ARTICLE

October 2004

Friend or Foe?

Marines Test Combat ID Advances in War Game

by Harold Kennedy

U.S. Marine Corps M1A1 Abrams tanks, amphibious assault vehicles, light armored vehicles and armed Humvees came rumbling into the dirt crossroads of the small, heavily defended village, guns blazing.

During the confusing melee, it was difficult to tell friendly forces from the enemy. Unintended consequences could include friendly casualties, a tragic part of warfare that seemingly won’t go away.

This time, however, the gunfire was simulated—and the Marines were equipped with the newest combat identification technologies that are being evaluated by the U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va.

The event was a one-day exercise conducted this summer in and around Dodds City, one of the combat training towns at the Marine base at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The exercise—sponsored by the Joint Forces Command and the Army’s Communications Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center, at Fort Monmouth, N.J.—was part of the coalition combat identification advanced concept technology demonstration, a multiyear project designed to improve combat ID in ground and close air support environments.

It also was an element of a much larger combined joint task force exercise, dubbed CJFEX 04-2, which involved more than 28,000 troops from the Marines, Army, Navy, Air Force, and special operations, as well as soldiers from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Netherlands and Peru.

The combat ID exercise was much smaller. Altogether, it involved about 300 troops from four different battalions of the 2nd Marine Division, which is based at Camp Lejeune, plus small contingents of Marines from the United Kingdom and France.

The opposition role was played by 40 members of the 1st Battalion of the 10th Marine Regiment. Their equipment for the occasion included some Soviet-designed platforms, including a BMP armored vehicle and a T-72 tank that flew what appeared to be a pirates’ black flag, complete with a white skull and crossed bones.

The purpose of the exercise was to assess the military utility of combat ID technologies and accelerate their fielding, explained Army Lt. Col. Mike Fowler, chief of the ground combat division of the joint combat identification evaluation team.

JCIET, headquartered at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., is part of the Joint Forces Command. It was established a decade ago to foster improved methods of combat ID for all of the military services.

JCIET conducts large-scale tactical evaluations and employs sophisticated equipment from all four services to assess integration and interoperability of current and future systems, concepts, capabilities and doctrine that directly affect combat ID.

The team evaluates four mission areas—surface-to-surface, air-to-air, surface-to-air and air-to-surface. It also is the primary venue for experimentation in areas of system integration related to joint and allied combat ID, and battlefield information management. JCIET has about 100 personnel, including 30 active-duty troops from all services and about 70 contractors, explained Maj. Stephen Banta, a Marine armor officer assigned to JCIET.

During the exercise, the Marines concentrated primarily on two devices—radio-based combat ID and battlefield target identification.

RBCI is a software update that can be used to prevent air-to-ground fratricide. Mounted on a helicopter or a fixed–wing aircraft, it allows combat net radios to confirm the presence of other RBCI-equipped friendly forces in a hostile fire zone, Banta noted.

“The radio-based systems will tell operators what vehicles with similar equipment are out there, and what grid they’re at,” he said.

In the air over Dodds City, for example, an Apache attack helicopter—equipped with RBCI—hovered, interrogating potential targets on the ground to determine whether or not they were friendly. In addition, fire-support coordinators, forward observers and forward air controllers on the ground can use RBCI to conduct queries with their fire-coordination and clearance procedures, Banta said.

In this exercise, however, “we’ve focused on the ground-to-ground fight,” Fowler said. Several prototypes of BTID were mounted on a variety of vehicles, including Marine tanks, AAVs, LAVs and Humvees, as well as a British Land Rover and a French reconnaissance vehicle.

BTID—pronounced “bee tid”—is an encrypted millimeter-wave question-and-answer system that allows a vehicle gunner or commander to make rapid “shoot or don’t shoot” decisions at the point of detection and engagement, he said. The system, which is being developed in conjunction with NATO allies, consists of an interrogator and a transponder. The interrogator allows a vehicle gunner or commander to send an encrypted message to another platform to help determine whether it is friendly or not.

For this exercise, the vehicles were configured in three ways, Banta said. “Some have interrogators only. Others have just transponders. Some have both. Those with the interrogators are the killers on the battlefield.”

Banta pointed to an Abrams tank rumbling into view. “That tanker right there,” he said. “Before he fires, he’ll query the target.”

If the target is equipped with a BTID transponder, Banta said, the tanker will get two signals. One will be a recorded female voice—nicknamed “Bitching Betty”—repeating a warning three times: “Friend! Friend! Friend!” Also, a red light will appear on the tanker’s spotter.

In less than one second, BTID can identify correctly more than 98 percent of the time a friendly target that is more than three miles away, regardless of the weather, said Army Lt. Col. Bill McKean, the project’s operational manager.

If the target doesn’t answer the query, it could be an enemy, but it also could be a friendly platform without a transponder, Banta said. Or it could be a civilian vehicle full of women and children. “You still have to go through your target ID process before shooting,” Banta said.

“Three countries are developing BTID systems, and they’re all different,” Banta said. The U.S. version is being designed by Raytheon Tactical Systems, Fort Wayne, Ind. The United Kingdom and France are working with separate units of the France-based Thales Group to come up with their own devices.

“These are mature technologies,” McKean said. “They have already undergone all the preliminary testing. This demonstration’s purpose is to accelerate the acquisition and fielding of capabilities to the war fighter faster than they would normally progress through the standard acquisition process.”

JCIET’s role is that of “an honest broker,” Banta explained. The unit planned to use the exercise to conduct an objective evaluation of how the devices performed under combat-like conditions.

The exercise got underway at 6 a.m., when the Marines began checking their equipment and making other preparations for the mission. By 9 a.m., they were rolling down roads made muddy by the previous night’s rain. By noon, the shooting was all over, and the troops returned, dirty and sweaty, to their base of operations for “a very intense debrief,” Fowler said.

Several portable buildings had been set up, with air-conditioning and rows of computers, where Marines were asked to record their experiences. They were given survey forms designed with the help of Johns Hopkins University, of Baltimore, Md.

“We want them to tell us what happened,” Fowler said. “Did the technology work? Did it prevent blue-on-blue engagements?”

The debriefing is not a test for the Marines, Fowler emphasized. “We’re not here to grade them on their performance,” he said. “We’re here to find out whether the technology works.”

After the Marines filed their reports, they were to be reviewed and analyzed by JCIET staff, a process that takes weeks, Fowler said.

Among the Marines who spoke to National Defense immediately after disembarking from their vehicles, the devices got mixed reviews. Sgt. John J. Washington, who commanded a tank that had been equipped with a transponder, was not impressed.

“All it does is tell the other guy that I’m friendly,” he said. “It doesn’t tell me anything at all. I didn’t know who else was out there. I really don’t see any use for it.”

Lance Cpl. Jonathan Robinson, a gunner on a Humvee armed with a tube launched, optically tracked, wire guided (TOW) missile weapon system, had a different experience. His Humvee was equipped with both an interrogator and a transponder.

“It worked very well,” he said. “Our interest is not to get shot at by friendly forces, and that’s what happened. We did get shot at, but it was by the enemy.”

By more clearly identifying friendly forces, the BTID equipment enabled Robinson’s crew to concentrate more sharply on enemy targets, he said. “We destroyed an AAV and a T-72.”

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