Thanks to one officer, the service is working to make that a reality.

The light-bulb moment of inspiration came to Lt. Cmdr. Jonathan Calhoun, a reservist assigned to U.S. Fleet Forces Command’s Maritime Operations Center in Norfolk, Virginia, as he completed a mobilization exercise earlier this year and was inundated with the required paperwork.

Calhoun said his new idea to this old problem involves sailors completing documents and requirements through an app that pre-populates information through their mobile phones so that they aren’t spending time filling out repetitive information like name, rank, and address by hand.

Pre-populating that information also reduces the likelihood of errors, Calhoun noted.

“It would save a significant amount of time, and what could take up to a full week to get done could be completed within just a few hours,” Calhoun told Navy Times.

“As soon as they show up to their Navy Reserve Center for mobilization, all of the information is already completed, verified and validated, as opposed to having to complete multiple different forms from scratch,” he added.

Calhoun’s idea, called “Leveraging Mobile Technology to Streamline Mobilization,” won the i3 Waypoints program last month, a new competition that Chief of Navy Reserve Vice Adm. John Mustin established so sailors could share ideas with top Navy leaders.

“We are already moving out on the design for Lt. Cdr. Calhoun’s mobile application,” Mustin said in a Navy news release last week. “His idea to add mobile technology to our distributed activation process helps us achieve our goal of mobilizing the entire Selected Reserve force of 50,000 in 30 days, if required.”

The i3 Waypoints program —a name based on innovating something new, improving an existing program, or integrating several concepts — received a total of 107 submissions over the course of a five-week period, and the competition will proceed as an annual event.

“With such an enthusiastic response from the force, and so many great ideas to modernize the way we do business, we saw enough in this inaugural event to commit to making i3 Waypoints an annual program,” Mustin said. “Very little is more important to us than keeping the direct pipeline open for creative ideas to flow to top leadership without filter or disruption.”

Calhoun, who served five years active-duty and eight years in the Reserves, said he would encourage others who’ve thought of concepts to improve the Navy to make their voices heard because leadership was receptive to the presentations exhibited at the i3 Waypoints competition.

“I think coming out of this process, I’ll definitely encourage others — if you have an idea, speak up, because leadership is willing and eager to listen,” Calhoun said.

The team worked to negotiate with village police and elders, who were friendly but not necessarily helpful, to search for their man. The exercise was similar to real-world scenarios in Afghanistan that could leave these small teams in austere environments.

But given the size of these so-called combat advisory teams – smaller than a platoon, though exact numbers are withheld for security reasons – communications were critical. In a real-world scenario, teams like this would need basic capabilities to track friendly forces and to communicate with each other, their Afghan teams and higher headquarters. They also would need to call for close air support or medevac if personnel are injured, especially as they are often on the front lines with Afghan personnel. (In this scenario, one U.S. service member was wounded while there were multiple Afghan causalities and killed in action).

These capabilities need to be “deployable, reliable, self-sustaining to a degree,” Col. Scott Jackson, the brigade’s commander, told C4ISRNET. “The manner of our operation is decentralized and distributed and so you can’t have this easy reach back for ‘oh my god my thing doesn’t work. Now somebody’s got to fix it.’ Well, the operator’s got to fix it … They have to be reliable because we’re going to have soldiers at a distance away from help and they can’t be going down.”

This scenario and eventual deployment of this unit could be a harbinger for how the Army equips other communications and technology gear moving forward.

Already, the service is in the throes of a major review of its network and comms gear, leading the Army to pause its $6 billion tactical network – the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical. Instead, it will outfit units with the current second increment of the program, one that provides some communications capability on the move as opposed to at the halt.

Following this review and other internal assessments, the Army has decided to stand up a new Modernization and Futures Command to improve the quality and speed of delivery and new materiel and capabilities to the war fighter.

Now, given that technology trends shift so quickly, Army leaders are looking at examples like the brigade at Fort Polk as way to purchase smarter and provide units with improved capabilities.

New brigade, new mission

The unit from the Fort Polk event, the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, or SFAB, stood up in August 2017, and is a first-of-its-kind for the Army. The unit, which deploys this spring, is considered by some to be a key pillar to America’s Afghanistan strategy in building proficiency with local partners.

Because its sole mission is training, advising and assisting, the unit’s make up in terms of personnel and equipment is different from traditional brigades. As such, the Army has had to take a different tact in providing communications and network equipment.

“As we’ve done with a lot of other technical skills in the SFAB, things that used to be done by specialists, meaning technical specialists, are now done by generalists like the operators,” Jackson said. “So, as a brigade commander, I’m expected to be able to do my own doggone radios. And troubleshoot my own radios.”

This notion of user simplicity is something the Army is pursuing broadly for systems it deploys. That characteristic becomes especially important given contractor field service representatives will not be deployed right by their side as they were in previous years.

Army modernization strategy

Within the modernization command, the Army has established cross-functional teams that will work to improve the quality and speed of delivery of new capabilities to soldiers on the battlefield.

Both the program side and the network-focused cross-functional teams are looking at the SFAB as a potential way forward.

In recent months, Army leaders have used a few mantras to describe a new networking acquisition such as “adapt and buy” and “buy, try, decide.” The idea, Army leaders say, is not to make new systems internally, but rather leverage what’s available either commercially or within the joint community, then adapt it to Army needs and evolve it as necessary based on user feedback and future missions.

Moreover, the Army is trying to understand what the minimum capabilities warfighters need as a way to simplify the requirements and fielding process of systems and architectures.

Here’s where the specialized SFAB unit comes in.

To help equip the team on their unique mission, the Army is using commercial systems along with capabilities from special operations forces and conventional Army units. The network cross-functional team wants to know if, from this experience, there are lessons that can be applied to traditional Army units and if the solutions for SFAB can be scaled to larger echelons.

“Internally, I would say the biggest requirement and the thing we work through the most, is a lot of the same capabilities and capacity that would normally reside at battalion level and definitely brigade level gets pushed down even lower now,” Jackson said.

“We’re pushing the same capability that exists at battalion level two echelons down from what a conventional brigade does … You get all sorts of things pushed way down to an echelon of command that doesn’t exist in a conventional force.”

Some of these capabilities include Secure Internet Protocol Router Network/Non-secure Internet Protocol Router Access Point, or SNAP, and the Global Rapid Response Information Package, or GRRIP, which both provide communications and satellite communications connectivity. GRRIP is a capability for very small units that are first on the scene and it fits in a suitcase. SNAP must be transported by a vehicle or helicopter.

“We kind of purposely fielded the SNAPs and the GRRIPs because of the number of users we get off of that,” Maj. Tony Nocchi, communications officer for the SFAB, told C4ISRNET. “I don’t need something that gives me access to like 50 users at one time. What I’d rather have is something that gives me access to fewer users but is more portable and I can echelon it.”

The SFAB, for example, doesn’t have the kind of networking capabilities found in traditional brigades, such as the Joint Network Node, which supports high-speed wide area network capability for secure voice, video and data exchange, due to its large size.

The Army, in outlining its vision for their network architecture going forward, has charted particular standards that can be used at various echelons and could be tailored based on mission need and theater.

The Army is trying to use the spring deployment of SFAB to Afghanistan as an educational effort to inform how it can both equip similar teams in the future and conventional Army units. The Army’s goal is to eventually have six SFAB units that can be sent to geographic theaters around the world on advise-and-assist missions, but the future of these units is still uncertain to some degree.

And how did the day end for the specially equipped SFAB team working with the Afghan troops at JRTC? After the initial sweep of the village turned up empty, the team finally found the hidden financier.

Such is the case for the Army’s newly established advise-and-assist brigade in which small combat advisory teams will accompany Afghan National Army units on missions to austere locations.

One way the Army is looking to outfit this brigade, called the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, or SFAB, from a communications perspective is by taking lessons from the special operations community.

“We’ve looked at some of the way the [special operations forces] community has operated. Even though we’re conventional, and our leaders are conventional, we do have some leaders with experience in the unconventional realm,” Maj. Tony Nocchi, the brigade’s communications officer told C4ISRNET during a recent visit to the unit’s training at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, LA.

“What are other ways we can employ [this technology] to be able to support the commander and the commander’s ability to made decisions better,” he said.

By looking at how special operations forces have employed systems in the past, “it kind of opens the aperture of ‘we can do this,’” Nocchi said,. He added that for the SFAB, it might be a melding of special operations and conventional uses.

As an example, he said typically the Nett Warrior, a dismounted handheld system that provides the location of friendly forces and other mapping data, was fielded with 154A Rifleman radios. Now the Army is exploring radios that provide additional capabilities.

“That’s kind of a one trick radio,” he said, “We were looking at what is something else that can do that – and can do more – so we went after other radios.”

The 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, or SFAB, stood up in August, is a first-of-its-kind unit that will accompany Afghan soldiers directly on missions.

During a recent visit to the unit’s training at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La., personnel described a few of the command and control issues they might face when they deploy.

“Command and control, that’s always going to be a problem even when you’re working with pure American elements,” Capt. Wallace Rollins, officer in charge with the 2nd Battalion, 1st SFAB, Team 1212, said. “There will be some challenges there, just differences in radios, ways to engage interpreters through a radio – that can be a very difficult thing to do. Availability of interpreters over there.”

Rollins noted that while much work goes into the problem of mission command, the JRTC rotation has been a good opportunity to exercise these problems prior to deployment such as how to work with an interpreter through an FM radio on a different style radio.

To help solve the issue of communicating with Afghans speaking different languages and using different systems, Maj. Tony Nocchi, communications officer for the brigade, said the Army is considering capabilities and devices that will bridge them in a secure means. He declined to provide additional material citing security reasons.

Another challenge the brigade is facing is what capabilities and capacity will be included in the unit. Since the brigade is so new and so specialized, “a lot of the same capabilities and capacity that would normally reside at battalion level and definitely brigade level gets pushed down even lower now,” Col. Scott Jackson, the brigade’s commander said. “We’re pushing the same capability that exists at battalion level two echelons down from what a conventional brigade does.”

These capabilities need to be “deployable, reliable, self sustaining to a degree,” the brigade’s commander Col. Scott Jackson, told C4ISRNET during a recent visit to the unit’s training at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La. “The manner of our operation is decentralized and distributed.”

Similarly, the brigade’s communications officer noted that there are three critical factors needed from a network and communications perspective in order to do their mission. Those factors are:

Agility. This means getting systems up quickly and pushing secure voice and data down to the team level that can also reach back to headquarters.

Scalability. Because teams are dispersed across the battlefield, they need to be able to scale capability depending on the size of these dispersed teams. More teams and more dispersed personnel means scaling capability to support them.

Expeditionary. Teams need to be able to put systems onto helicopters or vehicles and to move them quickly and then set them up fast.

Two of the systems that enable these capabilities include the Secure Internet Protocol Router Network/Non-secure Internet Protocol Router Access Point, or SNAP and the Global Rapid Response Information Package, or GRRIP.

SNAP ground satellite terminals provide satellite communications to small units at remote locations where they might be barred from using terrestrial radios given distance or terrain concerns.

GRRIP is provides secure beyond-line-of-sight voice, video and data communications to early responders without the local network infrastructure that offers global communications connectivity.

GRRIP fits in a transportable suitcase similar to an airplane carry-on while SNAP must be transported via vehicle or helicopter. The GRRIP can be up and running in 15 minutes while for higher echelons, SNAP can be up in 45 minutes.

Maj. Tony Nocchi, the brigade’s communications officer, told C4ISRNET that these teams need secure voice and beyond line of sight capability. Much of what they’ll be using is line of sight comms as they accompany Afghan National Army personnel on a variety of missions in austere environments.

Additionally, the teams would also like voice over various means, chat capability, situational awareness.

Depending on the mission and the types of capabilities that will be afforded to U.S. personnel, the team also could leverage a few situational awareness technologies.

From a vehicle mounted perspective – and much of Afghanistan is vehicle based – they’ll have access to Joint Battle Command-Platform, or JBC-P, a satellite networked, vehicle mounted blue force tracker with touch-to-zoom maps and drag-and-drop icons and interoperable with Nett Warrior.

Sometimes, they might have to get out of their vehicles and patrol on foot, at which point they’ll turn to Nett Warrior, which provides the location of friendly forces and other mapping data.

While this wasn’t his first training exercise using Nett Warrior, Rux said this unit is his first time using it. “It’s actually fairly easy to use. It takes a little bit of time to get used to like any new system,” he said.

Given that many of these teams are going to be widely dispersed, usability is an important factor.

“Usability is pretty important especially because [of] not having the depth of 25 soldiers,” Nocchi said. “Usability is pretty key because we’re getting a lot of capability and we’re handing that stuff to people who have never seen it before. Like the GRRIP. We’re trying to take some of the systems that you would see in other unconventional units because they’re very easy to use and we’re trying to move them into our unit so that when they get their hands on it they’re comfortable with it,” he added.

They’ve also offered training to help soldiers get more comfortable with certain systems.

Baseline capability

While there are certain baseline comms capabilities at each echelon, Nocchi said the teams are still learning. The benefit of going to JRTC is to test what they had originally planned for baseline capabilities and adjust as needed.

“As we come to places like JRTC and we get to operate, we see ‘Okay. This is what we thought was the baseline, now we need to adjust,’” he said.

One example is line of sight communication.

We’ve been able to leverage a lot of line of sight comms that when we go forward and do a mission, we’re probably not going to have,” Nocchi said. “The reality is we’re going to be very reliant on beyond line of sight comms and we’re going to still look to ways we can build that capability in and take what we have and improve on it.”

This also includes systems such as Nett Warrior. “How do we push that beyond line of sight with more capability? Not that the battalions and brigade are going to want to micro manage the teams that are out there but they’re going to want situational awareness of what’s going on,” Nocchi said.