Experimental battle-planning software rushed to Iraq.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Defense Technology

An experimental Windows-based software application that helped the military services coordinate fire support missions in Iraq could he the answer to avoiding friendly fire in future conflicts, officials said.

Pushing for the adoption of this technology is the U.S. Joint Forces Command, which first tested the system in the 2002 Millennium Challenge war fighting experiment.

The U.S. Central Command requested the bat tie-planning software, called Joint Time Sensitive Targeting Manager, for use in the Iraq war, even though the system had never been employed in live operations before. CentCom commanders nevertheless decided to take the JTSTM to the field, in the absence of any alternative system that could both expedite the mission coordination process and allow the services to see a common picture of the battlefield.

"The software was specifically designed to force commanders to look at a target before it can be executed," said It. Col. Mark Werth, head of the joint fires initiative at JFCOM.

Ground, air and maritime commanders who are logged on the JTSTM network can pinpoint a potentially risky mission--where the target may be too close to civilians or friendly forces. Via chat-rooms and e-mail, war planners can collectively assess the situation and figure out options, Werth explained. "Everyone is collaborating," which makes this technology a "great de-confliction tool," he said.

Typically, the Air Force would be chasing a target on the ground, without the Army or the special operations forces knowing about the mission. With the JTSTM, every component is aware of what the other services are doing, if the Air Force acquires a target, the air component commander feeds it into the target queue, and the target automatically pops up for everyone on the network to see.

The JTSTM is one of the software applications developed under the ADOCS program, or Automated Deep Operations Coordination System.

Originally sponsored in the late 1990s by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, ADOCS is a joint mission management suite of software tools and interfaces, designed to help coordinate operations across a theater of war.

None of the services adopted ADOCS as a "program of record," Werth noted: But the Defense Department is funding the project through 2004 as an Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration.

The ADOCS application used in Millennium Challenge was modified substantially for Operation Iraqi Freedom, mostly to accommodate non-traditional...