SOCOM a trailblazer for joint training.

The joint-service approach to training employed by U.S. special operations forces has become a model for the Defense Department's Joint National Training Capability, officials said. Under JNTC, the plan is to increase the amount of training that the services conduct jointly.

Because of the nature of their job, special operators from the Army, Navy and Air Force train and fight together. Therefore, most training and simulation systems have had to be networked to function together in combat exercises, said Michael Vaughn, a U.S. Special Operations Command consultant and the technical lead for JNTC development at SOCOM.

The Pentagon sees SOCOM as a "great foundation for building this JNTC," said Vaughn.

Mirroring this trend, the Army's training systems organization is setting up a program office dedicated exclusively to supporting SOCOM. This will "open the lines of communication" between the special operations forces and the conventional units, so they can share technology and mutually benefit from their combat experience, said Brig. Gen. Stephen Seay, Army program executive officer for simulation, training and instrumentation (PEO STRI).

"We want to leverage the operational experience, techniques and processes of SOF," he told National Defense. "There are lessons from SOF that we can transfer to the force at large."

The special operations forces, meanwhile, will benefit from this arrangement, because they will be able to take advantage of technology that the Army already has funded for conventional programs, Seay noted.

SOF training programs, although managed under PEO STRI, will be funded by SOCOM.

As far as the JNTC is concerned, "SOCOM has a close working relationship with the JNTC development," Vaughn said in an interview. At the same time, SOCOM is watching the developments in JNTC and "their ability to help us while we help them."

The U.S. Joint Forces Command is in charge of developing a plan for JNTC. The Defense Department will provide $1.3 billion for the program over five years. JNTC funds would be used to develop technologies such as double-digit infrared emitters, to simulate ground targets, high-speed Internet connectivity, digital maps and simulated forces. Ultimately, JNTC is meant to close the gap between the services when conducting tactical operations, officials said.

Vaughn said that SOCOM wants to continue improving the training systems and developing an architecture that would allow forces to perform global mission rehearsal.

"That helps the JNTC initiatives, because that is exactly what they want to do, so it is good for everybody," he said.

Key enablers to achieve that goal are Internet-related technologies, Vaughn said.

"Greater use of Web-based applications is key to this in order to have global connectivity without relying on a cost prohibitive communications architecture," Vaughn said in an e-mail. "Web-based technologies also give us great flexibility in configuring systems and architectures."

Vaughn said that SOCOM is investigating several technologies that offer potential for a more sophisticated mission rehearsal environment that can be deployed as required, and globally connected. Some of the desired features are three-dimensional infantry training, instrumented urban operations, media and instructional systems, and air traffic control and tactical ground operations.

Training systems must have PC-based modular capabilities of commercial nature "so that they can give us maximum flexibility and make us more efficient," Vaughn said. A better use of narrowband communications needs to be developed, "to take the load off the high-cost networks."

"SOF is the most complex training environment in the [Defense Department] because there are so many different types of weapons platforms and weapons to employ," said Jack Kelly, a former special operator and now business development manager at Lockheed Martin Information Systems. Kelly also oversees the Aircrew Training and Rehearsal Support program (ATARS) for the Air Force Special Operations Command.

"Unlike training the fighting community, where you have limited interaction with other types of aircraft, in the SOF community, you have AC-130s [gun ships] working with MH-53 J or MH-47 or MH-60s [while] ,also being coordinated with the troops on the ground, who do the call for fire," he said.

AFSOC was the first to have a network of simulators as part of SOFnet, to conduct distributed mission training. Kirtland Air Force Base, in New Mexico, started the trend, said Kelly. Hurlburt Air Field, in Florida, followed that lead, and now is the SOF network operations center. The center is the "hub of all of the SOF networks, which we have also connected to the conventional network, as well with all the Air Force simulations and the JNTC," said Vaughn. "SOF has been going in that direction for some time, and actually pioneered a lot of the capability."

Under the ATARS program, which was awarded to Lockheed Martin in 1987, the company provides contractor logistics support for training systems. At Kirtland, the Air Force has the MC-130 Combat Talon, II, the MC-130 Combat Shadow P and N, the MH-53 J and M, the Pave Low and the MH-60G and H and the UH-1N, said Kelly.

Each of those aircraft types has its own simulator, he added. Additionally, at Hurlburt Field, the service has AC-130H and U with training devices, the Combat Talon I and a new device, now in development, supporting the next version of Combat Talon.

All AFSOC platforms interoperate with the U.S. Army 160th Aviation Regiment's MH-47 and MH-60 simulators, said Vaughn. Kirtland is the distributed missions operations center, which provides a "hub for SOF to network to any other conventional platforms that DOD employs," said Kelly.

The concern, however, is to be able to integrate the ground forces in the training, said Vaughn. That would require a "very high resolution database and interoperability to a point where you can have correlation between what the ground forces are doing and what you are getting from the air simulation platforms," Vaughn said.

"The key is making sure that the changes that we make in the simulators are interoperable and across the distributed network that they are meeting the resolution required."

AFSOC recently started involving the ground forces into its simulation. "The whole JNTC initiative has helped spur that on," Vaughn said.

AFSOC also is linked to the dismounted battle lab at Fort Benning, Ga. In this manner, the combined forces train for close air-support maneuvers, said Vaughn.

Fort Benning has a 12-man virtual dismounted capability linked with Hurlburt's AC-130 gun ship simulator. "It has happened quite a bit in the last year that the gun ship has been hooked up with that capability, and has been training various ground forces," said Vaughn. The infantry not only trained with the AC-130, he said, but also with conventional platforms, such as the A-10 and F-16 simulated out of the Air Force Research Lab in Mesa, Ariz.

"Now, you are not only getting an aircrew [man] that is trained, but he is already working with training with the types of people and the types of missions that we are doing for real," said Vaughn.

In his opinion, simulators have helped increase readiness and training tempo for the aircrews. Take the AC-130 gun ship, for example. Ten years, ago all the training was done in the actual aircraft and it took months to train a crew to be proficient in the airplane, said Vaughn.

Sensor operators are the most difficult positions. "It took 18-20 rides in the airplane to get those positions trained," he said.

With the development of a simulator that replicates the back-end of the plane, those rides were cut in half, said Vaughn, because "of how effective the simulator became in training those crew positions."

Hurlburt Field is going to hook up to a simulator developed by the Army PEO STRI which trains air traffic controllers and tactical procedures for ground forces.

The system is called SAGIS, short for special operations air ground interface simulator. It is supposed to be capable of linking to multiple simulators and network with other command and service simulators.

"If they know the terrain and they know the objective area and they practice that, now they are better able to deal with the unknown," said Lockheed Martin's Lee Hess. "They are better able to deal with adverse weather conditions, with moved target areas or an unexpected threat." Missions never go as planned, he said, and practicing the known factors beforehand leaves more room for dealing with the unexpected, he said.