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Senior NATO officials say incompatible C2 endangers ISAF
Brooks Tigner
Key Points
ISAF's lack of interoperable C2 and intelligence equipment has contributed to allied fatalities, say commanders
Logistics and maintenance complications also need addressing
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan suffers a fatal lack of interoperable command-and-control (C2) equipment and intelligence-sharing networks, according to senior NATO commanders.
The issues are especially severe in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar district and others where the Taliban's insurgency movement is strongest, and where fatalities involving ISAF soldiers could otherwise have been avoided or minimised, they stated.
ISAF's interoperability problems "do not paint a very rosy picture", Major General Ton van Loon, NATO's chief of staff, Allied Land Component Command at Heidelberg, told NATO's fourth annual Industry Day on 27 September.
Gen van Toon completed seven months of ISAF command duty in Afghanistan in May. He stated: "I lost 38 soldiers in Kandahar. C2 and intelligence are NATO's biggest shortfalls in Afghanistan and they need our immediate attention."
He asserted that the communications nexus that ISAF forces have patched together in Afghanistan "is neither transparent nor seamless. In Kandahar we had to put liaison personnel from each nation in one room, each with a telephone [back to his own HQ]. That's how we created intelligence.
"For myself, I had to have nine different systems sitting on my desk just to communicate with all my units. All these different national systems are useless and it is unacceptable that we don't have a common operational network and [battlefield] picture."
Gen van Toon also pointed out issues with ISAF's logistics and support network.
"The handling of containers isn't streamlined, our logistics tail is too long, databases can't exchange info and our RPVs [remotely piloted vehicles], armoured vehicles, logistics and convoy procedures and equipment are incompatible," he declared.
Helicopter maintenance and spare parts were singled out as a particularly telling example.
"We had four types of Chinooks in theatre, but they were so different from each other that each nation's technical personnel could not service any of the others. Except for the US, which had full [overhaul and maintenance] support, the other three nations had to fly their parts or aircraft back home each time on an Antonov [heavy lift aircraft]."
Major General Koen Gisbers, a communications specialist attached to NATO's Allied Command Transformation (ACT), asserted that, unusually, cost and product development are not the problem.
Noting that technology and distributed databases offer cheap and effective interoperability solutions ready for exploitation today, he said: "We want a distributed JISR capability for ISAF in one year. There is no time to lose. Technology is not the issue: it's all there. It's how we put it together and loosen the rules of allies for sharing intelligence with each other."
The same sense of frustration is apparently felt at senior levels of the ACT, US General Lance Smith, the group's supreme allied commander, remarked to the Warsaw audience. Referring to ISAF's lack of joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (JISR), he said: "Why aren't the allies themselves demanding this? I'm losing troops because we don't have common JISR."
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Senior NATO officials say incompatible C2 endangers ISAF
Brooks Tigner
Key Points
ISAF's lack of interoperable C2 and intelligence equipment has contributed to allied fatalities, say commanders
Logistics and maintenance complications also need addressing
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan suffers a fatal lack of interoperable command-and-control (C2) equipment and intelligence-sharing networks, according to senior NATO commanders.
The issues are especially severe in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar district and others where the Taliban's insurgency movement is strongest, and where fatalities involving ISAF soldiers could otherwise have been avoided or minimised, they stated.
ISAF's interoperability problems "do not paint a very rosy picture", Major General Ton van Loon, NATO's chief of staff, Allied Land Component Command at Heidelberg, told NATO's fourth annual Industry Day on 27 September.
Gen van Toon completed seven months of ISAF command duty in Afghanistan in May. He stated: "I lost 38 soldiers in Kandahar. C2 and intelligence are NATO's biggest shortfalls in Afghanistan and they need our immediate attention."
He asserted that the communications nexus that ISAF forces have patched together in Afghanistan "is neither transparent nor seamless. In Kandahar we had to put liaison personnel from each nation in one room, each with a telephone [back to his own HQ]. That's how we created intelligence.
"For myself, I had to have nine different systems sitting on my desk just to communicate with all my units. All these different national systems are useless and it is unacceptable that we don't have a common operational network and [battlefield] picture."
Gen van Toon also pointed out issues with ISAF's logistics and support network.
"The handling of containers isn't streamlined, our logistics tail is too long, databases can't exchange info and our RPVs [remotely piloted vehicles], armoured vehicles, logistics and convoy procedures and equipment are incompatible," he declared.
Helicopter maintenance and spare parts were singled out as a particularly telling example.
"We had four types of Chinooks in theatre, but they were so different from each other that each nation's technical personnel could not service any of the others. Except for the US, which had full [overhaul and maintenance] support, the other three nations had to fly their parts or aircraft back home each time on an Antonov [heavy lift aircraft]."
Major General Koen Gisbers, a communications specialist attached to NATO's Allied Command Transformation (ACT), asserted that, unusually, cost and product development are not the problem.
Noting that technology and distributed databases offer cheap and effective interoperability solutions ready for exploitation today, he said: "We want a distributed JISR capability for ISAF in one year. There is no time to lose. Technology is not the issue: it's all there. It's how we put it together and loosen the rules of allies for sharing intelligence with each other."
The same sense of frustration is apparently felt at senior levels of the ACT, US General Lance Smith, the group's supreme allied commander, remarked to the Warsaw audience. Referring to ISAF's lack of joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (JISR), he said: "Why aren't the allies themselves demanding this? I'm losing troops because we don't have common JISR."
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