Photo By Cpl. Scott L. Tomaszycki | Marines, Sailors and coalition forces observe a Norwegian projection of the area of...... read more read more
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Coalition officers took a tour of Exercise Bold Quest 13-1 crews and equipment on Cherry Point and Marine Corps Auxiliary Landing Field Bogue, June 19, examining how each piece of gear and associated crew performed during the exercise. The exercise’s main objective was testing and integrating new gear for Identification Friend or Foe, or IFF, from multiple allied nations into a single battle picture.
Several nations provided equipment, crew and aircraft including France, Germany, Italy, Norway and others. Other allied nations who didn’t send equipment and crew sent observers to learn lessons from the other nations’ performance during the exercise.
“Bold Quest gave us a chance to do some vital training, especially in the mode four and mode five arena in Identification Friend or Foe,” said Maj. Richard P. Owens, the Marine Corps’ service lead for participation in the exercise. “You have to know what’s out there and if it’s friendly or not. The radar paints a picture and it comes back with the feed, but you don’t know what that is until you get a good identification on it.”
“Mode four” and “mode five” are two different systems of IFF equipment. Mode four is currently in use today across the U.S. military and with many of our allies. Mode five is a more advanced system currently being developed and implemented into militaries around the world.
IFF works by using radio transponders present on all aircraft today. Transponders send out a signal detailing what kind of aircraft it is and who owns the aircraft. Military aircraft, however, can turn off their transponders to avoid enemies using the transponders to target them.
This presents its own problem because with the transponders off, friendly forces can’t tell immediately if an aircraft is friendly or hostile. To solve this, mode four and mode five IFF systems send a signal to the aircraft transponder and force it to respond. If the transponder doesn’t respond, it is a potential enemy.
“Australia is looking at mode five IFF integration across a number of platforms, so it’s been informative to see where not only the U.S. but the European nations are going with that aspect of identification friend or foe,” said Wing Commander David Paddison, an Australian observer with the exercise. “I think it provides us with an increased level of situational awareness.”
In recent history, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Bosnia, American forces worked side-by-side with coalition partners to reach their objectives. While combined operations are beneficial for the militaries involved, they have their own problem in terms of language barriers and differing operation procedures that exercises like Bold Quest help overcome.
“These capabilities can only be reached with experience, with operations and exercises,” said Col. Vincenzo Falzarano, the country lead for Italy. “Now, we have many more coalition than joint operations, which means each operation will involve several different nations, and we need to prepare our soldiers to be ready when we have combined operations. Bold Quest is an opportunity to test what we already operate in Italy and to see the interoperability with all the other nation’s systems.”
| Date Taken: | 06.19.2013 |
| Date Posted: | 06.27.2013 14:20 |
| Story ID: | 109384 |
| Location: | MARINE CORPS AUXILLARY LANDING FIELD BOUGE, NC, US |
| Web Views: | 103 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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