Human-Machine Teaming is the integration of human performance with machine performance to synergistic effect, extending the cognitive and/or physical capabilities of the human operator. Human-Machine Teaming requires an intentional stance toward designing for flexibility, considering interdependence within task contexts, and the use of human-centered design to understand, structure, and enable human-machine symbiosis over time.
09.13.2024
Video by Bradley T Bowman
Air Force Research Laboratory
I last visited the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center in Fallon, Nevada during the pandemic in 2020 during the Rear Admiral Brophy’s time in command of NAWDC. During that visit I became familiar with an important new pilot program in NAWDC which was quite different from the rest of the command.
This program was called MISR or Maritime ISR for short. NAWDC is best known as “Top Gun” and the image one has of platforms coming off the carrier deck. MISR is. Platform agonistic and is focused on the shift in warfighting associated with the digital domain.
Coming back four years later, I was able to get a chance to talk with MISR officers about how MISR has progressed as the Navy has increasingly focused on force distribution and one embedded in the digital transformation processes of the fleet.
The core exercise hosted by NAWDC and run by the MISR team is called Resolute Hunter. The Fall iteration of this exercise was starting during the week I was at NAWDC.
This is what I learned during my visit in the Fall of 2020 from the head of MISR, CDR Pete “Two Times” Salvaggio.
MISR prides itself in being both platform and sensor agnostic, along with employing an effects-based tasking and tactics approach that allows for shaping the ISR domain knowledge which a task force or fleet needs to be fully combat effective. What is most impressive is that CDR Salvaggio has been present at the creation and is a key part of shaping the way ahead in a time of significant change in what the fleet is being asked to do in both a joint and coalition operational environment.
What is entailed in “Two Times” perspective is a cultural shift. “We need a paradigm shift: The Navy needs to focus on the left side of the kill chain.”
The kill chain is described as find, fix, track, target, engage and assess (F2T2EA). For the U.S. Navy, the weight of effort has been upon target and engage. As “Two Times” puts it “But if you cannot find, fix or track something, you never get to target.”
There is another challenge as well: in a crisis, knowing what to hit and what to avoid is crucial to crisis management. This clearly requires the kind of ISR management skills to inform the appropriate decision makers as well.
The ISR piece is particularly challenging as one operates across a multi-domain battlespace to be able to identify the best ISR information, even if it is not contained within the ISR assets and sensors within your organic task force.
And the training side of this is very challenging. That challenge might be put this way: How does one build the skills in the Navy to do what you want to do with regard to managed ISR data and deliver it in the correct but timely manner and how to get the command level to understand the absolute centrality of having such skill sets?
“Two Times” identified a number of key parameters of change with the coming of MISR.
“We are finally breaking the old mindset; it is only now that the department heads at NAWDC are embracing the new role for ISR in the fight.”
“We are a unique weapons school organization at NAWDC for we are not attached to a particular platform like Top Gun with the F-18 and F-35. The MISR school has both officers and enlisted WTIs in the team. We are not all aviators; we have intel specialists, we have cryptologists, pilots, aircrew-men etc.”
“Aviators follow a more rapid pace of actions by the mere nature of how fast the aircraft we are in physically move; non-aviators do not necessarily have the same pace of working rapidly within chaos. Our goal at MISR is to be comfortable to work in chaos.”
In my discussion with “Two Times” in his office during my November 2020 visit as he sat down during various swirls of activity underway in the exercise, “This is the only place within the Navy where we are able to pull all of these ISR assets together to work the collaborative assessment and determination space.”
I would add that this about the whole question of ISR-led and enabled, which is focused on how to leverage sensor networks to accelerate the decision cycle.
New ISR/C2 capabilities are clearly coming to the force, but as he put it: “We need to take what we have today and make it work more effectively in a collaborative ISR effort.”
But to underscore the shift from being the collectors and delivering data to the decision makers, he referred to the goal of the training embodied in the exercise as making the operators in airborne ISR, “puzzle solvers.” Rather than looking at these airborne teams as the human managers of airborne sensors, “we are training future Jedi Knights.”
And to be clear, all of the assets used in the exercise are not normally thought of as ISR platforms but are platforms that have significant sensor capabilities.
It really was about focusing on sensor networks and sorting through how these platform/networks could best shape an understanding of the evolving mission and paths to mission effectiveness.
So what has happened since then?
To get an update, I talked with LCDR Jason “Cuddles” Falk, who is the assistant commander of the program, and a former MH-60R Weapons and Tactics instructor, about the evolution since 2020. There have been significant changes in the Navy moving forward with Distributed Maritime Operations in the context of the changing nature of warfare in which the digital dimension has become increasingly significant.
It became clear in talking with him that MISR had become involved with the entire kill chain, not just the left side. For targeting in a fluid distributed environment is closely linked with surveillance and reconnaissance informing decision making rapidly enough to determine where the target is located and how best to degrade or kill that target.
In fact, MISR is de facto highlighting the importance of a kill web rather than a kill chain. A distributed force works with Local Area Networks, which means that the force can operate with combat clusters leveraging LANs rather than having to rely on centrally delivered ISR content. And this allows, the MISR thinking process to encompass autonomous and remotely piloted systems as key decision-making aides for combat cluster LANs or as adds to higher echelon decision making.
Since I have been to Resolute Hunter in 2020, the exercise has encompassed five eyes partners and joint participants, notably the USMC as they work Naval integration. And indeed if one wishes to find a key epicenter of Navy and USMC integration, MISR and NAWDC are key places to go to see how they are working the kind of S and R D being worked or surveillance, reconnaissance and decision-making. And the folding in of autonomous systems will certainly be a key part of this.
But Resolute Hunter has changed in another way. The ready force needs more rapid transformation, and this is being driven by payloads coming to the fleet, rather than new platforms. The kill web is empowered and anchored by the payloads available at the point of operations delivering the kinds of effects which the task or combat cluster needs to have available.
Resolute Hunter has evolved to the point whereby warfighters participating in the exercise are given access to new payloads to explore their potential benefit to a warfighting outcome. In other words, Resolute Hunter can become a place to help the Navy and the joint and allied forces to discover ways to close gaps in warfighting with new payloads on platforms or delivered by autonomous systems.
This is how Cuddles put the focus of the effort:
“We’re producing warrior solution architects. If you tell us the capabilities and the effects of the payload, we can connect them with other payloads to create the constellation that can deliver the desired effect. In other words: kill web design, execution, and management. The enemy gets a vote too. Given the complex nature of the next fight, the speed, scale, and precision required to achieve the desired effects need to be aligned at the right opportunity in time and space and also need to be dynamically managed as the battlespace and enemy actions change.
“We are focused on producing the human element that can manage those sensing, shooting, and C2 constellations and exploit those opportunities.
“The platform, payload agnostic approach enhances the ability to look for contingencies and allows you to build in the redundancy needed to execute kill webs at speed.”
Industrial partners are now bringing their experimental payloads, either roll on roll off payloads, or autonomous system delivered payloads, to Resolute Hunter to get into the hands of warfighters.
This platform-payload mix in the hands of warfighters is the key to driving the kind of rapid change the ready force needs in order to be able to compete in today’s strategic context.
Featured photo: U.S. Marines assigned to the operations control element with 1st Radio Battalion, I Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group, assemble an inflatable satellite antenna at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, during Exercise Resolute Hunter 25-1, Oct. 31, 2024. Resolute Hunter, the Department of Defense’s only dedicated battle management, command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance exercise, has served as a proving ground for 1st RadBn as it employs a new command structure consisting of three elements – small teams of SIEW Marines, the OCE and an operations control and analysis center – all geographically distributed as they would be in a real-world operation. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Nate Carberry)
For example, see the following:
Modern-day Space Threats Are Real—and Here. Unfortunately, these Space Threats are no longer Science Fiction—they’re NOW Science Fact. Everyday, we secure our Nation’s interests in, from, and to Space. Discover More About Space Threats…
Imagine electronic pulses in space that block the reception of legitimate signals and replace them with counterfeits. That’s not science fiction. It’s science fact in today’s era of Great Power Competition.
09.10.2024
Video by Russell Isler
Space Systems Command
Six F-35A Lightning II aircraft and 63 Airmen assigned to the 48th Fighter Wing participated in a combined Agile Combat Employment exercise alongside Royal Air Force counterparts Sept. 2-6. ACE training events focus on strengthening participants’ capability to rapidly deploy from their home base and establish, as well as sustain, combat airpower generation. The Liberty Wing routinely conducts collaborative training exercises that provide opportunities to strengthen tactics, techniques, and procedures to improve interoperability, and strengthen trust between U.S. and UK forces.
RAF LAKENHEATH, SUFFOLK, UNITED KINGDOM
09.12.2024
Video by Airman 1st Class Delanie Brown
48th Fighter Wing
A compilation of Drone footage and voice-over interviews by Geo-Spatial integration manager Nathan Glondys and 628th Civil Engineering Squadrdon-Base Program manager Chase Barron demonstrating the Small Unmanned Aerial System (SUAS) video capturing capabilities on Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, Sept. 4, 2024. SUA systems can classify landforms and collect information for base use.
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
08.22.2024
Video by Staff Sgt. James Harris
Joint Base Charleston
The first pillar of the Italian approach to airpower has been a clear commitment to the F-35 as a driver of change in shaping a fifth generation enabled force.
The second pillar has been to build a facility to produce their own F-35s along with European allies and to place that facility within a secure area where the entire fast jet maintenance for the Italian Air Force is performed.
And that F-35 Final Assembly and Check Out facility (FACO) is itself more than a factory: it is a significant maintenance facility for Italian and allied F-35s.
In other words, the Italian approach is not just about their own combat power. It is about leveraging a F-35 global enterprise.
It has been allied-oriented from the outset, and the fact that virtually all European air forces are flying F-35s means that the bet which Italy took a decade ago to build the FACO at Cameri was a prudent one.
I visited Cameri in 2013. Those were early days. I talked with workers and management and the energy was palatable. But I think it was safe to say that much of Italian industry and political and strategic talking heads were not on the same page with the workers at the plant.
I noted in an article about the facility that it is was designed with a future in mind anticipating a strong demand signal beyond Italy itself for maintenance, and the plant was structured with that in mind.
This is what I wrote in 2013:
“The facilities are very flexible for maintenance. There are no fixed bays but are open areas where the client can figure the support area as they might wish to support their combat aircraft.”
It is now 11 years later, and we can see the realization of what was more of a dream than reality in 2013. 70 F-35s has already been built at the plant with the current production projected yearly around 15. And there are significant maintenance facilities at the plant for Italian and allied F-35s.
By comparison, Dassault produced 13 Rafales in 2023.
When I visited Rome, I had a chance to talk with Brig. Gen. Cristiano Bandini, the commander of the 2nd Division of the Air Force Logistics in the Italian Air Force.
As he explained his remit: “My responsibility for Air Force sustainment, not only for the 35 but for all the fleets for that are in service with the Italian Air Force. Cameri part of my command.”
He explained that Cameri is part of a larger secure airfield area which includes Eurofighter and Tornado sustainment. The Cameri sustainment is contractor managed and the Eurofighter and Tornado sustainment are Air Force managed. But he argued that having the entire fast jet sustainment capability at Cameri meant that the Air Force could take a more integrated sustainability approach.
We discussed briefly my own experiences earlier at Cameri and he assured me that things had changed with regard to public support. The local area and more generally in Italy, it is realized that this is a national asset which creates jobs and allows the Italian Air Force to work closely with allies.
Other Europeans have or will have their F-35s built at Cameri. Bandini noted that template was for first F-35s for a European customer to be built at Fort Worth and the pilots trained at Luke Air Force base in Arizona. Then the rest of the build for a European partner could be done at Cameri.
They build wings as well as complete aircraft at Cameri, and these Italian-built wings are part of the F-35 global enterprise. The first wing built in Italy and delivered to the overall F-35 program was in 2015.
Brig. Gen. Bandini then turned to the maintenance side of Cameri. He explained that currently there are five maintenance bays at the factory which service aircraft from Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and in the future there will be USAF aircraft maintained there as well.
Cameri is the designated heavy maintenance and repair facility for the European and Mediterranean region. This is a key part and indicator of a global enterprise for the F-35.
He indicated that they are currently expanding the facilities from five to seventeen maintenance bays with the provision for four additional bays.
And support facilities are being increased to encompass a doubling of the facility itself.
Brig. Gen. Bandini underscored the need to take advantage of the commonalities of the F-35 across allied fleets to shape cross-servicing agreements and this is clearly an important next step to realize the promise inherent in the program of becoming a true global enterprise.
Featured image: F-35 produced at Cameri facility.
16 September 2023
Credit: Alamy
By Robbin Laird
The Italian Air Force leadership saw early on that the F-35 was more than a next generation aircraft – it was a whole different way to look at airpower in the digital age and enabling multi-domain airpower.
They committed to the aircraft and have built a fifth-generation air force. The Italian government committed to building an F-35 plant and maintenance facility in Cameri with a very wide aperture to encompass other members of the F-35 global enterprise. And finally, they re-shaped their training program to shape a way ahead for a fifth generation enabled multi-domain training regime.
In 2022, a new training facility was opened on the island of Sardinia. As Lieutenant General Aurelio Colagrande, Italian Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff, started his presentation to the Williams Foundation seminar in Canberra, Australia in 2022: “We launched a very challenging operational training infrastructure program in Sardinia, an Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea where we have lot of airspace, air to air, air to ground, EW and lots of test ranges and good weather throughout the year.
“Furthermore, in Sardinia, we are setting up our international flight training school where we will train in the phase four advanced training, our future fifth generation pilots. Within the OTI framework, we are investing in connectivity network in order to offer a real effective advanced training.
“And through it, we intend to achieve one of the most challenging objectives, the integration between legacy and new generation weapon system for exploiting the main operational output of the fifth-generation assets that we believe is the ability to be task enablers and force multipliers.”
This training facility is embedded in the Italian fifth generation transition. Symptomatic of this reality is the current head of Air Force training and of the new international center, Brigadier General Edi Turco. A look at his bio highlights his early engagement with the F-35 and his deep understanding of what this new aircraft brings to driving change in air and multi-domain operations.
BGen Edi TURCO serves as Chief of Staff of the Air Education Training Command / 3rd Air Region, and Head of the International Flight Training School (IFTS) Program Office.
BGen TURCO joined the Italian Air Force in 1991 and he graduated at the Air Force Academy in 1995. He is a Master Navigator, Weapon Instructor, with more than 2200 flying hours (2000 of which on Tornado). He has served different combat tours.
BGen Turco spent most of his operational career assigned to the 154th Squadron, 6th Wing in Ghedi (Brescia – Italy) flying, as a WSO, on Tornado aircraft (reconnaissance, conventional and dual role fighter-bomber).
Between 2009 and 2012, BGen Turco was the Air System Requirements Working Group Lead and F-35 Future Requirements Deputy Lead at the JSF Program Office, in Arlington, Virginia (USA).
He, then, was Base/Wing Director of Operations at 6th Wing Ghedi (Italy), after his appointment at the ItAF HQ as Director of F-35 Air Force Integration Office, he commanded the 2nd Wing at Rivolto Air Force Base (Italy) and subsequently he was the Deputy Commander Air Staff Situational Room at the Air Operational Forces Command in Rome (Italy).
Prior to his current assignment, BGen Turco was the Air Attaché at the Embassy of Italy in Washington DC (USA), accredited both to the United States Department of the Air Force and Mexico.
I met with him to discuss the new training center on 12 November 2024. The Italians have created a cutting-edge training center looking beyond airpower muscle memory training to shaping pilots who can think and operate in the changing multi-domain combat environment. It is a very international program with pilots from several nations, including from Asia. Students have come from twelve counties, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Singapore, Austria, Netherlands, Hungary and Spain.
Because the training facility is on Sardinia, the combination of live training and be able to operate over water, land and in air-to-air engagements means that the training center pushes the envelope on advanced training, they are clearly positioned to work with the world of unmanned and autonomous systems airborne, land-based or sea based in shaping the 360 capabilities of what I originally labeled the emergence of the three dimensional warrior.
IFTS is located at Italian Air Force base in Decimomannu (Cagliari), and employs an international team of instructor pilots and technical staff, who train students on phase 4 “Lead-In to Fighter Training – LIFT“, the most advanced part of training syllabus, that prepares the way for subsequent deployment on fighter aircraft.
This graphic below from the presentation which the Turco made to me, highlights the physical nature of this facility:
The IFTS was set up as a collaboration between the Italian Air Force and the private sector. The Italian Air Force rewrites the syllabus for training, which is crucial given how dynamic the global combat situation has become. And Leonardo and the Canadian company CAE provided the private sector support in terms of managing the equipment and services for the IFTS. Leonardo and CAE are key players in providing the support for the Live Virtual Constructive systems to support the training regime.
BGen Turco underscored that the syllabus is modular so can be updated rapidly as threats change. He underscored that fifth-generation training was really about getting pilots of whatever aircraft being flown to understand the comprehensive and extended battlespace and to find their place within that battlespace. It is crucial to understand what platforms and payloads are available to deal with the threat envelope.
The M-346 training aircraft is the key element for providing live training but a focal point for bringing the constructive world into the cockpit. As Leonardo described a key aspect of the M-346:
“The M-346 – a twin-engine, tandem-seat aircraft with fully digital flight controls and avionics – is equipped with a fly-by-wire flight control system with quadruple redundancy, a modern human-machine interface with Head-Up Displays (HUD) and Multi-Function Displays (MFD), Hands On Throttle And Stick (HOTAS) controls and in-flight safety features such as the Pilot Activated Attitude Recovery System (PARS). The M-346 can operate in complete autonomy with the aid of its Auxiliary Power Unit (APU).
“The training system features integrated on-board technology to simulate tactical training – the Embedded Tactical Training System (ETTS) – allowing the aircraft to emulate sensors, weapons and Computer Generated Forces (CGF). It also enables pilots to interact in real-time, through Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) training that features aircraft in flight (Live), simulators (Virtual) and computer-generated force/threat generated environments (Constructive).
“The system is completed by the Ground Based Training System (GBTS), which consists of various flight and mission simulation systems, multi-media and classroom courses, mission planning and training management systems, and an integrated logistic support (ILS) service that optimises fleet and simulator management for maximum operational use.”
According to BGen Turco, the school is built around its students. The ground-based simulators are available 24/7. This is especially important for international students whose families live in distant time zones, so that they can stay in touch with late night or early morning calls, and then go to the simulators to learn and build their muscle memory,
In short, Italy has established a cutting edge fifth generation training center which drives forward the future of developing air power-enabled multi-domain warfare in a dynamically changing world. And they are doing it with allies from the ground up.
This graphic provided an overview of the IFTS effort:
Chief of Staff of the Air Education Training Command / 3rd Air Region, and Head of the International Flight Training School (IFTS) Program OfficeItalian Air Force
BGen Edi TURCO serves as Chief of Staff of the Air Education Training Command / 3rd Air Region, and Head of the International Flight Training School (IFTS) Program Office.
BGen TURCO joined the Italian Air Force in 1991 and he graduated at the Air Force Academy in 1995. He is a Master Navigator, Weapon Instructor, with more than 2200 flying hours (2000 of which on Tornado). He has served different combat tours.
BGen Turco spent most of his operational career assigned to the 154th Squadron, 6th Wing in Ghedi (Brescia – Italy) flying, as a WSO, on Tornado aircraft (reconnaissance, conventional and dual role fighter-bomber).
Between 2009 and 2012, BGen Turco was the Air System Requirements Working Group Lead and F-35 Future Requirements Deputy Lead at the JSF Program Office, in Arlington, Virginia (USA).
He, then, was Base/Wing Director of Operations at 6th Wing Ghedi (Italy), after his appointment at the ItAF HQ as Director of F-35 Air Force Integration Office, he commanded the 2nd Wing at Rivolto Air Force Base (Italy) and subsequently he was the Deputy Commander Air Staff Situational Room at the Air Operational Forces Command in Rome (Italy).
Prior to his current assignment, BGen TURCO was the Air Attaché at the Embassy of Italy in Washington DC (USA), accredited both to the United States Department of the Air Force and Mexico.
BGen TURCO is a graduate of the “Joint and Combined Forces Staff College” in Rome.
Featured photo: U.S. Space Force Brig. Gen. Stephen Purdy, right, Space Launch Delta 45 commander, laughs with Italian Air Force Col. Edi Turco, Italian Air Attaché to the United States, at Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla., Jan. 27, 2022. Leaders of the Italian Air Force, Navy, and Army visited for CCSFS the launch of the Italian COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG-2) Earth Observation Satellite aboard the American-made and launched SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The U.S. and Italy share a long heritage of space security cooperation. (U.S. Space Force photo by Senior Airman Thomas Sjoberg)
U.S. Marines and Sailors with 2nd Air-Naval Gunfire Liaison Company, Marine Rotational Forces Europe, under the command and control of Task Force 61/2, and members of the Finnish Defence Forces, conduct live-fire naval surface fire support training with the PGG Hamina-class missile boat during Finnish Readiness Exercise on Camp Dragsvik, Finland, Aug. 6, 2024. Finnish Readiness Exercise exemplifies the strong defense partnership between Finland and the United States through combined training activities while enhancing operational readiness and effectiveness. Task Force 61/2 commands and controls fleet Marine forces in support of the U.S. Sixth Fleet commander while synchronizing Navy and Marine Corps units and capabilities in the U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command area of operations.
CAMP DRAGSVIK, FINLAND
08.06.2024