CONR, CANR partner up for first-ever live, bi-national simulator exercise

  • Published
  • By Angela Pope
  • AFNORTH Public Affairs
TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  Somewhere high above the Pacific Ocean, a commercial cargo jet bound for Anchorage, Alaska, squawks 7500 -- the code pilots use to indicate they've been hijacked. The plane shifts course and enters Canadian airspace. Homeland defense officials at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the Canadian NORAD Region, the Continental U.S. NORAD Region and the Canadian Air Defense Sector spring into action. Two Canadian F-18s and two U.S. F-15s scramble and intercept the jet.

Had this been a real scenario, NORAD and its subordinate commands would have been prepared for it thanks to CONR-1st Air Force (Air Forces Northern)'s Distributed Mission Operations, or DMO, system.

While this system of inter-connected simulators is fired up every day at AFNORTH, allowing warfighters from various locations to link up and participate in the same live scenario simultaneously, an exercise held Nov. 17 marked a first in DMO's seven-year history.

"These scenarios have always been executed in a U.S.-only environment," said Steve Boe, DMO program manager. "For this exercise, however, we incorporated Canadian F-18 pilots and simulators with the Canadian Air Defense Sector. It provided a multi-regional realism we've never experienced before using DMO."

Due to the bi-national NORAD agreement between Canada and the U.S., the two countries train together on a regular basis, preparing their responders for the worst imaginable homeland defense scenarios. But because of technological limitations, Canada was previously unable to reap the benefits of AFNORTH's DMO system.

To facilitate Canada's participation in the exercise, AFNORTH developed a network security device that allowed Canadian warfighters to view and interact with the scenario on their own command and control displays.

During the exercise, participating warfighters across the continent were fed five different scenarios involving everything from commercial airliners to small, private aircraft. Some were hijacked, some failed to establish radio contact and one had a bomb on board.

"DMO allows us to train for missions we can't do in a real-world environment," said Larry Christie, a DMO exercise planner. "And it lets us train all of our warfighters from the air battle manager up to the general officer, from the tactical level to the strategic level."

Because of the proximity of CONR and CANR's airspace regions and the likelihood of an aircraft moving from one region to the other, it is crucial for the two commands to work and train together as they were able to during this exercise.

"Our mission is identical to CANR's mission, and threats can easily transition from their area of operations to ours," said Brig. Gen. Christopher Coates, CONR deputy commander. "When we get training opportunities like this, it gives us a chance to streamline our operations and better prepare ourselves for those difficult and unimaginable real-world situations."

The exercise also marked a first for the 144th Fighter Wing out of Fresno, Calif.

"Fresno's unit training device simulators have always been good for one-on-one training within their own unit," Christie said. "But they lacked the ability to 'play in the sandbox' with others until now. This was the first time we've networked them into a virtual homeland defense exercise through DMO."

The Alaska NORAD Region, the Eastern and Western Air Defense Sectors, the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division, the U.S. Coast Guard Aviation Training Center, the Transportation Security Operations Center and the Distributed Training Operations Center also participated in the exercise.

Bringing all of these entities together for a real-world training event would be quite costly. In accomplishing exercises like this in a virtual setting, the Department of Defense saves millions of dollars a year.

During the last fiscal year, DMO generated $100 million in equivalent live-fly training for a total program cost of $3 million.

"This program is truly cost-efficient," Christie said. "DMO is a problem solver across the DoD. It allows our warfighters to get the training they need for a fraction of the cost."