USJFCOMLive

Like the other coalition partners involved in Bold Quest 09, our neighbors to the north are deeply concerned with mitigating friendly fire incidents during air-to-ground close-air support engagements.  Canada’s military sent more than 40 people to BQ this year, including pilots, joint terminal attack controllers, analysts, and support crews for the three CF-18 fighter jets involved in the assessment.

Canadian Forces Cmdr. Robert Edwards, the Canadian lead for BQ 09, and Maj. James Kettle, a CF-18 pilot working in the air operations center at MCAS Cherry Point, N.C., participated in a media roundtable Saturday and shared their thoughts on BQ’s importance and the bebefits of working in a multinational environment.

During the roundtable, Edwards said Canada - which has been involved in the Bold Quest series since its inception – continues its engagement because the testing and its results will help its military make the best decisions regarding purchases of CId technologies in the future.

We’re here because we want exposure to future technologies to fill capability gaps in combat identification. We’re interested in exploiting new systems for interoperability, particularly with the United States but also with our coalition partners.  They inform our investment decisions.  Up in Canada, we have equipment that we’re interested in buying in the future and these exercises help us to inform those decisions.  Finally, our joint air controllers, our pilots and other people that are participating get a lot in trainng, tactics and procedures in all this coalition combat ID.  Overall, we’re trying to advance our efficiency in this area and save lives due to fratricide.

I think that the Bold Quest series is really gaining momentum.  Every year, we have more coalition partners who are learning more about each others equipment.  We’re trying to improve our efficiency and safety in the conduct of our operations.

Kettles, who goes by the call sign “Bucca”, said Bold Quest will lead to coalition pilots being able to efficiently and effectively attack targets on the joint battlefield while lessening the potential for collateral damage or fratricide.

From an F-18 perspective, having that ability to communicate a target and friendly locations quickly is a huge benefit for us.  Working with our coalition partners is a great experience because we can learn better tactics and better techniques and employ them ourselves to make us better … It’s an outstanding opportunity for Canada to participate.

Bucca said that on modern battlefields, things change quickly, so the technologies and tactics being evaluated at BQ can have a huge impact for fighter pilots having to fly and make decisions based on information which can lose its validity in a matter of seconds.  He said that having accurate information available at the exact moment it’s needed can go a long way to mitigating human error in the cockpit.

Human error is never going to be eliminated … but the more information [there is] and the more easily a shooter can process it, that’s going to actually reduce the human error … From a shooter perspective, if you prevent one fratricide or you prevent one collateral damage potential, that’s successful.