Joint Blue Force Situational Awareness: Helping Save Warfighter Lives and Improve Operations through Information Integration

Abstract : Technology development programs in recent years have greatly improved our forces' ability to understand their own situation through the use of Global Positioning System-based tracking systems. In short, they used newly developed Blue Force Tracking (BFT) systems to establish "Blue Force Situational Awareness" or BFSA. While these systems provided a wealth of new data, they were all developed in a traditional stovepipe fashion. This meant that warfighters could see only some of the friendly forces on the battlefield. The inability to produce a single, accurate, common operational picture at any strategic, operational or tactical level limited the overall utility of BFSA. It was in this environment that the Joint Requirements Oversight Council chartered the Joint Blue Force Situational Awareness (JBFSA) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) in 2002. Given the critical impact on the warfighter, the JBFSA ACTD was put on an accelerated schedule to develop and demonstrate technology to integrate and disseminate information from the large family of military and commercial BFT stovepipe systems used by the U.S. military. The goal was to provide an integrated Blue Force picture to the warfighter using equipment they already had, and were already trained to use. Thus the integrated information developed by the ACTD's hardware and software was designed to use the Global Command and Control System--Joint (GCCS-J), developed by DISA. The operational manager and transition manager for this ACTD is U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Battle Lab (SMDBL) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This article describes the demonstration phase and efforts to operationalize the technology, including the Extended User Evaluation phase, participation in Foal Eagle and Talisman Saber, collaboration with the UK Ministry of Defense and NATO in pursuit of JBFSA interoperability, and using the ACTD's capabilities in support of ongoing operations.