A big part of life is getting things done with limited resources. This is especially true in combat. Every commanding officer would like to have more assets at his disposal. Manpower is another obvious limitation in combat. At the most basic level, commanders usually want, in a perfect world, more brigades at their disposal. Sometimes the personnel shortage comes in important specialties. For example, I wrote the other day about the limited number of maintainers TRANSCOM has.
This is where good technology can help out. When it's working right, technology can reduce the number of people required to perform a job. It can make one person more productive. So, regarding the maintainer example, if you can build some self-diagnostics into an airframe, you can maximize your maintainers' time.
Air Force Link had an article the other day about the importance of JTACs, Joint Terminal Attack Controllers: "With less than 1,100 of them to go around," the Air Force is turning to technology to magnify the effect of the JTACS they do have. Besides, marking "friendly forces on a map using tacks and symbols or markers," no matter how many JTACS you have, just doesn't cut it anymore. One piece of technology designed to help keep forces straight is the Joint Datalink Information Combat Execution (JDICE).
Defense Industry Daily had a good piece on JDICE yesterday. JDICE correlates information from Link 16 (or similar) radios in aircraft, Blue Force Tracker information from ground troops, and GPS data "to create a live common operating picture of the battlefield."
JDICE is one part of ugrading Air Support Operations Centers (ASOCs). Another part is the Ground Mobile Gateway (GMG) "a humvee with a shelter that contains the tactical battlefield command and control functions ... used at the ASOC level." This quote from Staff Sgt. Erik Roberts, 422nd JTAC perfectly illustrates the best role of technology in combat:
I can now see the ground picture and the air picture as it's moving. We let the machines do the math and let the warfighters make the decisions.
I love the technology. But lives are on the line. We want this thing to work as well or better than when people do it. For all the gee-whizzardry, technology in the foxhole had better work. JDICE (and all its components) is not proven, yet. Here's hoping it will be and will help our service personnel.
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