As armies continue to modernise in the 21st century, effective Situational Awareness (SA) for commanders of troops, vehicles and equipment is a challenge for every military force, especially with the requirement for leaner and more agile forces in an age of rapid, asymmetric international operations.
Giles Peeters | Ottowa, Canada
Today’s armed forces require communications systems that can maximise the effectiveness of their digital capability without disrupting their existing operations. Non-intrusive Command and Control (C2) enhancements are becoming increasingly popular – and the good news is, with minimal investment in the latest commercial off the shelf (COTS) products, it’s entirely possible.
As Defence Sector Director at Track24 Defence, I’ve seen this first-hand in our work with South American militaries. These forces rely on Combat Network Radio (CNR) for communications, but have very little data functionality to speak of. We filled this gap by adding cloud-based and in-premise tracking, data transfer, emergency alerting and chat messaging – a simple matter of fitting the equipment into the vehicle, plane, or boat, thereby enabling it to connect to the network operations centre (NOC). Now, they can track vehicles and their operators with ease. It’s not heavy, it’s not obstructive – and it doesn’t require a huge financial outlay.
For Australia, achieving better SA functionality for its future operational deployments should be even more straightforward. Australia has a larger military budget in comparison to these South Amercian countries, and combined with the inexpensive nature of much COTS C2 technology, makes enhancing SA capability a relatively simple matter. Furthermore, format standards for data established by NATO mean that, from a hardware perspective, integrating these systems is relatively painless and can enable Australian forces to share SA and other data easily with allies and coalition partners on joint operations.
We’ve been working with the ADF in Australia through our in-country distributor EPE, an organisation specialising in the Counter-IED field. Track24 devices have been fitted into the ADF’s UASUV fleet in operational theatres as a Blue Force tracking and emergency capability, but it has been very much on an 'as required' and mission-specific basis.
It functions well, but the advantages of contemporary technology mean that thinking of a tracking device as just a tracking device is rather limiting: it has the potential to offer unprecedented battlefield visibility and threat management capability to the ADF. Information already being presented to ADF operation centres could be piped into other systems and provide a much more uniform solution for J2 and J3 planning and operations.
The current in-service Whisper unit is versatile and, due to its agnostic RS232 pipe, able to integrate or transfer data from other devices already in service, from ECM (including live threat data and profile/waveform OTAR) to CBRN sensors able to be deployed anywhere and provide real time data/alarms to an operations centre.
The Track24 Echo systems are available to provide SATCOM-based tracking and communications at the individual/patrol level as well as for vehicles, and the latest Shadow system provides a tracking or multi-sensor package for key equipment, installations or logistic containers.
It may seem obvious enough, but it’s worth saying nonetheless: having the best possible timely and actionable intelligence requires having rapid and hassle free access to the best possible information. In the ADF’s case, it helps that it already acknowledges the importance of beyond line of sight SA – especially where the safety of personnel is concerned.
In much of the Western world, however, BlueForce tracking is already a mandatory requirement: Australia has an opportunity to enhance and institutionalise its SA capabilities to the latest international standards, providing better battlefield information to commanders and increasing the level of protection for its armed forces in the field at an affordable cost.
Disclaimer: Giles Peeters is the defence sector director at Track24 Defence.