7th ATC hosts DF 19 in three locations

Photo By Staff Sgt. Christopher Stewart | Georgian Soldiers fire mortars during exercise Dynamic Front 19 at Grafenwoehr Training Area, March 7, 2019. Exercise Dynamic Front 19 includes approximately 3,200 service members from 27 nations who are observing or participating from Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany; Riga, Latvia; and Torun, Poland; during March 2-9, 2019. Dynamic Front is an annual U.S. Army Europe exercise focused on the readiness and interoperability of U.S. Army, joint service, and allied and partner nations’ artillery and fire support working together in a multinational environment. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Christopher Stewart)  

GRAFENWOEHR, BY, GERMANY

03.13.2019

Story by Sgt. Christopher Stewart 

7th Army Training Command

Grafenwoehr, Germany— U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) conducted Exercise Dynamic Front 19 (DF 19) March 2-9, 2019 within three distributed locations: Grafenwoehr, Germany; Riga, Latvia; and Torun, Poland.

7th Army Training Command hosted the USAREUR-directed annual exercise.

Dynamic Front 19 is testing the interoperability of the Artillery Systems Cooperation Activities (ASCA), the common language that partner nations’ artillery units use to communicate fires information, within those three distributed locations.

This exercise allowed different commands to share tactics, techniques, and procedures on providing accurate and timely artillery communication and execution.

“This exercise is enabling the artillery community across multiple nations, NATO and non-NATO, to come together and work through the frictions of our interoperability in human, procedural, and technical domains,” said Maj. Andrew Champion, DF 19’s exercise officer in charge. “It will enable us to work together more effectively and efficiently in the future.”

Dynamic Front 19 integrated participating nations into every echelon of the exercise’s structure to develop interoperability between all participants from the simulated land command to the individual units conducting the live fires in the training areas.

The simulated land command, the highest command in this exercise, communicated directly with all three distributed locations.

“We massed all of the units across all three locations at one time on target so every firing unit fired onto one location, at each location,” said Champion. “We are able to take multinational firing units and coordinate that mass destructive fires.”

The Theater Support Fires Command (TSFC), a new concept that was executed during this exercise, was designed to coordinate fires information between the land command and the firing units. The TSFC took both the digital and analog systems of communications from the firing units and coordinated firing plans for the land component commander.

“We need to be able to synchronize our widely-dispersed units to get the right effects at the right target at the right time,” said Col. Andrew Anderson, commander of the TSFC.

• Date Taken: 03.13.2019
• Date Posted: 03.13.2019 12:26
• Story ID: 314086
• Location: GRAFENWOEHR, BY, DE