Photo By Lt. Col. Deanna Bague | Marine Cpl. Ryan Roberts with 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, prepares a Meal,...... read more read more
FORT BLISS, Texas – Planning and training for Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) 14.2 is well underway. The major events start at the end of April and lead to connecting with the Joint Staff J-6 Bold Quest exercise.
NIE 14.2 will focus on joint and coalition force integration, and allow the assessment of communications and network gaps, with joint and multinational partners, said Lt. Gen. Keith C. Walker, deputy commanding general, Futures, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, and director, Army Capabilities Integration Center.
To align with the military’s principle of training how they fight, one of the NIE 14.2 goals is to implement joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational operations in a realistic setting to examine interoperability and integration by sharing and safeguarding the right information.
“The NIE has always been about the Army tactical network, and we’ve worked very hard so we can talk to each other, but the reality is we don’t fight alone as an army, we fight as a joint force with our Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps partners, and in fact we fight as a combined force with our coalition partners,” said Walker.
Walker said taking advantage of Bold Quest, an exercise that the Joint Staff sponsors to work with coalition partners, is also cost effective. Both events are scheduled to take place independently, and by bringing them together, the combination allows each to leverage the benefits of the other, so it’s very economical in that sense, said Walker.
“When we have many of our coalition partners working with Bold Quest and they are also working with NIE, it creates a training opportunity right here at Fort Bliss for the 1st Armored Division to do a joint and multinational training exercise,” said Walker. “For this NIE we’ll have the first combined exercise in which the 1st Armored Division Headquarters will serve as a joint task force.”
Walker, who is one of the former commanders of BMC, has seen the progression of the NIEs and acknowledges that the purpose of the NIE has evolved.
“When we first started doing Network Integration Evaluations, we were working to deliver a network in combat,” Walker said. “Now as we come out of Afghanistan, it’s a different problem for the Army. It’s delivering the network to the future force, a force with a much broader challenge than wide area security operations in Afghanistan. In the future, mission command on the move, which is a key part of our network requirements – is that much more important.”
The way in which the NIE works with industry has matured, added Walker. He attended Industry Day at Fort Belvoir after the last NIE, and said that industry has provided some pretty steady feedback.
“The consistent [commentary] from our industry partners is they want to get the feedback from the Soldiers as soon as they can,” said Walker. “Now [Brig.] Gen. John Charlton [with] the Brigade Modernization Command is implementing a new business practice that will start from NIE 15.1 and carry forward where we can give industry more focused capability gaps, better synchronized with Army program planning. And during this NIE, industry will be able to sit with Soldiers early on and get feedback directly from the Soldiers that use the systems, so I think that will be helpful in both instances with industry.”
Officials from BMC’s Brigade Modernization Integration Division said NIEs continue to provide training opportunities as they leverage the live, virtual and constructive environment that affords units the opportunity to assess emerging capability sets while supporting scalable, distributed and blended training. Across this environment, subject matter experts from U.S. Training and Doctrine Command’s Centers of Excellence, as well as system analysts from both BMC and Army Test and Evaluation Command, support an integrated analysis effort.
In an era of budgets constraints and reduction of forces, Walker said he thinks the NIE will be more important than ever. When budgets are reduced, programs get cancelled or delayed, as seen in previous times, he added.
As a result, he said, the investment approach in research and development has shifted because the focal point can no longer be short term and we must look to the future. The Army has been doing short-term focus for 12 years, which has been the longest amount of time in continuous combat operations ever in U.S. history.
Walker said the NIE provides the chance to examine and evaluate some of the results of the research and investment dollars as the Army looks to future requirements. Getting Soldiers involved early in research and development efforts provides feedback to improve existing programs while informing less expensive doctrinal, organizational, training and leader development capability solutions, he said.
“With decreased budgets, we can’t afford not to do the NIE,” said Walker. “We can’t afford not to thoroughly evaluate capability solution candidates in a reduced budget environment.”
| Date Taken: | 04.10.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 04.10.2014 17:13 |
| Story ID: | 125407 |
| Location: | FORT BLISS, TX, US |
| Web Views: | 444 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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