Joint Combat Assessment Team Readiness

Comment:  This is a article published following orders to China Lake Naval Air Systems Command training during 2003 and 2004.  It highlights the need to assess failures, faults, and deliberate actions to determine how to best improve systems.  Field work like this is exciting and finding ways maximizing the impact to America's adversaries while minimizing impacts to ourselves is a critical part of war fighting. This kind of thinking also extends to marketplace competition. While not belligerent, companies do seek marketplace dominance through similar efforts in quality, durability, and sustainability.  Another post of interest may be What does Military Experience Bring to the Table?

Training to Assess the Threat:

NAVAIRSYSCOM Det. 0474 Personnel Support

Joint Combat Assessment Team Readiness

 By 

Air Systems Program Public Affairs 

LT Mike Randazzo, NAVAIR Air Systems Program PAO

Mission planners rely on real-time combat data to establish immediately the threat environment and improve planning of ongoing operations. As an integral part of a joint service combat assessment team, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) Air Systems Program (ASP) personnel aggressively train to add value to this effort and contribute to current and future Naval aircraft combat readiness.

Sponsored by the Joint Technical Coordinating Group on Aircraft Survivability (JTCG/AS), the Joint Combat Assessment Team (JCAT) is comprised of Reservists from the Army, Navy, and Air Force. JCAT’s primary mission is to collect data on aircraft combat damage and losses.

JCAT Team with live-fire testing F-14: As an integral part of a joint service combat assessment team, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) Air Systems Program (ASP) personnel from NAVAIRSYSCOM Det. 0474 aggressively train to contribute to current and future Naval aircraft combat readiness. (LCDR James Bogden is second from left on top, and LT Mike Neaves is third from left on top.)

During recent conflicts, the lack of a permanent combat damage reporting system resulted in the loss of valuable combat damage data. In 1999, JCAT was established as a Reserve unit ready to deploy rapidly and collect combat data anywhere in the world. LCDR James Bogden and LT Mike Neaves joined JCAT from NAVAIRSYSCOM Det. 0474, which supports NAVAIR’s Naval Aviation Depot at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, FL. Det. 0474 is aligned with NAVAIR’s Industrial Capabilities unit which delivers the people, skills, knowledge, facilities, and equipment required to perform depot-level maintenance and repair of aircraft, engines, components, and other aeronautical equipment, and performs manufacturing and prototyping operations.

The JCAT unit, also, provides threat training to aviators and battle damage repair personnel. “An important part of this mission is to ensure that we continually train for the mission to ensure that we are ready to be deployed whenever and whereever we are needed,” LCDR Bogden said. Bogden and Neaves recently participated in a two-phase training session geared toward raising awareness of threat assessment and combat data collection.

The first phase of the training was the 2003 Threat Warheads and Effects Seminar at Hurlburt and Eglin Air Force Bases, Ft. Walton Beach, FL. The annual threat seminar covers the entire spectrum of threat weapons, including grenades (RPGs), manned portable air defense systems, and the latest Russian surfaceto- air missile systems. Threat exploitation hardware displays and live-fire demonstrations of small arms, RPGs, and a Stinger missile serve to reinforce the classroom material.

The second phase of JCAT training consisted of hands-on combat data collection training hosted by the NAVAIR Weapons Survivability Laboratory at China Lake, CA.

“We received valuable training on the effects of hydrodynamic ram from armor piercing and high explosive AAA, conventional metal versus composite structural damage, and warhead fragment and pattern identification. The combat data collection training provided us with the techniques and abilities needed to collect damage information in the fluid combat environment while minimizing the impact on the maintenance personnel trying to get the aircraft back into action,”  Neaves said of his recent training experience.

Participants observed an F-14 live-fire demonstration and collected damage data on a variety of aircraft, including an F/A-18 Super Hornet, V-22 Osprey, Harrier, and C-130. Each complete training assessment consisted of data collection (measurements, photographs, interviews, etc.), preparing a presentation, briefing the findings, and an instructor critique of student performance. Emphasis was placed on proper damage documentation for future reference and briefing operational commands.

“Projecting ASP technology and operations support at the depot level, even in a joint operating environment such as JCAT, is key to the ASP strategic planning process: to create a more ready and responsive Naval Air Systems Reserve Force,” said Rear Admiral Mark Hazara, Director, Naval Reserve Air Systems Program.

“Harvesting combat data to improve survivability and provide a database of lessons learned for future aircraft designers supports our effort to provide NAVAIR with readily deployable assets to provide optimum current and future material readiness,” Hazara added.

The Air Systems Program (ASP) provides qualified and diverse civilian and military experience in operational support of Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) research and development, engineering, program management, logistics, and industrial capability activities. The 600 Naval Reserve officers and enlisted men and women of the ASP train constantly to respond to evolving NAVAIR missions enabling the organization to harvest tangible cost savings for fleet recapitalization. The ASP is comprised of 32 commands that are headquartered in 14 states.

References:

Randazzo, M. (2004). Naval reserve association news: training to assess the threat.  (Vol 51. No 2.).  VA.