Heads of USAF’s six battlelabs make their first-year progress reports. From the Battlelabs

attlelab seems like a natural Air Expeditionary Force B name for a cutting-edge military Battlelab research organization, but one year Since it became operational July 1, ago, when the Air Force’s six battlelabs 1997, the AEF Battlelab has received began official operations, few service 111 ideas for ways to improve expedi- officials had a clear vision for what a tionary strike package fighting power. battlelab should do or how it should Of these, 43 were industry responses By Peter Grier be organized. to a broad area announcement the lab Not even the newly named battle- put out earlier this year. lab commanders knew where they Twelve initiatives are in an advanced were headed. “I didn’t really know state of development. At least two were what the battlelab was,” said Col. Joe put in the plan for Expeditionary Force Grasso, head of the Unmanned Aerial Experiment 98, a major annual exercise Vehicle Battlelab, at a July 1 Defense designed to test futuristic concepts and Colloquium hosted by the Air Force technologies. Association’s Aerospace Education One of the demonstrations entails a Foundation in Arlington, Va. “I knew new en route Expeditionary Operations less about UAVs.” Center, which is intended to allow AEF Today, all the Air Force battlelabs planning personnel to make better use are up, running, and beginning to of their time. produce innovative ideas, said officials “Every wing that deploys has an at the AFA discussion. Their work has operations center,” said Lt. Col. Jeff involved everything from new types of Neuber, AEFB deputy commander. munitions trailers to classified research “Historically, this group of people, on information war. during the 14- to 18-hour flight time Said Col. Ronald Kurjanowicz, head to the Area of Responsibility, they re- of the Air Force Battlelab Integration ally haven’t been able to do anything.” Division, “The impression I want you The point of the en route EOC is to get straightaway is that the battlelabs to allow them to do mission planning are for real. One year later, they’re while still in the air. It involves stick- here to stay.” ing a phased array antenna on top of The mission of the Air Force battle­ an aircraft—a KC-135R from the 366th labs is to rapidly measure the worth Operational Support Squadron will of innovative operations and logistics be the platform of choice for the EFX concepts and then recommend ways to demonstration—and connecting it to a insert the most promising ideas into ser- discrete pallet of electronic planning vice doctrine, operations, or acquisition. equipment in the cargo compartment. The six battlelabs are the Air Expe- Mission planners will receive the ditionary Force Battlelab, Mountain up-to-date information they need before Home AFB, Idaho; Unmanned Aerial reaching their beddown location. Upon Vehicle Battlelab, Eglin AFB, Fla.; arrival, unit commanders with this ca- Force Protection Battlelab, Lack­land pability will theoretically be able to roll AFB, Texas; Space Battle­lab, Schriever out their Air Tasking Order and begin AFB, Colo.; Command and Control operations right away. Battlelab, Hurlburt Field, Fla.; and An Integrated Planning and Execu- Information Warfare Battle­lab, Kelly tion Capability will be the other EFX AFB, Texas. demo for the lab. In essence, IPEC is

48 AIR FORCE Magazine / September 1998 an effort to automate the base support The lab is further working on an terdrug center based at what was, at the planning process. initiative to “liberate” UAVs from time, Howard AFB, Panama. The lab will send an advance squad restricted airspace. Currently, the When it comes to general initiatives, equipped with a powerful laptop into a Federal Aviation Administration is “the most important thing that I would potential beddown location. The squad wary of allowing UAVs into general tell you we have started working on will do a site survey, take digitized US airspace. To get around this barrier is explosive detection,” said Collins. pictures, even video, and download (which Grasso described as “cultural”) A large vehicle laden with explo- them into the computer. Using a 3-D the lab will use a commercially avail- sives remains the No. 1 threat in the capability to “build” a picture of the able traffic alert system on a UAV and US Central Command AOR. Ion-scan location graphically, they will then demonstrate that this gives the craft the technology and other high-tech solu- zap the data back to the oncoming ability to detect and avoid conflicting tions can at least help guard against deployers. air traffic. such bombs. “You can lay out your parking plan, Another UAV lab concept is called “We wanted to take this kid with the decide where you’re going to put your “geo-reference.” This involves taking mirror under the truck and put more security checkpoints, your vehicle yard; imagery from Predator UAVs and from sophisticated things like X-ray technol- ... you can build your whole base before national reconnaissance assets and com- ogy into the hands of the troops in the you get there,” said Neuber. bining the two with specially developed field,” said Collins. A third initiative that AEF lab lead- computer software. The lab has also joined forces ers believe has promise is the Next The result will be near real-time with its UAV counterpart and has Generation Munitions Trailer. UAV images with precise location assembled a proof of concept dem- Right now, the Air Force takes two coordinates. Predator pictures on their onstration of the use of a UAV in a kinds of trailers when it deploys: the own are not accurate enough to allow force protection role. 15-foot MHU-110 and the 10-foot use of precision guided munitions, Combining a UAV with a wide area MHU-141. A battlelab master sergeant but “you’d be able to target against surveillance thermal imager and other had the bright idea of building a one- [a geo-located threat] if you wish,” off-the-shelf tactical sensors could size-fits-all version that expands and said Grasso. potentially provide an unprecedented contracts as needed, instead. Finally, the UAV battlelab is also peek at the surrounding area for ground In addition to generating, receiving, investigating the use of UAVs as sur- commanders. and processing ideas, the battle­lab has rogate satellites. A Global Hawk long- The lab is also working on detection functioned as something of a meeting endurance craft, outfitted with JTIDS of chemical and biological agents. place, as it has sponsored several AEF Link 16 and UHF radio links, could While the Army and Marine Corps conferences. serve as a quick, cheap substitute for are developing equipment aimed at space-based communications. sniffing out airborne toxins advancing UAV Battlelab on troops, the Air Force battlelab’s In the past, the Air Force com- Force Protection Battlelab emphasis in this area is more prosaic: mitment to UAVs has waxed and Col. Don Collins, the commander of food and water. waned, said UAV Battlelab Com- the Force Protection Battlelab, said the The easiest way to attack Americans mander Grasso. first thing he found out after his organi- in an AOR might be to slip poison into Today, “that interest is rising again, zation started working a year ago was their food and water, which is often in part due to the technology that now that he needed a lot more than cops to provided by local contractors. exists and the commitment that industry solve force protection problems. Initiatives for the future include soft- has made to further that technology and He needed experts in blast mitigation, ware that combines such capabilities expand concepts.” which is a civil engineering discipline. as blast modeling and injury-reduction The first major UAV Battlelab ini- He needed explosives scientists. He modeling to give commanders some tiative involved the use of unmanned even needed talent oriented toward the empirical help in making force protec- aircraft in the Suppression of Enemy medical issues inherent in food and tion decisions and microwave weapons Air Defenses role. In a New Mexico water supplies. that might be useful in clearing out demonstration, the lab showed that a Much of the lab’s first year has been hostile checkpoints in a nonlethal UAV outfitted with a direction-finding spent in helping those carrying out manner. package can find, identify, and very current operations to defend against precisely geo-locate mobile emitting bad guys. Space Battlelab threats and then forward that data to During the Bright Star deployment Space surveillance has been one an F-16 cockpit, via the UAV’s com- to the Gulf, the lab pulled together an of the primary focuses of the Space mand center. explosives detection team to help out Battlelab. One of the lab’s initiatives, The next step in this initiative will on-site commanders. Last September, for instance, involves evaluation of be what Grasso calls an active SEAD the lab sent experts to Izmir, Turkey, commercial off-the-shelf telescopes concept. where a US military population lives and that might be able to provide accurate “We’re saying, ‘OK, now let’s take works downtown. The team bolstered data on deep space objects to increase this same UAV with that same capabil- the base force protection package. the capacity of the Space Surveillance ity and let’s add the capability to jam The force protection folks also put Network. Another will test tracking or decoy the threat on demand from together a multidiscipline package satellites via use of ambient radio the fighter.’ ” designed to protect a multilateral coun- frequency energy.

AIR FORCE Magazine / September 1998 49 The latter project “is basically taking involved Air Tasking Order visualiza- of particular interest nowadays in the advantage of physics,” said Col. (sel.) tion and assessment. Air Force and in the military as a whole. Bob Bivins, Space Battlelab chief. “What it does is produce a cartoon Within a few weeks of opening its doors, The Earth is studded with TV and of the Air Tasking Order, so that you the lab had received 50 to 60 ideas for radio transmitters that beam energy can look at it more easily,” said Col. initiatives from industry. Though the up into the sky and into space. This John Gorman, lab commander. rate has since slowed down, their idea ambient energy then reflects off Low The battlelab looked at eight different count stood at 113 in late June. Earth Orbit satellites. systems, bringing in “real warfight- About 75 percent of their ideas come An Earth-based receiver might read ers” to help them, said Gor­man. The from private industry. these reflections and provide an accurate finished product is being incorporated “As you can imagine, many contrac- picture of where the satellites are and into the system. tors came forth with old marketing where their orbit will take them. “We’ll see it in March ’99,” said the pitches that they dusted off, put a new “There are obviously advantages lab chief. cover sheet on, and fired at us,” said here,” said Bivins. “We don’t pay for Many of the battlelabs have paid lab chief Col. James C. Watkins. the power of this. We’re just doing a particular attention to off-the-shelf Thirty-six percent of the pitches dealt passive receive. And it gives you a lot information technology, and the com- with information security measures. of advantages in identifying changes mand and control lab is no exception. Twenty-six percent involved informa- in orbital parameters without being too An initiative that focuses on future Joint tion attack, and 20 percent focused on obvious about it.” Forces Air Component Commander electronic warfare. The other defined In a non-surveillance project, the lab command-and-control systems looked pillars of Air Force info war—physical intends to evaluate the effectiveness of at commercial technology that might destruction, psychological operations, commercial wireless communications help out. and military deception—all were in the in a military environment. It will send “The market is exploding with things, single digits, when it came to percent 50 Motorola handsets to South Korea such as chat room capability, that have of ideas. to see if they help operations. obvious applications to ... the Air Ops Six ideas were funded for Fiscal Another space initiative involves Center,” said Gorman. 1997. Eight were picked for Fiscal placing a Hyper-Spectral Imagery col- The organization is also looking at 1998. A number of them deal with lector on top of Pikes Peak in Colorado. simply reducing the size of C2 hardware. classified projects. This receiver will peer down at nearby “I put that into the category of, ‘Duh,’ ” “We find that we deal with a con- military bases such as Ft. Carson and see said Gorman. siderably larger number of classified if it can spot anything interesting. The Flat screen displays, workstation initiatives than the other battle­labs do,” intent is to validate future space-based laptops, and wireless local area net- said Watkins. HSI strategies. works could reduce the size of an Air Among the projects Watkins could The very environment of space is also Operations Center by the size of a talk about was IW Reachback. This of interest to the battlelab. An initiative C-17 load, according to C2 Battlelab initiative involves connecting remote named SEAM (Space Environmental calculations. users with Sensitive Compartmented Anomaly Monitoring) aims to take Future projects might include C2 Information through existing low-cost advantage of sensors mounted on some systems that include speech recogni- satellite relays, via portable electronic current satellites that measure fluctua- tion—something that might come equipment. tions in space energy. in particularly handy to ops crews Another initiative is an attempt to “What we’re trying to do is leverage encased in bulky chemical protection visualize the information battlespace. that information to try and see if we gear. “You can just address it and say, This hardware–software combo pro- can figure out any trends developing,” ‘I want to go to target list, strategic, duces a digitized, 3-D picture of infor- said Bivins. “If there’s a lot of proton electric grid,’ and boom, you’re there. mation nodes and the data flow among activity, is it going to cause a higher You save about eight mouse clicks,” them. One mouse click, and any node number of [satellite] upsets? It might said Gorman. can be eliminated, with subsequent flow allow us to more effectively manage The C2 lab also wants to draw interruptions easily visible. our satellite assets.” more on lessons from industry. In “This would be a powerful tool to recent months, lab representatives do self-analysis to see where you’re C2 Battlelab visited private concerns to see how vulnerable,” said Watkins. The Hurlburt-based C2 Battlelab has they work global communications To date most of the info war lab’s the distinction of having produced the and control. work has involved small solutions to first Air Force battlelab initiative that “mission gaps” that have been brought has been completed and entered the Information Warfare Battlelab to its attention, said Wat­kins. In the formal procurement system. That effort The IW battlelab deals with a subject future, the lab hopes to seize upon ini- tiatives that have a broader operational impact at a higher level. If nothing else, “I believe it is safe Peter Grier, the Washington bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor, is a to say that the information systems longtime defense correspondent and regular contributor to Air Force Magazine. His most recent articles, “Plotting a Course for Health Care” and “Readiness in a protection portion of what we do will Downdraft,” appeared in the July 1998 issue. be with us forever,” said Wat­kins. ■

50 AIR FORCE Magazine / September 1998