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Imagine the following time-critical strike demonstration scenario: Headquarters has set DEFCON 2, and United States forces are at increased readiness. Aircraft are orbiting at contact points and standing by as preplanned or ad hoc sorties. The strike cell commander, who is responsible for coordinating time-critical targeting, is monitoring selected points of entry along the demilitarized zone. The air ops commander is monitoring airspace users and unit positions as needed (strike aircraft, unmanned air vehicles, hostile sites, artillery, special operations). The strike cell commander receives an alarm in a time-critical-targeting watchdog area and, in conference, decides to send in an unmanned air vehicle for reconnaissance. The air ops commander graphically makes a trial plan for the unmanned air vehicle going to the point of entry. The resulting dynamic plan is automatically deconflicted (adjusted to keep aircraft from flying too close to each other) against all other airspace utilization plans (deliberate and dynamic), and the unmanned air vehicle is vectored to its new route. Meanwhile, intelligence on a hostile missile site is received and recorded by the air ops commander. The strike cell commander later receives video from the unmanned air vehicle showing an enemy armor column. In conference, the strike cell commander decides that Brilliant Anti-Tank (BAT) munitions are required. Two strike aircraft are equipped with the appropriate weapons load. The air ops commander attempts a trial plan for the closest strike aircraft, but an alert showing a conflict with the newly identified hostile missile site is automatically displayed. Rather than route the aircraft around the missile site and risk losing the time-critical targeting window of opportunity, a trial plan for the second strike aircraft is created, deconflicted, and subsequently issued. The air ops commander then later reroutes an unmanned air vehicle to conduct battle damage assessment on the target area. In the above scenario, the time-critical strike and its associated techniques and decision aids rely on a close-coupled interaction of command, intelligence, and weapon-control functions to shrink the observe-orient-decide-act cycle from hours to minutes. The decision aid must ensure that joint targeting complies with Joint Forces Commander (JFC) guidance and objectives; coordinates, deconflicts, and synchronizes attacks; responds rapidly to time-critical surface targets; prevents fratricide; minimizes duplication of effort; controls tasking for mutually accessible targets; supports expeditious combat assessment; and provides a common perspective of targeting efforts. Many functions and technologies are required to support time-critical strikes, including collection management; sensor tasking and control; target detection, classification, prioritization and mensuration; weapon-target pairing; real-time strike mission planning and deconfliction; communication; collaboration; and battle damage assessment. This article focuses on managing dynamic airspace. Currently, battle airspace is allocated as part of the air-tasking-order process for procedural controls and automated planning systems. These systems allocate airspace to missions through static air corridors one to three days before execution. There is extensive activity to reduce this cycle from days to hours. Even so, there is a void in dynamic-planning capabilities for coordinated access to airspace to support time-critical operations. To hit time-critical targets, a 4-Dimensional Airspace Deconfliction Decision Aid (4DD) that considers friendly units, weapons, and air assets simultaneously, in all four dimensions (X,Y,Z, and time), is needed to allow rapid firing authority without resorting to air corridors. We believe an automated military 4DD capability will display dynamic and deliberate mission plans, and display current positions of airspace users. It will monitor the airspace to see if users are adhering to their mission plans. 4DD will also predict the future positions of units based on their mission plans, and will detect future conflicts between dynamic or deliberate plans. It will plan and replan both dynamic and deliberate missions, and coordinate between joint airspace control officers monitoring different regions of airspace. MITRE is currently developing a demonstration 4DD decision support capability, which modifies the User Request Evaluation Tool (URET). URET is a fielded airspace deconfliction prototype we developed for the FAA (see previous article). Like the 4DD, URET is a key step toward the FAA concept of free flight. (See above figure.) We are evolving URET to demonstrate deconfliction and replanning of airborne assets to strike fixed targets within a time-critical window. Deconfliction Concepts In the demonstration being prepared, 4DD will monitor current positions of airspace users (military air assets), raising alerts if users are not conforming to their filed mission plans or Air Tasking Orders. It will predict and display future positions (trajectory modeling) based on current positions and filed mission plans, plus air asset, environmental, and procedural information. In addition, 4DD will conduct continuous prediction of conflicts (based on user-determined separation criteria) between the future positions (4D trajectories) of airspace users. Moreover, it takes into account ground unit positions in preventing fratricide. The decision aid will also demonstrate graphical user interface support of graphical and menu-driven route planning and trial planning of air assets and mission plans, alerts, data viewing, coordination, etc. It will also demonstrate continuous conflict monitoring and resolution automatically performed between deliberate and dynamic plans. Furthermore, it will raise alerts to the air control officer who then uses trial planning capabilities to generate new routes, as needed, to resolve conflicts. The 4DD’s dynamic mission planning capabilities include trial planning, which is used to respond to the following kinds of new, time-critical requests for airspace: (1) rerouting of unmanned air vehicles that are assessing battle damage; (2) developing new ingress or egress routes for Close Air Support; (3) in-flight replanning of Tactical Tomahawks; (4) planning of coordinated strikes by TACAIR and Tomahawks; (5) redirection of strike aircraft around hostile activity zones; and (6) planning new routes or reroutes of weapons (such as strike aircraft and naval surface fires support) against mobile targets. Finally, the demonstration will show air control officers (in charge of different air spaces) working together to prevent fratricide, to give synchronized, timely access to airspace, to control taskings for mutually accessible targets, to minimize duplication of effort, and to provide a common perspective. The potential operational value of these integrated 4DD capabilities to support time-critical strikes includes shortening the sensor-to-shooter timeline, minimizing duplication of effort and control tasking for mutually accessible targets, preventing fratricide, protecting military forces, and providing a dynamic planning and replanning capability for Strike Cell assets and coordinated time-critical access to airspace. To read about the weapons-selection part of this technology, see the article "Choose Your Weapons and Targets" by Chien-Ching Cho on the back page of this issue. For more information, please contact Tom Gerasch using the employee directory. |
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