Joint Training Center for Indirect Fires Integration.

A joint training center should be established at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to provide instruction and training on the integration, coordination and application of the full range of joint indirect fires. The US armed forces need a center to train members of the joint fires team in individual skills as well as command and staff competencies related to the synchronous application of the effects of joint indirect fires.

While we recognize an increasing interdependence between the services, we do not have a joint training center that focuses on the integration of fires and effects. Instead, we rely on service component schools to inform on service capabilities and train component elements of the joint fires team. A joint training center would allow commanders and joint fires teams to work in a well-crafted simulated environment while providing the potential for live-fire outcomes. The Joint Training Center for Indirect Fires Integration would fill a long-standing training shortfall.

The concept of establishing this Joint Training Center for Indirect Fires Integration fully supports the Chairman of the Joint Chief's Joint Fires Initiative to promote horizontal coordination among forces and components.

Future Warfare and Joint Requirements. To achieve decisive outcomes in future warfare, the armed forces of the United States will execute coherent joint operations based primarily on the integrated application of firepower from each of the services. Multiple distributed operations will be conducted simultaneously to achieve an overwhelming synergistic effect.

The ability to successfully integrate the complementary indirect firepower capabilities of each service is essential to, achieving decision. By achieving integration, a full kinetic pulse can be delivered by indirect fires in multiple dimensions against enemy critical vulnerabilities and centers of gravity. Fires will be maneuvered throughout the battlespace to continuously sustain pressure at all levels--strategic, operational and tactical--by applying the most appropriate indirect fire means.

To achieve the effective and timely application of all fires and effects, we require a cohesive joint fires planning and execution process. Because we require forces that are immediately employable, including staffs at every level, those forces must train on and rehearse the critical skills associated with fires and effects application.

Providing joint training will greatly enhance the ability of forces to locate and track targets, select and task the correct fires delivery systems, generate desired effects, assess results and reengage targets, as required.

Although advances in command and control capabilities have enabled the joint force to become more integrated, our command, control and communications systems, our targeting processes and the means by which we plan and execute fires are not yet fully integrated. We continue to organize and execute by service component rather than by functionally oriented headquarters.

Training Facility for Joint Fires. The US Army Field Artillery Center has begun a cooperative effort with the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), a government-funded university research facility associated with the University of Southern California, to create a joint fires and effects training capability. A training facility is being established at Fort Sill that will leverage ICT immersive training technologies to train the application of joint fires. It also will serve as a test bed for developing Objective Force training capabilities.

This facility will leverage revolutionary training technologies--virtual reality, artificial intelligence and simulations--with the potential to achieve live-fire outcomes. It will train personnel from all services to request and employ fires as universal observers; to develop staff capabilities to coordinate and synchronize fires; and to train observers in the application of joint effects in an urban environment.

The training system will replicate the visual and aural conditions of employing different lethal systems and combinations of systems against a wide array of enemy target sets. Scenarios will be developed to enable training across the. full spectrum of operations in variable environments and conditions.

The facility will be able to train situations that present dilemmas, such as the presence of noncombatants on the battlefield, the potential for fratricide and the need to avoid collateral damage. The intent is to be able to train the application of any indirect fire capability from any service in any environment.

Using advanced virtual reality and simulation technology to create an, experiential learning environment is an" efficient and cost-effective supplement to large-scale military exercises. The integration skills developed by individuals and staffs can then be applied with greater effectiveness in other training environments. such as force-on-force joint training at our combat training centers (CTCs).

Our current training facilities replicate neither lethal and nonlethal fires realistically and effectively nor the full range of capabilities that our emerging doctrine directs. Our CTCs must continue to provide tough, realistic training scenarios for maneuver operations, but they must be able to better replicate the application and effects of the full range of joint and land-based, indirect fires. We need to train as we intend to fight.

From the perspective of those who must integrate fires and effects, warfare is becoming increasingly complex and more reliant on joint indirect fires. The time has come to truly integrate the indirect fires capabilities of the services and, most especially, to train those who are engaged in integrating fires and effects.

The need for a Joint Training Center for Indirect Fires Integration is essential to our future.