Red Flag: Training assists military readiness
By Muridith Winder, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Office of Corporate Communications
The Department of Defense touts it as ‘the most realistic combat exercise ever developed.’ To understand the full significance of Red Flag aviation training, now in its 40th year, requires a look further back in history and beyond its Air Force sponsor.
Picture this: World War II is raging in Europe. The United States, though not yet formally involved, decides to ship cargo and fuel to England. Far from the front, and within sight of our own ports, there seems little to fear for our merchant ships and their military escorts as they embark on their transatlantic supply mission.
The Germans think differently. They decide to send U-boats to attack the U.S. convoy by night. They find the U.S. ships silhouetted against the brightly lit Mid-Atlantic coast. The ships are also running lights themselves.
Easy pickings….
America’s lack of accurate situational awareness would prove one of the most costly missteps in its military history. It took days for U.S. officials to fully understand what had happened and weeks before they were able to take corrective action. It would also take a second and more devastating attack at Pearl Harbor before the United States would officially enter the war.
Full-time awareness
Among lessons learned during WWII, this one in particular is linked directly to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency mission: decision makers and military forces must know at all times the locations and movements of their adversaries, and must work to anticipate their strategy and likely tactics.
NGA builds full-time situational awareness for its military customers in large part through its support team system. NGA personnel are embedded with each service branch and at all major combatant command locations, serving as ready sources for analytic products and services that provide spatiotemporal context for what is happening in the world.
“We coach, train and mentor our mission partners on NGA tools and applications,” said Army Col. Joseph Patterson, director of the NGA Readiness Office.
The NGA Support Teams comprise liaison officers and geospatial analysts who work together across service boundaries to support state-of-the-art geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, according to Patterson. He said team members engage pre-deployment to set the stage for success in theater as well as in reach-back support to operations.
Training exercises
NGA also supports its military customers during training and readiness exercises and demonstrations. In addition to the annual Enterprise
Challenge, which focuses on demonstrating interoperability among all branches of the U.S. military and key allied partners, NGA supports
specialized training, such as the aviation-focused Red Flag exercises that are conducted several times each year.
Red Flag involves a series of simulated combat exercises conducted on the bombing and gunnery ranges of the Nevada Test and Training Range. Red Flag is one of a series of advanced training programs administered by the U.S. Air Force Warfare Center and Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. It is executed through the 414th Combat Training Squadron. The squadron’s mission is to maximize the combat readiness, capability and survivability of participating units by providing realistic training in a combined air, ground, space and electronic threat environment while providing for a free exchange of ideas between forces.
Red Flag is not limited to the Air Force. Each Red Flag exercise also includes naval, marine and army aviators; sailors posted to aircraft carriers; search and rescue personnel; and the air forces of a host of U.S. allied nations. Over its history, Red Flag has helped train personnel from more than 29 allied nations. GEOINT is a key component of Red Flag training, and NGA products and services figure prominently.
“Every exercise begins with an NGA mission brief,” said John Gray, NGA’s liaison officer to Nellis and Creech Air Force Bases. “This presentation provides the overview, capabilities and location of NGA resources.”
Among key resources is NGA’s Map of the World visualization tool, which provides access to rich geospatial content and data by location. Red Flag’s naval participants rely on NGA’s integrated Web-based services while onboard ship. Pilots access MoW and other NGA products and services during flight by using iPads and other mobile devices.
“We get all of the flight pubs, approaches, etc., through NGA,” said Air Force Col. Jeffrey Weed, 414th Combat Training Squadron commander. “I don’t want to underappreciate that, but that really pales in comparison to the other products that we get from [NGA].”
Included in the broader set of services NGA provides are imagery, GEOINT products and navigational charts that are regularly updated and made available on all of the Red Flag mission-planning and flight-planning computers.
Because foreign air forces also participate in Red Flag, NGA must supply products, including imagery, that are releasable to non-U.S. participants, added Weed. Just as with the U.S. participants, it is important for allied forces to be familiar with and able to maximize use of the GEOINT products available to support joint missions.
NGA’s commitment to use commercial imagery to a larger extent than before has proved a boon to operations at Red Flag, in large part because of the releasability issue, said Weed.
“That’s probably been the most successful NGA partnership that we have,” said Weed. “For the last 18 months, NGA has had a commercial imagery program in which they can provide unclassified imagery to all of our participants.”
Weed also said that NGA’s commercial imagery program has allowed Red Flag participants to access imagery in a timelier manner. He explained that Red Flag’s imagery requests typically were at the bottom of the priority list before NGA started incorporating commercial imagery, because real-world situations always take precedence over training exercises.
“Whether surveillance imagery on potential landing zones for helicopters or updated target photos, we have been able to use that imagery request process — specifically the unclassified commercial imagery — to get products into the hands of exercise participants in less than 24 hours,” said Weed. “That never happened before in Red Flag.”
Making it real
Preparing for an exercise of Red Flag’s magnitude takes a lot of planning and coordination, according to planners. One of the key elements to mission planning is providing realistic intelligence.
“We have a team of nearly 20 personnel who work closely with the corporate [main Red Flag] team to make sure scenario products are available to participants,” said Air Force Capt. Kathryn Leach, flight commander with the 547th Intelligence Squadron.
“We support the 414th with intel scenarios and target assignments for Red Flag,” she said. “[NGA] provides several Web-based services, where participants can look up imagery. They also have a couple that they’ve pushed out for our coalition sites, where we have foreign participants.”
Planners work to make the training itself as realistic as possible, according to Leach. This means assigning some participants to act as aggressors. The aggressors are trained to replicate the tactics and techniques of potential adversaries.
Both friendly and adversarial teams are provided with intelligence and products, which simulates a real-world scenario as much as possible, according to Leach. Participants also must work through all of the same mission-planning processes that they would in a live event.
The effort to simulate a realistic experience also includes having rescue personnel on hand.
“Our role is the same as downrange,” said Air Force Capt. Andrew Bergeris, intelligence officer for the 66th Rescue Squadron.
That downrange mission is to provide combat flight rescues and recovery of downed pilots. Using the HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter, members of the rescue squadron also provide and assist in peacetime search and rescue operations. They rely heavily on NGA products to accomplish their
missions, said Bergeris.
“We use NGA products to look at terrain features on different routes,” he said. “Since we fly so low, we look at the vertical terrain to see what might possibly be in our way.”
Having accurate terrain details is critical to the rescue pilots, said Bergeris, and NGA’s digital products usually provide the most up-to-date information because they are constantly updated.
“Terrain can change from year to year,” he said. “With paper products we have to wonder if power lines are where we think they are, or did they take them down? Or, did they add a new vertical obstruction to this area? There are so many different reasons why we look at more updated imagery when we’re
actually going out the door.”
Paper products are still the preferred format for fighters, according to Weed.
“Hard-copy charts can survive an ejection and be useful on the ground with the pilots,” he said.
Describing NGA’s contribution to Red Flag and military readiness, Weed had nothing but praise.
“This has been a great partnership. I think it’s been one of the most successful parts of my command,” he said.
