstrate how the joint training would take place.
"We had to learn how to tie into FA so we learned to use our systems first to make sure we knew how to do it and how to pass data to [the FA units]," Steiner said. "We had to make sure first that the information was going to be incredibly accurate. If there was a single digit error, it could be a catastrophic event. We had to make sure the data was going to be accurate enough to send to them."
Steiner presented her plan and was granted approval from the FA and the Air Defense Artillery branches. She then contacted 2nd Battalion, 44th Air Defense Artillery from Fort Campbell to inquire if battalion leaders were interested in testing out the new joint communication capabilities during their pre-deployment training on Fort Sill. They were happy to help.
Steiner said all the systems were designed to integrate with one other so the hard part was ensuring they actually were communicating. Soldiers, from both the air defense artillery and the FA branches attended classes to learn about their counterpart's systems to better understand what information they would need to send to have an effective and efficient transfer of data. Details like Internet protocol addresses would need to be shared if the systems were to work effectively.
Once the systems were programmed correctly, it was as simple as letting the machines do the work for them. There would be little change to the training the 2-44th Air Defense Artillery Soldiers received. As they rehearsed shooting down mortars, their weapons systems automatically relayed the point of origin to the Singapore FA units who also joined in on the training. From there, those FA units rehearsed shooting at the target to prevent a theoretical second or third shot from being fired.
"All these systems were designed to integrate so we didn't have to do much, just make sure we all had the most up-to-date software," Steiner said. "The data was pushed straight to air firing batteries, which is how it's conceptually supposed to work in theater and how it's been working, we just haven't done it in a training scenario."
Steiner said the joint training was a success not only because of the ease in which the training took place, which she attributed to cross training and rehearsals, but also because of the boost in morale it gave to the Soldiers. The training let the Soldiers know that when they are attacked, other units can go out and keep them from being targets a second time.
"As long as we push this information to the next unit that deploys, it's only a matter of minutes before we can get this capability up and running."
Lt. Col. Pat Stich, commander of 3-13th FA, said he was pleased with the joint training taking place between the units. He added repeating the training annually would help future Soldiers understand the equipment, which would better serve the Army.
"Any opportunity that we can get to integrate and determine interoperability between our two specific branches to make us more effective on the battlefield is an opportunity we should endeavor for," Stich said.
The next step for Steiner and her team is to review and catalog the training. Steiner said she hopes to be ready by January when the next group of Soldiers is scheduled to train. She also plans to make available the information they've gathered to units before they deploy so they can also have an opportunity to train.
"What I'd like to see is for this to become an annual thing where they train this joint capability and continue to refine this process and make it better," Steiner said. "I want to give them that information at their fingertips."
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