Take a look at the highlights of the award ceremony held at the recent C4ISR & Networks Conference, and click here to learn more about the winning programs.

The TTPs address the use of technologies such as: chat and voice; ISR data like full-motion video and other imagery products; video teleconferencing; email; and other viewable data for situational awareness for use by global response force teams while airborne and en route on a mission.

See full coverage of C4ISR & Networks’ Elite 6 awards.

These TTPs are now in use by the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, the 75th Ranger Regiment at Fort Benning, and the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp Lejeune. In addition, the Army’s Project Manager WIN-T has incorporated the TTPS into its airborne Enroute Mission Command Capability (EMCC) program.

Accepting the award on behalf of the Joint Staff J6 was LTG Mark Bowman, the J6, along with Jeff Springer, Enroute Mission Command Capability test director, and Jon MacCartney, EMCC project engineer.

“En-route comms in today’s enjoinment is absolutely a must,” said Bowman. “You can’t anymore get an update before you deploy and figure out what happened while you were in the air when you get there. We have to have the en-route mission command capability. And it has to be out there with the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.”

The payload was designed to sense explosives components by collecting data from channels in the near-visible to the edge of the mid-wave infrared spectrum, making it suitable for deciphering camouflage, as well as plumes or aerosols that would emanate from bomb-making facilities.

See full coverage of C4ISR & Networks’ Elite 6 awards.

The 100-pound sensor flies on Predator unmanned aircraft, and is the first military version that can fly on these UAV types.

Air Force analysts at NASIC advocated, facilitated and successfully transitioned ACES-Hy’s near real-time processing, exploitation and dissemination operations to two air intelligence units in Kuwait in 2014. ACES-Hy recently identified the discovery of an assessed 37 tons of illicit material for targeting considerations.

GEOINT Analysis Squadron’s Assistant Director of Operations 1st Lt. Michael Kanaan accepted the award.

See video of Kanaan’s acceptance speech.

“Thank you to C4ISR & Networks for the opportunity to highlight the fantastic collaboration and work not only going on at NASIC, but across the intelligence community with various analysts involved with the ACES-Hy program,” said Kanaan, assistant director of operations for the GEOINT Analysis Squadron. “The full realization of taking this emerging technology and what is essentially an R&D function, and subsequently creating meaningful intelligence to give to the war fighter in a quick and precise manner, speaks volumes about the caliber of the people involved in this program, and serves in the future as a model for non-literal force employment and future increased analytic rigor across the community.”

The team used an innovative IT integration strategy where they acted as their own system integrator, and delivered full scanning capability while saving the Air Force $22 million in less than a year. That solution has since been deployed to 211 sites to detect threats 24/7 in real time.

See full coverage of the Elite 6 Awards.

The Air Force Vulnerability Management Team deployed the first-ever AFNet Linux patch management system, which assures configuration control and reduced sustainment costs by $1.5 million a year.

Accepting the award on behalf of the Air Force Vulnerability Management Team were Capt Weldon Hobbs from the team and Michael Kaplan, chief of the Air Force Network Systems Branch.

“The message was very clear; we needed to find ways of delivering cyber capability to our war fighters in a much quicker fashion,” said Kaplan. “Not long thereafter, DISA mandated that the latest version of its vulnerability management system be deployed across the services. And Capt. Hobbs is the program manager for that. He came to me and said, ‘we have a different way of doing things. Instead of hiring a system integrator, we’re going to do this organically using the people just in our program office.’ We approved the strategy, formed a very small team and deployed this capability to over 200 bases worldwide. The Air Force, active duty and guard, did it on SIPR/NIPR, saved about $22 million in the process, and did it in about a year less time than it would have taken normally.”

See full coverage of the Elite 6 Awards.

These efforts provide a platform that can support deployment of Marine Air-Ground Task Forces and ensure continuity of information. The unification plan also provides the Marine Corps a Joint Information Environment-compliant enterprise network by retiring ATM circuits in favor of digital MPLS routers.

Accepting the award was the director of C4 and CIO BGen Kevin Nally, along with Col Dave McMorries, C4 Network Plans & Policy Division chief, and Karl Hartenstine, C4 current operations IT supervisor.

“On behalf of the Marine Corp C4 and CIO we’re honored to accept this award,” said Nally. “I personally want to thank these two gentleman [(McMorries and Hartenstine)] because when we decided to do this in support of the JIE about four-and-a-half years ago they are the ones who are responsible [(for the implementation)], and I personally go by every day that I’m in the office and check on their health to make sure they’re OK.”

In February, the 4th Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia, become the first unit in the Army to begin field testing JBC-P. Installed mainly in vehicles, the system displays position data for friendly forces and foes. It has an interface similar to Google Earth that allows soldiers to communicate wirelessly through real-time chats, and send photos and other graphical material. It even lets soldiers draw revised attack plans directly on the screen and send them to other commanders.

See full coverage of the Elite 6 Awards.

COL Michael Thurston, PM Mission Command , accepted the award.

“(JBC-P) is built on a long heritage of successful situational awareness capability that people most know as the Blue Force Tracking family of systems,” Thurston said. In the recent Vanguard Focus exercise at Ft. Stewart the JBC-P system not only provided the brigade commander with position location information, it “ended up being his number one communication and command control system.”

Added Thurston: “On one day, with 165 systems, they transmitted 27,000 C2 messages — predominately chat messages, reports and graphics that they used during the height of their attack.”

The system is built using open-architecture approaches that are lower in cost and easier to implement and maintain, and an advanced system prototype is being used in exercises with the military today.

See full coverage of the Elite 6 Awards.

Roger Dickerson, senior research engineer with the Sensor and Electromagnetic Applications Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, accepted the award.

“Despite having an admittedly slightly silly name, Angry Kitten represents very serious technology,” Dickerson said. “We’ve been working hard to improve the capabilities and the readiness of the war fighters in our sponsor organizations: the Army, the Navy and especially the U.S. Air Force air combat community.”

The 100-pound sensor flies on Predator unmanned aircraft, and is the first military version that can fly on these UAV types.

See full coverage of the Elite 6 Awards.

Air Force analysts at NASIC advocated, facilitated and successfully transitioned ACES-Hy near real-time processing, exploitation and dissemination operations to two air intelligence units in Kuwait in 2014. ACES-Hy recently identified the discovery of an assessed 37 tons of illicit material for targeting considerations.

GEOINT Analysis Squadron’s 1st Lt Michael Kanaan accepted the award.

“Thank you to C4ISR & Networks for the opportunity to highlight the fantastic collaboration and work not only going on at NASIC, but across the intelligence community with various analysts involved with the ACES-Hy program,” said Kanaan, assistant director of operations for the GEOINT Analysis Squadron. “The full realization of taking this emerging technology and what is essentially an R&D function, and subsequently creating meaningful intelligence to give to the war fighter in a quick and precise manner, speaks volumes about the caliber of the people involved in this program, and serves in the future as a model for non-literal force employment and future increased analytic rigor across the community.”

The TTPs address the use of technologies like: chat and voice; ISR data like full-motion video; video teleconferencing; email; and other viewable data for situational awareness for use by global response force teams while airborne and en route on a mission.

See full coverage of the Elite 6 Awards.

These TTPs are now in use by the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, the 75th Ranger Regiment, and the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. In addition, the Army’s Project Manager WIN-T has incorporated the TTPS into its airborne Enroute Mission Command Capability (EMCC) program.

Accepting the award on behalf of the Joint Staff J6 was LTG Mark Bowman, the J6, along with Jeff Springer, EMCC test director, and Jon MacCartney, EMCC project engineer.

“En-route comms in today’s enjoinment is absolutely a must,” said Bowman. “You can’t anymore get an update before you deploy and figure out what happened while you were in the air when you get there. We have to have the en-route mission command capability. And it has to be out there with the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.”