`Persistent' intelligence feeds benefit air combat planners.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

Air combat planners, in the foreseeable future, can expect to use sophisticated software tools that will help compress the so-called "kill chain,"-the time it takes it to find, identify and destroy a target, said Air Force officials.

Some of these technologies were tested this summer, during a series of experiments designed to execute new air-combat planning concepts embraced by U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper.

Among Jumper's initiatives is the notion of a "global strike task force" of fighter and bomber aircraft that would he able to take off on short notice and attack an enemy's critical infrastructure-thus clearing the way fur U.S. ground forces. This task force, to be successful, would require unprecedented levels of battlefield intelligence.

A continual flow of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data around the dock is a fundamental prerequisite in the global strike task force, said Lt. Gen. William T. Hobbins, commander of the 12th Air Force. He served as the joint force air and space component commander during the Air Force war-fighting experiment conducted this summer, known as JEFX 2002.

In a simulation-based portion of the experiment, a global strike task force made up of F-22 fighters and B-2 bombers relied on "persistent 24-7 ISR to kick down the door in a scenario where we don't have access, to enable follow-on forces," Hobbins told reporters during a news conference.

The JEFX command air operations center, or CAOC, at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., became the test bed fur several new technologies that Hobbins said will help "transform" the way air operations are planned and implemented. The goal, he said, is to "send information as rapidly as we can from the CAOC to the war fighter in the air, so we can prosecute targets before we lose the opportunity."

Among the more useful technologies tried at JEFX were software programs that help collect and combine data from multiple stove-piped systems, Hobbins said. "We are using software in ways we never did before, to facilitate machine-to-machine talk."

Hobbins was particularly enthusiastic about the experimental MC2A-X (multi-sensor command and control aircraft), known as Paul Revere. This system is viewed as a "critical enabler" fur the global strike task force, its role envisioned as an information hub that can help direct sensors and weapons.

The Paul Revere is a Boeing 707 equipped with communications links and workstations that receive sensor...