A group of U.S. military organizations are teaming up to
develop improved, better-integrated missile defense training,
according to senior civilian officials. The in-progress initiative
is called, "All Things Missile," Patrick A. McVay, joint exercises
and training director at U.S. Strategic Command, Offutt Air Force
Base, near Omaha, Neb., told reporters during a telephone
interview.
The goal, McVay said, is to develop new missile defense
simulated training exercises that are more realistic, efficient and
joint. One of U.S. Stratcom's missions is to synchronize global
missile defense plans and operations. The envisioned new system,
McVay said, will consolidate training capabilities for integrated
tactical warning/attack assessment, ballistic missile defense
systems and tactical engagement simulations.
"I don't want to call 'All Things Missile' a system; it is a
system of systems, if you will, or a single training capability
that will go across all those capabilities," McVay explained. McVay
said current planning calls for introduction of the new training
capability in about two years.
The new capability will employ the internet and the global
information grid, McVay said, to enable distribution "to any
training requirement from anyone in the 'All Things Missile'
community of interest." Today's missile defense training system
also lacks cross-organizational capability, McVay said.
"If I'm using it, then (U.S.) Northcom can't train on it, or the
guy on the Aegis (guided-missile) cruiser can't train on it," McVay
said of the current system.
McVay co-hosted the interview with Gregory F. Knapp, executive
director of U.S. Joint Forces Command's Joint Warfighting Center
and Joint Training Directorate in Suffolk, Va. U.S. Joint Forces
Command, based at Norfolk, Va., is supporting Stratcom's "All
Things Missile" training initiative, Knapp said. Jfcom is the
defense department's joint-force training and
capabilities-development organization.
"No (training) task happens in isolation; it's always done in
some kind of global context," Knapp said. "The way we build the
training environment allows us to bring in scenarios with very
complex, multi-dimensional context, like what happens in the real
world."
Introducing a better-integrated, more-realistic training system,
Knapp added, should also improve the missile defense community's
operational capability.
Other participants in the training initiative include the
Missile Defense Agency at the Pentagon, several combatant commands
and the military service branches. The MDA's mission is to develop
and field an integrated, layered, ballistic missile defense system
to defend the United States, its deployed forces and allies. [ANN
Thanks Gerry J. Gilmore, American Forces Press Service]