Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada — The 805th Combat Training Squadron’s Shadow Operations Center – Nellis, or ShOC-N, is the U.S. Air Force’s premier battle lab supporting the development, advancement, and maturation of key technologies and capabilities designed to compress the kill-chain for joint and coalition warfighters.

The ShOC-N accomplishes this mission by utilizing multi-domain, all-domain, and cross-domain solutions spanning all classification levels, working closely with key defense, industry, and sister services such as the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Missile Defense Agency, and the Defense Industrial Base.

In addition to hosting government sponsors and industry partners daily, the ShOC-N is helping to steer and evolve Joint Staff doctrine and guidance for all-domain and cross-domain solutions and capabilities by focusing on defining and developing instrumentation for data, networks, software, and air component-specific command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence, or C4I, warfighting processes.

Working closely with their wide range of mission partners, the ShOC-N is a vanguard unit on the frontlines of next-generation technologies for the USAF and Joint Staff. With key placement and access to Nellis AFB’s unique mission, the ShOC-N is providing a critical venue to advance and refined key technologies and showcase them to U.S. and coalition leadership in a tactically and operationally relevant setting – to see the technology working in a warfighter environment with real-world operators at the helm vice a clean lab with scientists only.

Normally, ShOC-N leverages existing exercises to meet mission requirements.  But sometimes, when no other appropriate venue exists, the ShOC-N team will host its own organic event to advance and refine technologies. A recent example occurred at the end of April. The ShOC-N hosted an organic Distributed Command and Control Event simulating Agile Combat Employment utilizing new technologies available at the ShOC-N. The ShOC-N set up an austere location simulating a pacing adversary threat environment for the new technologies and their ability to operate in a degraded setting.

“ShOC-N’s ability to operate in the shadows of operational theaters or large-scale exercises allows us to experiment in the most realistic, operationally relevant ways.  Everything we do is nested within the USAF Warfare Center’s Pacing Challenge Campaign Plan. All new technology is vetted against our ability to compete with China,” said Col. Frederick Coleman, 505th Command and Control Wing commander, Hurlburt Field, Florida.

The Air Combat Command C2 Futures Branch’s Tactical C2 Weapon Systems Division leveraged the event to shape Battle Management Command and Control functions requirements, viewing several mobile and rapidly deployable tactical air component C2 systems at work in an ACE environment.

“Major General Slocum, ACC/A3 [director of operations], challenged the staff to rapidly prototype and field a Tactical Operations Center – Light, or TOC-L, capability,” said Maj. Carl Rossini, C2 Futures Branch chief. “[The] ShOC-N enabled us to meet that challenge by quickly bringing together the event, data, warfighters, test organizations, and acquisitions.”

Not only did this event leverage unique ShOC-N capabilities, but it also served as a risk reduction event for the Pacific Air Forces’ Valiant Shield 2022 exercise, along with ACC’s participation in the U.S. Army Futures Command’s Project Convergence 2022 exercise.

Organizations that partnered with the ShOC-N for the TOC-L experimentation included the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Research and Engineering 5G support team, the Missile Defense Agency, representatives of the ACC staff, the Air Force Joint Test Program Office, the 605th Test and Evaluations Squadron, the 422nd Test and Evaluations Squadron, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Solypsis, Global C2 Integration Technologies, Lower Echelon Analytics Platform – Tactical, or LTAC, and Novetta Systems.

In addition to external mission partner involvement and success, the ShOC-N employed their organic data scientist team to develop methodologies to measure data latency from various systems, data files, and logs. Their analysis proved successful and demonstrated data scientists’ current and future utility, along with the need to advance and automate instrumentation.

“Collecting and storing mass amounts of data without a plan is of no value. Turning volumes of data into decision quality information is where we show value, and I’m proud of our data science team,” said Lt. Col. David Spitler, 805th CTS/ShOC-N commander.

Instrumentation is a core attribute of the battle lab still under development.

“The analytics shown by our data science team and the LTAC cyber team sparked the imagination of what is possible. However, it also showed how much more investment is needed to truly instrument the battle lab,” said Col. Aaron Gibney, 505th Combat Training Group commander, Nellis AFB, Nevada. “We need to be able to define what we’re measuring and then measure it in an automated, objective, quantitative way.”

When data is collected, classified, labeled, properly tagged, and stored with ontologies, the instrumented data provides the basis for objective evaluation of technical performance in the experimental lab environment. Instrumentation is intended to enable objective methods for A|B comparisons, measuring compression of warfighting processes, data latencies, and the efficacies of prototypes against currently fielded hardware and software. With instrumentation, the ShOC-N will provide objective reviews to inform senior leader decisions for the continued prototyping and/or transition to test to deliver capabilities to the warfighter rapidly.

The Distributed Command and Control Event showed how critical the ShOC-N is as the USAF develops and matures advanced technologies to compress the kill-chain and streamline the decision-making process for warfighters. The ShOC-N was able to showcase key technologies in an ACE environment and will continue advancing its mission to support the warfighter. 

“The warfighter ethos is alive and strong in the ShOC-N,” said Coleman.

The 805th CTS reports to the 505th CTG, Nellis AFB, Nevada, and the 505th Command and Control Wing, headquartered at Hurlburt Field, Florida.  

By Deb Henley

505th Command and Control Wing

Public Affairs

The 505th Test and Training Group, Hurlburt Field, Florida, provided critical command and control expertise during the 23rd Wing’s execution of their Lead Wing exercise, Ready Tiger 22-01 at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, Feb. 28 to March 4.

The 23rd WG conducted RT 22-01, an Agile Combat Employment LW exercise, in preparation for their upcoming, certification- exercise Agile Flag slated for later this summer. 

In November 2021, the 705th Training Squadron team provided LW C2 academics to the 23rd WG A-Staff which established base-line procedures for interacting with operational C2.  During RT 22-01, the 505th’s team evolved these procedures by providing a small scale Air Component replication for the 23rd WG.

 “The goal of providing replication, in place of standard white-cell injects, was to give the Lead Wing the realism of having to communicate and coordinate directly with entities at the AOC [Air Operations Center] and AFFOR [Air Force Forces] staff,” said David Hetzler, 705th TRS, ACE LW C2 subject matter expert, Hurlburt Field, Florida.

The four-day, LW exercise focused on maturing the 23rd WG’s ability to employ Air Base Squadrons to generate airpower downrange and maintain C2 in contested environments.

“The 505th CCW provided outstanding support to exercise Ready Tiger and brought realism to the interaction between the Lead Wing and Air Component. This integration, the first during any wing-led ACE exercise, brought valuable lessons learned from both the 505th CCW and 23rd WG, and will ensure future ACE exercises are more realistic and successful,”  said Maj. Paul Ochs, 41st Rescue Squadron RT deputy exercise director, Moody AFB, Georgia.

The future Agile Flag exercise will test the LW’s mission generation, C2, and base operations support elements to prepare warfighters from multiple installations and major commands for what they may encounter deployed while supporting the joint force air component commander. 

 “The 705th is using their subject matter expertise in creating tailored academics that prepare Lead Wings to integrate quickly with Air Components.  Our academics provide a baseline that the Lead Wing can build upon while developing TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures] to integrate with an Air Component’s staffs,” said Lt. Col. Marcus Bryan, 705th TRS commander, Hurlburt Field, Florida.  “Our participation in Ready Tiger keeps us current on ACE Lead Wing employment concepts which directly informs our upcoming Lead Wing academic courses.”

Bryan continued, “This was the first time that a Lead Wing exercise used a real-time AOC replication cell to simulate the ‘normal’ back and forth interaction between an AOC/AFFOR and the Lead Wing, greatly increasing training fidelity for the 23rd Wing.  The experimental use of 505th TTG personnel sets the groundwork for using an operational C2 replication team during Agile Flag.”

“During Ready Tiger, I was able to replicate numerous, yet scaled functions such as the Chief of Combat Operations, Senior Offensive Duty Officer and Joint Personnel Recovery Center director directly with the 23rd WG’s WOC,” said Shawn Holsinger, 505th Training Squadron senior Combat Operations Division instructor, Hurlburt Field, Florida. “With extensive doctrinal knowledge and real-world experience on operational-level C2, our team is able to provide critical replication, similar to our AOC initial qualification training for 1500+ students per year.”

The 505th TRS is the USAF’s only AOC Formal Training Unit and trains geographic AOCs and functional OCs joint and coalition warfighters on C2 processes and systems used to employ air, space and cyber at the operational level of war.

In previous exercises, the Air Component was simulated however in RT 22-01 interactions between the 505th TTG replication team provided realistic interaction between the LW WOC and the Air Component.

“Our combined team of 705th Training Squadron and 505th Training Squadron C2 experts created an initial Air Component Replication Team for the Lead Wing exercise successfully providing operational C2 interaction within exercise Ready Tiger.  The connection and growth of Wing Operations Centers within theater battle management constructs and with the Air Component staffs is a necessary evolution to the future success of integrating the Lead Wing construct into ACE concepts,” said Col. Adam Shelton, 505th Test and Training Group commander, Hurlburt Field, Florida.

By Deb Henley, 505th Command and Control Wing, Public Affairs

MALMSTROM AIR FORCE BASE, Mont. (AFNS) —

When the 819th RED HORSE Squadron was presented with the challenge of accelerating change to increase deployment capabilities across their enterprise, they responded with an innovation that will completely change the way RED HORSE trains at home and how they deploy overseas.

“One of the big objectives is to make sure we are ready to confront the challenges of the future,” said Lt. Col. Javier Velazquez, 819th RHS commander. “The only way we can possibly do that is by building our teams in garrison the same way that they are going to be deployed and working together.”

RED HORSE stands for Rapid Engineer Deployable, Heavy Operational Repair Squadron, Engineer. They are self-sufficient and mobile squadrons capable of rapid response and independent operations in remote environments worldwide. In addition to civil engineers, the squadron includes Airmen from more than 30 career fields.

Over the last several decades, RED HORSE squadrons organized themselves by those career fields. They spent time primarily with people who do the same job while they were in garrison and only built deployment teams when tasked to mobilize. This meant that when a RED HORSE team deployed, they would have to build camaraderie and learn to trust one another in the deployed environment.

“Nowadays we don’t have that luxury,” Velazquez said. “We need to be sure that we can hit the ground running on day one and that’s exactly what we’re trying to achieve with our new structure.”

Now, the squadrons will be restructured into teams based on their ability to fulfill a specific purpose. These teams include horizontal construction, demolition and quarry, vertical construction, expeditionary engineering, site assessment and support functions.

This means if a combatant commander needs, for example, an airfield built at their location, RED HORSE would send them a horizontal construction team that includes all the right people, tools and assets necessary to complete that task.

“By putting these teams together, we have the ability to not only know each other…but be organized in a way that is capabilities-based,” said Chief Master Sgt. Nathan Laidlaw, 819th RHS senior enlisted leader. “When the combatant commander comes down and says, ‘we need a water well drilled,’ we press the button and they’re there. They are organized, trained, equipped and ready to go.”

The squadron’s leadership emphasized that the idea is to spend as much time at home as possible working together, solving problems and maintaining their readiness.

“This new construct really focuses us on that capability as well as readiness,” said Maj. Keegan Vaira, 819th RHS director of operations. “In the previous way we were doing business, that wasn’t at the forefront of everyone’s mind and under our new structure, a huge piece of what these teams are doing every day is making sure they are ready to execute that mission.”

“Everyone can get ready at once,” said Senior Master Sgt. Serena Goethe, 819th RHS first sergeant. “They all got their shots at the same time, they all did their firing at the same time, they did their (computer-based trainings) at the same time so they knew they were all good to go at once.”

After the initial planning process, the 819th RHS completed the transformation in about five months from August to December 2021.

“At the beginning of any change it’s difficult and it’s a lot of unknowns,” Laidlaw said. “In that initial storming change of this transformation I would say it was a little uneasy to be honest and it should have been because we’re changing the way we’ve done business.

“Once (the Airmen) started buying in and seeing the process and understanding where we were going and seeing the benefits it provided them, the majority have come on board and have been very positive about it.”

Goethe added that while Airmen will spend most of their time working with the teams in their new flights, they will have the opportunity to work with others within their specific career fields for training and mentorship.

“I’m glad to say that the 819th is taking the lead for the entire enterprise with the support of the 800th RED HORSE Group,” Velazquez said.

The 819th RHS is the first RED HORSE squadron to complete the restructuring.

“The cumulative plan came almost exclusively from the 819th” Laidlaw said. “This unit went through a lot to come up with this concept and they deserve the credit for it.”

By Heather Heiney, 341st Missile Wing Public Affairs