When Air Force headquarters leadership and staff need help in evaluating new concepts of operations and observing worldwide tactical operations in a real-time environment, they come to the C4ISR Visualization Center (CVC)—a state-of-the-art visualization facility in the Pentagon that conducts command, control, communications and computers and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance analyses, produces 3-D visualizations, and demonstrates C4ISR capability.
The center provides a portal into Air Force joint and coalition training events, experiments, wargames, real-world operations, and facilitates demonstrations of new and emerging technologies. Air Force and DoD organizations can use it to demonstrate and display their products and capabilities to senior military and civilian leaders, providing a vital link for sharing information about promising warfighting capabilities, events and architectures for transformation.
The CVC is part of the Air Force Agency for Modeling and Simulation, which is under the Directorate of Architecture and Operational Support Modernization and the deputy chief of staff for warfighting integration.
The unique capabilities provided by the center’s battle management C4ISR equipment and modeling and simulation tools allow developers to demonstrate their efforts while giving headquarters staff the opportunity to view and evaluate the military utility of promising technologies.
“The systems and advanced concepts being demonstrated can be evaluated against desired capabilities in support of CONOP development, C4ISR integration and policy decisions,” explained Norman Murray Jr., center director. “By providing the CVC’s unique capabilities in the Pentagon, the Air Force has ensured that decision makers and senior leaders are able to view, first hand, the many important developments being made to increase warfighter readiness and continue its transformation in the 21st century.”
Distributed Missions
One example of a CVC activity was a distributed mission operations demonstration and update to Air Force Chief of Staff General John Jumper and other senior Air Force leaders last spring. The “distributed event” brought together four sites—the CVC, the Distributed Mission Operations Center (DMOC) located at Kirtland AFB, NM, Langley AFB, VA, and Nellis AFB, NV—facilitated by use of the DMOC’s mission brief/debrief system.
The event showcased Air Combat Commands’ Virtual Flag 04-3 training exercise, enabling participants to brief Jumper on this distributed live, virtual and constructive training event and to demonstrate the advances being made in the distributed mission operations program.
This past summer, the CVC provided a Pentagon portal into the Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment 2004 (JEFX 04), an Air Combat Command-executed experiment that combined live fly, live play, ground and naval forces, simulations, and technology insertion into a near seamless warfighting environment. In partnership with the Air Force Experimentation Office, daily demonstrations and briefings of key JEFX ‘04 initiatives were presented to senior leaders.
In the future, the CVC plans expanded involvement with both the Virtual Flag and JEFX programs and has several events scheduled for 2005 involving units throughout the Air Force.
One of the many tools at the CVC’s disposal is the Satellite Tool Kit (STK), the core software offering from Analytical Graphics Inc. STK fuses tactical information—such as real-time feeds, messages and geographic information services data—for the simultaneous analysis of multiple theaters of operation and thousands of tracks and events. The software also displays its analyses in dynamic 2-D and 3-D graphics, so users can immediately grasp what is happening in the field.
This 3-D viewer is part of an integrated package known as Constant Sentinel/Flight Control, which brings both simulation as well as real C4ISR network interfaces to the common operating picture. STK provides “God’s eye” situational awareness, from viewing the entire earth to following individual entities participating in an experiment or exercise. STK also provides astrodynamically correct satellite positioning with various orbital flight paths and many analysis tools.
For modeling and simulation, Constant Sentinel integrates with distributive interactive simulation-based networked game play, but also adds real-world interfaces to Tactical Information Broadcast Service, Tactical Receiving Application and Link 16 data feeds. The Flight Control module can accept and fly out air tasking orders. Furthermore, STK images can be exported for use in animation and graphics tools.
