AAEF continues testing new technologies
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by Kris Gonzalez/The Bayonet FORT BENNING, Ga. (TRADOC News Service, July 13, 2005) -- The Air Assault Expeditionary Force launched the second spiral in its live force-on-force experimentation program designed to bring tomorrow’s technology to today’s battlefield. Two platoons from the Experimental Force Company spent three weeks at the McKenna Military Operations on Urban Terrain site to test the platoon’s lethality against a well-equipped enemy force. During this exercise, dubbed the base case, a platoon of 39 Soldiers used their five senses and present-day equipment to fight an opposing force of 18 men during 10 day and night missions. “We took a currently equipped infantry rifle platoon, with all their organic assets, and ran them through an overmatch mission against an OPFOR,” said Capt. Clint Cox, commander of the EXFOR Company. By doctrine, Cox said, when Soldiers fight, they always try to overmatch the enemy three to one. During this exercise, the opposing force was made bigger to make the overmatch only two to one. “Usually a platoon will try to destroy a squad, a company will go after a platoon,” said Cox. “We want to be better able to overmatch the enemy with a smaller ratio.” Cox said data collectors followed his platoon leaders and their Soldiers as they moved across the simulated battlefield to get a better understanding of how they fight now. "They asked questions like, ‘What do you know about the enemy?’ ‘Do you know where they are right now?’ and ‘What intelligence have you gotten along the way?’" he said. They recorded the answers and will give feedback to the Army and manufacturers of military equipment, Cox said. In August, the AAEF will travel to Fort Dix, N.J., to spend four to six weeks training on about 40 prototypes devised from the feedback compiled during the base case and Spiral A, which took place in 2004. In November, the Soldiers will return to the MOUT site for the advanced case, to re-execute the same mission fought in the base case, next using sensors, robots, cameras and other “leading edge” technologies. “We’re experimenting with emerging technologies to help design future combat systems for the military,” said Gary Daniel, project lead from Fort Benning’s Soldier Battle Lab. “As the platoon is air-assaulting over some distance from the objective, we want to be able, by virtue of technology, to give Soldiers better situational awareness of what the objective looks like so they can change or adjust their mission while en route,” Daniel said. “They may not have to destroy the enemy in an assault; they may be able to do that from a stand-off distance,” he said. “But they could only do that if technology provides them a clear picture of what the objective looks like and what the enemy force is doing.” Without technology, the platoon relies on information it gets from the battalion and above, said platoon leader 1st Lt. Aaron Schwengler. “We get a broad overview of where the enemy is, and we have to develop a plan based on that.” “The information flow is slow,” Sgt. Kyle Sisco said. “We don’t even know where the enemy is until we’re at the objective.” New technologies like ground sensors would be helpful, Schwengler said. Unmanned sensors can be dropped from the air or mounted on vehicles.“They can be our eyes forward,” Schwengler said. “The lack of intelligence given in the base case is realistic,” Cox said. “Sometimes we take casualties because of lack of information.” Cox described a scenario played out during the base case to demonstrate his point. “These guys were conducting a raid. They had been tasked to destroy a cache, kill as many bad guys as they could and get out,” Cox said. “They executed excellent movement, they never got compromised, and got within 20 meters of the enemy before they even knew they were there, using the sheer skills of patrolling, current day. “Everything up to that point was done right. We got to the objective and started killing bad guys. The Soldiers stumbled upon the cache, and the enemy detonated an [improvised explosive device] right in the middle of it. We lost six guys immediately. Then they called for artillery on top of them, killing four or five more.” He said the platoon could no longer continue the mission because they had lost so much combat power. For every one casualty, it took two Soldiers to carry them out. “The variables and the complexities they’re putting in are real,” Cox said. “The way the OPFOR is fighting is precisely the way the insurgents would fight,” he said, referring to the Taliban’s use of hit and run tactics in Afghanistan and ambushes and suicide bombings in Iraq. Cox said the challenge for about 50 percent of the platoon who had participated in last year’s spiral was to go back to fighting “cave-man style,” already knowing what technologies are available. Spc. Andrew Hasbrouck, who controlled about 60 percent of robotics in Spiral A, said the new technologies definitely help because they are better at pinpointing the enemy’s location and depicting friendly civilians from foe. Hasbrouck said during one scenario in last year’s spiral, the Soldiers used an unmanned aerial vehicle to determine that a group of civilians standing on a rooftop was friendly. “In Iraq, the enemy is moving with friendly civilians,” Schwengler said. “They may drop off, or they may occupy somewhere nearby and even use them as shields. You throw these new technologies in the mix, and right away we’ll be able to divert our forces and not even have to deal with the civilian population because we can pinpoint where the enemy is and attack them.” “This information will be crucial to the way we fight in the future,” Cox said. “We want to gain enough situational awareness so we know where the enemy is, pick the right time to fight him, and attack him when he’s at his weakest.” The feedback from these spirals will affect Army doctrine, organization, training, materiel and leader development, Daniel said. “This is the only venue that exists in the Army that gets technology off the PowerPoint slides and into the hands of Soldiers,” he said. Spirals C and D of the AAEF experiments will take place in 2005 and 2006, respectively. |
Soldiers with the AAEF EXFOR Company move across a landing zone before getting the mission brief. View and/or save high-resolution photo |
