Groundbreaking Navy and Marine Corps land-attack technologies will be in the spotlight this month as the 2001 Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (JWID) kicks off in the second week of July. JWID 2001 will feature a three-weeklong series of demos hosted mainly at the Naval Surface Warfare Center's Dahlgren, Virginia, laboratory and the Joint Battle Center in Suffolk, Virginia.
JWID is an eight-year-old annual exercise that tries out innovative technologies in a range of joint-service mission areas, and usually selects several for accelerated development. The services take turns managing the event, which is built around a simulated operational scenario aimed at stressing the technologies being evaluated. The common operational picture that tracks the scenario is shared among the sites as well as by NATO and Pacific allies over high-speed networks.
Last year JWID moved to a two-year format. An initial "theme" year demonstrated more than 30 technologies and a second "exploitation" year looks again at the most promising candidates from the theme year. Ten of those, including two "gold nuggets" selected from last year's field, are back for 2001. One of these nuggets, a network-security system called Silent Runner (developed by Raytheon), will serve as the security component for the new Navy-Marine Corps Intranet.
The top performers at JWID are expected eventually to be fielded, depending on service needs and the availability of funds. The others will get a closer look and probably a better assessment of their maturity.
JWID 2000, held last July and hosted by the Air Force, focused on the theme "Space and Information—the Warfighter's Edge;' with U.S. Space Command acting as the lead service component. The two other major nodes were Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii, and the Joint Battle Center. This JWID ran two simultaneous operational scenarios, one each on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, in which virtual forces responded to simulated contingencies.
This year, Space Command's role will be consolidated at the command site at the Joint Battle Center. Pacific Command will serve as a transmission site linking the JWID to our Pacific allies. The Navy's primary site was shifted from the Third Fleet command ship Coronado (AGF-11) to the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command site in San Diego. The Marine Corps and the Army will share a primary site at Dahlgren. The Air Force will be at Hurlburt Field, Florida.
JWID 2001 officials point out that most of the demonstrations aim at top-level data management capabilities in such areas as network security, network management, and imagery generation. To make the exercise more relevant to fleet operators, Dahlgren—in addition to hosting eight of the ten scheduled JWID demonstrations—also will run a special set of seven demonstrations that focus directly on Navy-Marine Corps operational priorities.
Among these demos is the joint warning and reporting network, a Windows NT-based system and a segment of the Defense Information Infrastructure Common Operating Environment, that will be incorporated into the Navy's global command-and-control system/maritime system and other service command-and-control nets.
Dahlgren also will demonstrate the naval fire-control system, a hardware- and software-based architecture that will support fires planning for shipboard guns. This system is one of the three pillars of fire-support for surface combatants, along with the tactical Tomahawk weapon-control system and the land attack missile fire-control system.
Also being looked at in the fire-control arena is a Marine Corps target laser designator-handoff system. The system, either mounted on a tripod or installed on an aircraft, will be used to illuminate targets ashore and pass them to the naval fire-control system and the Corps' advanced field artillery tactical data system, which will process data for weapon selection.
In addition, Dahlgren will showcase the quick-strike planner, a tool developed at the lab to enhance shipboard mission planning for the tactical block-4 Tomahawk cruise missile. A significant additional Navy demo will be the use of a navigation sensor system interface. This interface, developed as a go-between for shipboard navigation systems and combat systems, will provide precise timing in the same way it keeps ship inertial navigation systems synchronized.
The 2001 JWID will be the first time two services (in this case the Army and Marine Corps) have shared a single site as their primary node. In past years, the Army has based its JWID activity at Fort Gordon, Georgia. The joint use of Dahlgren underlines the interest both services share in surface fire-support coordination.
The 2001 JWID also will be the first in which the exercise is linked to two separate allied links. A coalition wide-area network that provides connectivity for NATO sites and the multination task group will link units of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.