ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. -- The U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) and its subordinate organizations recently participated in the Joint Warfighting Assessment 19 (JWA 19), April 22 to May 10, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Yakima Training Center, Washington.
JWA 19, executed by the U.S. Army Joint Modernization Command (JMC), is the U.S. Army's largest annual joint-multinational live exercise in which the U.S. military and partner nations assess 26 future warfighting concepts and capabilities in a large-scale and realistic battlefield exercise.
According to the JMC Commanding General, Brig. Gen. Johnny K. Davis, JWA 19 is the Army future and modernization training ground. "When we peer into future operational environments and consider our capabilities within that environment, we need an avenue to assess and evaluate our capabilities -- that's where JWA 19 comes in."
During the assessment period at JWA, ATEC and four of its subordinate organizations: U.S. Army Evaluation Center, U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center, U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, and U.S. Army Operational Test Command, were primarily focused on five major concepts and capabilities.
These concepts and capabilities included the Stryker Nuclear Biological Reconnaissance Vehicle Sensor Suite Upgrade, Command Post Computing Environment, M-Drive, Tactical Electronic Warfare System with Raven Claw, and Robotics Combined-Arms Breach.
Each ATEC organization provided different types of support before and during the event, to include safety testing and documentation to ensure non-fielded items were safe for Soldiers to use during the exercise; observing system capabilities and Soldier interaction with those systems to capture any issues and areas for improvement; and noting progress and improvement on a system that had been previously tested by ATEC.
These types of support to a modernization event such as JWA 19 are consistent with ATEC's focus on supporting the Army Cross Functional Teams (CFTs) and the U.S. Army Futures Command. The Army initiated and established the CFTs to improve the quality and speed of delivery of new materiel and capabilities to the warfighter. Incorporating CFTs in the test and evaluation realm results in testing early in a continuous and cumulative process to support decision-maker touch points.
"JWA is a tremendous opportunity for the test and evaluation community to inform the development of future systems," said Maj. Gen. Joel K. Tyler, commanding general of ATEC. "Putting these systems in the hands of Soldiers, getting them in tough field conditions, and seeing how they work together give us an edge in understanding how the future battlefield is going to look."
Related Links:
U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center
U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command
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