Davis-Monthan getting combined air operations center

Air Force Links ^ | Oct 24, 2005 | unattributed

[SandRat]

10/24/2005 - DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz -- The Air Force broke ground on a new combined air operations center here.

There was the sound of sledgehammers swinging when workers started the conversion of an old ground-launched cruise-missile facility into the new Falconer CAOC facility Oct. 17.

The new operations center -- scheduled to open in July 2006 -- will be the only “continuously operational” facility in the United States and one of only five Falconer CAOC weapon systems used to support combatant commanders worldwide.

The CAOC -- an $11.35 million construction project -- is part of an Air Force vision to create warfighting headquarters to provide focused and dedicated support to combatant commanders. As a major component of this new concept, CAOC “crewmembers” team with Air Force forces and commander’s personal staffs to meet the desired objectives.

“The capabilities offered by these state-of-the-art facilities are limitless,” said Col. Tim Vigil, 12th Air Force special assistant for warfighter headquarters transformation.

Even before the completion of this new facility, the Air Force is looking for emerging technologies and additional missions for the center, the colonel said.

“Truly, these five Falconer CAOCs will provide the Air Force, it’s supported combatant commands and the U.S. itself, with an amazing array of command and control capabilities,” he said.

The CAOC staff develops the strategy, plans and processes to successfully employ air, space and information operations forces to achieve desired effects in support of joint forces commander theater-wide objectives.

The new facility will serve as the command and control hub for U.S. South Air Force, renamed Air Force South, which serves as the air and space component to U.S. Southern Command. The command is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Caribbean and Central and South America.

When completed, the new center will link to the other four Falconers around the globe. Within this constellation of command and control centers, any one of the centers can assume the duties and responsibilities should something occur to interfere with the daily operations of any other CAOC.

[gaijin]

UCAV/UAV central?

[Spook86]

In part; the idea behind a CAOC (Combined Air Operations Center) is to have a permaent, standing control node, focused on a particular geographic area, allowing us to transition to contingency operations much more quickly. We've had similar facilities for years in places like Korea, where the threat was very present and very clear; now, the concept is being expanded to include other areas of the globe. The D-M CAOC, I'm told, will focus on Central and South America. Hello, Hugo Chavez; that Global Hawk is watching you, and it's downlinking to D-M (among other locations)

[axes_of_weezles]

I was assigned for 12 Years to do direct support for 12AF. This has been in the works for at least 7 to 8 years. It's a major shift to the concept of operations to perform these functions from the CONUS vice in the AOR. 9AF at Shaw has the Centcom AOR and has had "reachback" operations since '92 for many comm functions. The big deal is not shipping the Operators to the AOR, because good commercial comms and bandwidth are available to remotely perform many management functions stateside; thus limiting exposure to danger and TDY's to the AOR for the "Operators".

This is a beancounting operation. What used to happen is the whole AOC would take over a facility/hangar and run the Air War from somewhere near or in the AOR, because military comm was extremely limited between all the services Intel, Voice, networks, video all had to fit a T1 or multiple T1's on a military sattelite.

Since DS91, availablity of commercial bandwidth on fiber and commercial sattelites have supplanted the military sattelites and the military now purchases Commercial Off the shelf (COTS) hardware. It's cheaper to buy and throw away/upgrade after 3 years versus buying milspec; handles commercial level bandwidths, (up to Gigabit Ethernet) vice the fractional T1's on striclty milspec gear.

By having the AOC fixed, they also lose and are shedding deployable communications capability, figuring there will be time waiting for the Army to get to the AOR to get a full blown CAOC up and running. It's a tradeoff (read bean counting).

12 AF used to have a deployable self sustainable AOC,with comm, vehicles, generators, fuel support, air conditioning road and air mobile; played in major JCS exercises, ran the AOC for Clintons Haiti fiasco, and has had expertise at every major contingency and exercise for the last 15 years. It was a source of pride to be able to pick up and go anywhere and set up an AOC/CAOC. With the fixed AOC they lose this capability and are counting on the rapid availability of comm and facilities in any future AOR contingency. The beancounters won. They are reassigning the support folks to regular base assignments.
The pilots would rather stay in hotels vice in tents, for sure.
It sure will suck to be them if something happens in Korea, Taiwan/China, Iran or Venezuela.

Most of the day to day operations of 12AF has been focused on counterdrug ops, and Humrel in Latin/South America.

It used to be a fun place to work. Wouldn't you rather deploy to South America, where you can drink and the locals are somewhat friendly (read Christian vice Islamokazi)? Southaf's AOR rocks compared to CENTAF/9AF.