WIESBADEN, Germany -- Leaders from the 44th Expeditionary Signal Battalion, 2nd Signal Brigade and the British Army's 250th Gurkha Signal Squadron, 30th Signal Regiment, met March 2, 2016 in Grafenwoerhr to plan for the upcoming Stoney Run exercise in June.
Stoney Run is an annual, binational, signal exercise designed to test and validate communications and network capabilities, enhance interoperability and build partner capacity between the two NATO Allies.
"From the American side, the main intent of the exercise is to reinvigorate our partnership with the 250th Gurkha Signal Squadron and to utilize our expeditionary posture and deployment readiness with our smaller network assemblages, our SNAPs, to see how best we can incorporate that into our new operational construct," said Capt. Derek Pagan, commander of Company B, 44th Expeditionary Signal Battalion.
This year's Stoney Run exercise will build on the accomplishments of the previous three years with a focus on building expeditionary signal capability. Last year the two Allies were able to establish a link and pass voice and data through each other's line-of-sight systems.
"Over those three years we've got a really close relationship with the 44th and have since thrown in some interoperability objectives, on a technical level understanding how their kit and equipment works and equally them understanding how our equipment works," said Capt. Matt Bennett, operations officer for the 250th Gurkha Signal Squadron.
Achieving that level of interoperability would allow, for example, a British liaison officer in an American headquarters to access their network and vital information using U.S. Army signal equipment as the backbone, and vice versa.
"We have the opportunity here in Europe to really be the driving force for a lot of experimentation and advancement in the cyber domain, within the scope of building, operating and securing the network," Pagan said.
However, both sides agreed that one of the challenges to achieving that level of interoperability will be working out the higher level network policy and governance piece.
Bennett said the British Army as a whole is focusing more on a return to contingency operations, and Stoney Run is a great opportunity for them to exercise the expeditionary aspects of signal interoperability.
"What we're doing in the U.K. is resetting to look at the new threat as it is and building the flexibility to respond to it," Bennett said. "What we're doing here [Stoney Run] is building our flexibility and robustness so that when we go out there we have a lot more options to deploy together and make it work -- get it right here, get it right there."
Pagan agreed the partnership and relationship building between the U.S. and U.K. signaleers was just as important as meeting the technical goals of the exercise.
"Every handshake with a multinational spin to it, every alliance we have is important from the ground up, and we are the ones on the ground. This is a great opportunity for us to advance our multinational military relationships with a strong, lasting Ally like the United Kingdom," Pagan said.
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5th Signal Command's mission is to build, operate and defend network capabilities to enable mission command and create tactical, operational and strategic flexibility for Army, Joint and Multinational forces in the EUCOM and AFRICOM areas of responsibility.
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