LAGER AULENBACH, Germany -- The U.S. Marine Corps new Combat Operations Center is one of many communications interoperability demonstrations being presented at Combined Endeavor 2006, the world’s largest security cooperation and communications and information system military exercise. The U.S. European Command sponsored exercise is being held from May 12 - 25 and involves 41 partner nations.
The modular, scalable, and mobile operations system was built to facilitate faster decision making in a field environment. The mobile tent facility is a "high-tech office" with all the latest equipment including laptop computers, printers, a built-in local area network (LAN), a power system, overhead touch screens to provide an overview of the battlefield, as well as air conditioning and heat.
“This mobile operations center provides commonality among Marine Corps information systems, integration with Marine, Joint, and Coalition systems as well as rapid and flexible deployment and employment,” said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Michael Coolican, project manager for the combat operations center, Marine Corps Systems Command. “The need for such a resource comes from the Marines need to move very quickly from place to place and a need for standardization.”
The core of the combat operations center is the “ready-to-go” operational trailer. All equipment is pre-wired and ready to operate. The trailer contains servers that process both classified and unclassified local area and wide area networks. Data protection is provided by a random array of independent disks (RAID) configuration, a set of disks that makes copies of data bits and spreads them across the set. If one of the servers goes down the information is reconstructed from the backed up disks on the RAID drive. In case of generator failure, the trailer is set up with an uninterruptible power supply, which can supply 45 minutes of battery back up power in an emergency. There is even the capability to run the trailer on Humvee power.
These mobile operations centers were designed to support up to a battalion of Marines, is transported in three Humvees and trailers and can be set up and operational in 60 minutes. Currently, 16 command systems are being used in Iraq with another 60 to be delivered to the Marine Corps in July.
Marine Corps Cpt. James Hickey, Marine Forces Europe communications operations officer, summarized the importance of this system, “Simply put, the combat operations center gives the field commander the ability to rapidly set-up a system to oversee and direct military forces while at the same time ensuring equipment compatibility and sustainability.”