Non-Subscriber Extract
US Air Force losing patience on joint CAS approach
By Rupert Pengelley
27 June 2008
The US Air Force (USAF) has decided that it should follow its own path in enhancing the efficiency of the support that it provides to ground forces via its own tactical air controllers and close air support (CAS) aircraft.
At the same time, it remains party to continuing joint service attempts to create a single common digital communications standard and message protocol for line-of-sight (LOS) machine-to-machine data communications between joint tactical air controllers (JTACs) and CAS aircraft from the USAF, US Marines Corps (USMC) or US Navy.
Speaking at the recent Defence IQ Sensor to Shooter 2008 conference staged in London, USAF Major Andrew Stone, from the Air Ground Operations School at Nellis Air Force Base, told delegates that the USAF now intends to "capitalise on its inherent tactical datalink strength". This implies extending reliance on Link 16 and the Situation Awareness Data Link (SADL), the latter based on the Enhanced Position Location Reporting System networking waveform used by the US Army and USMC for terrestrial communications.
The findings of the Joint Forces Command Coalition Combat Identification Exercise 'Bold Quest' in September 2007, he noted, showed that many aircraft still lacked a compatible means of digital communications with the machine-to-machine communications terminals introduced for use by JTACs from the various US services. The findings also indicated that there was still no common digital communications standard, either between the various US forces or allied forces, and that there was continued piecemeal implementation of differing message transfer protocols by the individual services.