Military Communications and Information Technology: A Trusted ...

64 Military Communications and Information Technology...
In addition CFBLNet has supported several key pre-deployment war fighter
programs and activities, including; multinational connectivity for air picture; messaging
services; collaboration; multi-level security initiatives; homeland defence and
crisis response tools; ship-to-ship command and control; unmanned aerial vehicle
imagery and situational awareness via enhanced tactical data link interoperability.
Imagery and video systems proven on CFBLNet are currently supporting operations
in Afghanistan and other missions. CFBLNet supported key second-tier war fighting
objectives including on-line distributed war gaming and multinational training exercises.
1) Some specific success stories include the following:
CFBLNet supported the build, validation and verification of the NATO ALT-
BMD program with high speed simulations. Its Integration Test Bed (ITB) is a high
profile interoperability and requirements validation capability for the program and
for NATO. The effectiveness of the ITB has been further enhanced by the turnkey
solutions and capability offered by the CFBLNet. The existence of a test network
with connections already in place to the majority of ALTBMD national labs and
system sites facilitated the ITB connection to hardware-in-the-loop testing some
9 months earlier than originally planned.
Lessons-learned in live and unmanned Intelligence, Reconnaissance and
Surveillance aircraft and satellite surveillance in Empire Challenge were applied
immediately in support of ISAF – Afghanistan.
The multinational training federation initiative focuses on providing high
quality mission training with high grade federated modeling and simulation capability
to the warfighter. In addition, it functions as a pre-deployment and staging
platform to shorten the time to operation in theatre.
An example:
The ISAF Coalition forces joining the Afghanistan Mission Network (AMN)
required at short notice a persistent test and evaluation infrastructure to perform
Coalition Interoperability Assurance and Validation (CIAV) activities with regards
to the national system joining the AMN. For this reason CFBLNet was requested to
create Coalition Test and Evaluation Environment (CTE2). The goal of the coalition
test and evaluation environment is to establish a distributed test network to support
interoperability testing between the coalition applications and data interchanges.
CFBLNet worked closely with the CTE2 community lead representatives to
build the persistent CFBLNet CTE2 secure network community within weeks. This
was achieved through supporting the initiative team with their request and coordinated
through the CFBLNet secretariat, national lead representatives, network,
security and initiative workgroups. After approval for execution from the CFBLNet
Executive Group the initiative was scheduled. Once the sites and initiative security
accreditation was accepted by the MSAB the CTE2 network community became
operational and was ready for the first scheduled tests and evaluations.