With more than 3,500 Land 200 BMS nodes delivered and the joint Army/Air Force DTCS approaching final operating capability, Army has turned the first corner on the long road to the networked, joint force envisioned under Plan Beersheba.

Philip Smart | Adelaide

The ADF now has a cadre of qualified Digital Terminal Control System (DTCS) operators among its Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) core, and more extensive practical experience of using the new equipment to coordinate joint fires with Australian and allied forces through Exercise Talisman Sabre and training in the US. And the benefits of digital are being seen in the field.

“Prior to digitisation, the ADF joint fires capability was controlled, coordinated and executed only via voice,” a Defence spokesperson said. “Digitisation has allowed the use of data, where appropriate, to aid voice communications. This use of data has resulted in increased accessibility to situational awareness and an ability to exchange large volumes of information more quickly than via voice.”

Historically, joint fires has implied calling air force and navy assets in to help a land force achieve its objectives, such as the use of heavy naval gunfire to destroy inland strongholds identified by advancing land forces. But with advances in communications and data sharing and recent Afghanistan and Iraq experience proving the value of combined operations, the joint fires model is increasingly moving towards the concept of any service being able to call on the assets of any other. Another sign of the times is that the joint fires model isn’t always about targeting a lethal weapon; although the list of available offensive assets has long included battlefield tools such as smoke and electronic warfare, cyberwarfare is also increasingly becoming part of major operations.

Army manages joint fires with Raytheon’s Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS) acquired with 35 M777A2 Lightweight Towed 155mm Howitzer artillery pieces in a Foreign Military Sales (FMS) deal from the US as part of Project Land 17.

An Army officer conducts a briefing during the rehearsal of concept drill for brigade live fire activity. Credit: Defence

AFATDS is a network of computer workstations that receives information from the forward observer, analyses what fire support is available and appropriate, and formulates a fire support plan for dissemination to the chosen assets such as field artillery, mortars, naval gunfire, attack helicopters, and close air support aircraft. It is capable of automatic processing of fire requests, generating multiple tactical fire solutions for missions, monitoring mission execution and supporting the creation and distribution of fire plans, and providing a commander with the ability to rapidly bring in to action all fire support assets at their disposal.

AFATDS is the US Army’s main fires system, used from weapons platoons through to corps level, and in the US Marine Corps from firing battery to expeditionary forces. It is also part of the weapons systems for US Navy LHD amphibious assault vessels to support expeditionary strike groups and will be on Australia’s Canberra class LHDs. Acquisition of AFATDS ensures the Australian joint fire system is interoperable with US forces.

To provide the “front end” of target acquisition and designation in the field, Land 17 also included the 2012 acquisition of 96 Rockwell Collins DTCS, following on from a 56-unit purchase for use in Afghanistan in 2010, at a combined cost of $68 million. The DTCS is a lightweight man-carried system including a tablet PC, laser range finder, laser target designator, GPS receiver and real-time video downlink receiver. It allows forward observers such as Australia’s JTACs to precisely fix the location of identified targets, then feed the data through to the AFATDS for targeting and designate the target via laser for incoming weapons systems. In April this year a Forward Air Controller using the Firestorm system from which Australia’s DTCS was derived became the first user to guide an F-35 Lightning II aircraft on a close air support test.

"It will give soldiers from battalion commander to members of individual fire teams digital maps showing the position of friendly forces, location of various fire support elements and the whereabouts of movement tracks."

“The DTCS has already achieved an Initial Operating Capability (IOC) and is approaching Final Operating capability (FOC),” a Defence spokesperson said to ADM. “The system is fielded within Army and Air force, is currently deployed on operations and has been utilised during several recent coalition activities in the US. Defence has an extensive ability to interact within the joint fires domain through the use the digital terminal control system, which allows an observer to access joint fires effects from land, air and maritime platforms in both the ADF and coalition settings via voice and data communications.”

And while the Raytheon and Rockwell Collins systems provide direct management for joint fires, Elbit’s Battle Management System (BMS), now coming on stream as part of Land 200, is expected to provide the strategic situational awareness and command and control network to help ensure the AFATDS concentrates on fire solutions.

Elbit’s BMS is designed to be ubiquitous, providing a battle group network of command and control for every asset from headquarters posts to armoured vehicles, helicopters, and individual soldiers and even those of sister services such as the Royal Australian Navy’s new LLC landing craft. It has already been specified for vehicles to be acquired under Land 400 and when fully fielded will include more than 20,000 nodes in the Australian system.

It will give soldiers from battalion commander to members of individual fire teams digital maps showing the position of friendly forces, location of various fire support elements and the whereabouts of movement tracks. The system will receive both data and voice simultaneously, so users can talk together while planning on their screens. It will also allow use of intelligence from surveillance assets not directly operated by the unit, such as UAVs.

In its full iteration the Land 200 BMS will handle planning, operational overlays, blue force tracking, logistics and operational orders, with AFATDS used to generate and execute fire plans. But with a BMS terminal in virtually every vehicle, post and pair of hands in the army’s order of battle, the system will provide extra situational awareness for those connected to the AFATDS system, such as JTACs. And the vast majority of soldiers not connected to AFATDS will be able to use the Elbit BMS to request joint fires, with the request simply transferring across to the AFATDS further up the command chain.

As may be expected, there are overlaps between the two systems. In other parts of the world Elbit’s system is used as a full standalone combat and fires system, with equipped vehicles and sensors capable of handing off target data to other ground assets or attack helicopters, and automatically cueing weapons to lay directly on a detected threat.

ADM understands that should Defence ask the contractors to more closely integrate the Elbit and Raytheon systems, the challenges would lay not in technical issues but in the security issues surrounding the AFATDS system’s US International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) approved status. But Defence hasn’t asked yet.

“It’s not in the scope of Land 75 as it currently stands,” said an industry expert. “And it’s not in the scope of Land 17 as it currently stands. At the end of the day you have ITAR sensitivities. You’ve got ITAR controlled radios, you’ve got ITAR controlled software and you can’t willy-nilly go and plug that in to lots of different systems without the approvals from the US Government.”

It has also been suggested that keeping the fire planning system separate was not unusual, ensuring critical fire planning and execution bandwidth was not drained by unrelated communications and messaging, such as coordinating casualty evacuation or routine unit communications.

As more BMS nodes come on line Army will gain more understanding of how the system can be put to best use, and tweaks are evidently already underway to suit Australian operations. Larger operations such as Exercise Talisman Sabre are providing critical real world experience, but the presence of the BMS is already providing visible change.

“What the automation allows is a lot more seamless transfer of particularly existing data and automated request for fire,” said an industry expert. “So a soldier now with a BMS can actually laser designate and give a very accurate position of where the enemy is and where he is. So no one’s estimating anymore.”

The Australian Army’s head of modernisation and strategic planning, Major General Fergus (Gus) McLachlan, understands that digitising Army is a critical step in a modernisation that is “fundamentally changing the way we do business”.

“The challenge for us that we’ve got these incredible joint enabling capabilities, so how do we integrate those in to our command and control architecture and our tactics, techniques and procedures?” MAJGEN McLachlan said. “How do we take that data and provide it to commanders at the right place and time so that we’re actually making a decision quicker than an enemy might be able to react?”

The question is not just about software and tools, but about doctrine and philosophy. But the Raytheon and Elbit systems will be part of the answer.