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Combined Endeavor 2007: An Interoperability Exercise with Real World Applications

4th Combined Endeavor 2007

"Combined Endeavor 2007" (CE 07), the largest and most prominent Security Cooperation and Communications and Information System (CIS) military exercise in the world, started on April 26 and continued till May 10. The event took place at Lager Aulenbach, Germany and at the Air Institute in Yerevan, Armenia. More than 1,200 military and civilian personnel from 42 countries and two multinational organizations took part in the annual event.

This "in the spirit of" Partnership for Peace multinational exercise brought the U.S., NATO and PfP nations together to plan and execute interoperability testing of command, control, communications and computer equipment systems in support of future combined humanitarian, peacekeeping and disaster relief operations.

During CE 07 network topics such as information assurance (IA) and multinational information sharing were tested. The multinational communicators conducted more than 1,000 different interoperability tests, which would be added to the existing 13,000 technical test results currently in the Combined Endeavor Interoperability Guide.

Partnership for Peace Information Management System (PIMS) has supported information sharing at Combined Endeavor for eleven years in a row. This year, PIMS was on site in Germany and Armenia with hardware, software, network support and personnel.

The local In Country Coordinator (ICC), Mr. David Ghazaryan, was supporting CE07 at the forward operating site in Armenia. "PIMS provided laptops and a caching server. My role is to monitor the laptops and mainly the server. The server maintains all laptops under public network of the exercise; it's just caching every peace of request coming from the laptop users and keeps it inside. If the same page or piece of info is requested by the browser, it will get the page from the local depository of the server, keeping the connection channel unloaded and giving more speed to the users", said Mr. Ghazaryan.

Being able to communicate rapidly and effectively is a prerequisite for more successes in case of possibly upcoming contingencies, and PIMS is responsible for information support necessary to be trained to respond to them. PIMS has powered a public web-portal of the exercise: http://www.combinedendeavor.net/ as well as another web-portal: https://members.combinedendeavor.net, available only for the participants and hosting several gigabytes of data, which served as means of communication, in order to prepare and coordinate and organize not only the exercise proper, but also all four planning conferences.

At Combined Endeavor exercises the participants have an opportunity to be trained in global communications interoperability, and this training has proved critical in the success of a quantity of combined operations, such as the evacuation of 1,600 people from Lebanon in July of 2006. Interoperability between the responding nations was of crucial importance indeed, as people attempted to flee the bomb-ravaged country.

Naval and air forces from the six nations responded with C-130 aircraft, SH-3D helicopters and naval vessels of all shapes and sizes. The Luigi Durand de la Penne, an Italian Navy Destroyer, was one of the first to arrive. "We were communicating with the other nations involved within 24 hours," said Italian Air Force Lt. Col. Enrico Ercoli, Combined Endeavor Italian delegation chief. "One reason we were able to establish such rapid communication is because of our participation ... at Combined Endeavor." [1].

Communication systems' testing at the U.S. European Command-sponsored exercise, Combined Endeavor, provides multinational communications guidance and standards for contingencies, such as the Lebanon evacuation operation.

"It's good to be here at CE because I can find out how good or bad my equipment works with that of other nations' before it is too late," said Italian Army Lt. Col. Vincenzo D Amico, a network engineer for the Army Information Transmission Command (COTIE) detachment in Treviso, Italy, participating in the CE exercise [2].

CE proved very successful for all participating nations, and the number of the represented nations steadily increases. In 2006, Bosnia-Herzegovina hosted a CE former forward operating site. This year, a delegation from Bosnia-Herzegovina, now a Partnership for Peace member, attended at the exercise.

Transforming from an observer nation to an official CE participant is a giant step, but the Bi-H delegation chief, Army Capt. Nebojša Stajic, of the Operations Command J-6 cell, was quite optimistic: "next year we hope to be full participants." [3].

For more information about the Combined Endeavor please refer to the public web-portal of the exercise: http://www.combinedendeavor.net/

References:

  1. Johnson D. (Air Force Tech. Sgt.). Global communications interoperability proves critical in combined operations. Combined Endeavor 2007 Public Affairs. Release Date: May 11, 2007.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Benner B. (Sgt. 1st Class). Bosnia-Herzegovina delegation observes its first CE exercise. Combined Endeavor 2007 Public Affairs. Release Date: May 10, 2007.

Picture:

Bosnia-Herzegovina delegation chief, Army Capt. Nebojša Stajic, left, receives an equipment demonstration from Slovenian Army Lance Cpl. Nino Moravac, a telephone switch team member from the 11th Signal Battalion, during the Combined Endeavor training exercise on May 8.