Missile defense info sharing with allies still a challenge as need to operate together grows

By: Jen Judson

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- The U.S. is seeing the need more and more to become increasingly interoperable with allies when it comes to missile defense, but there are many challenges still to overcome, according to a panel of former and current missile defense stakeholders at the August 7 Defense News Missile Defense Networking Reception.

“Probably the challenge that we struggle with the most with regards to our foreign partners is increasing and enhancing our cross-domain solution capability,” Col. Francisco Lozano, the Army's project manager for the service's Lower Tier Project office within the Program Executive Office Missiles and Space, said. “So not only just the ability to share information between our international partners in a given combat scenario but actually to do it at a high enough fast data rate so that the information is relevant and actionable.”

The Army has worked toward this in exercises in Europe specifically, not just focusing on missile defense, but all levels of information sharing as it attempts to tie together systems and networks so, if the coalition had to respond in a crisis, information would flow more freely and in a more timely fashion for allies and partners to fight together.

“So that becomes important for us to continue to improve, especially as just U.S. defense systems in general proliferate across multiple different countries” Lozano said.

The colonel noted that the Army is finding ways to learn from its partners and allies that are involved in regular combat operations even if they are not directly connected system-to-system.

“We stay tied in very closely with them and it has become a great partnership situation where we are continuing and able to work very closely in their country to understand the execution of engagements, what impacts are on certain systems and certain environments operated 24/7 for very long periods of time, understand the relevancy of certain threats and how those threats are employed and then improve those through [tactics, techniques and procedures] and [concepts of operations] not only for a given country but also for ourselves,” Lozano said.

https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/smd/2018/08/08/missile-defense-info-sharing-with-allies-still-a-challenge-as-need-to-operate-together-grows/