October 31, 2013
When Major Nicko Petchiny and his team proposed to a NATO planning committee in Denmark earlier this year that the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) could demonstrate an integrated warning and reporting system for defence against chemical and biological warfare agents during Exercise Brave Beduin 2013, the response was lukewarm at best.
“Traditionally, this exercise is done manually with telephones used to communicate threat information to commanders and their command-and-control systems,” said Maj Petchiny, director of the CAF’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Sensor Integration and Decision Support (SI & DS) Project.
Maj Petchiny and his team were proposing to provide an automated link from software tools that model the predicted path, or threat zone, of airborne chemical, biological and radiological warfare agents on the battlefield to the Canadian Army’s command-and-control system, as well as to systems used by the Royal Canadian Navy and Canadian Special Operations Forces.
“But largely due to the outstanding efforts of our project management team in preparing for Brave Beduin, NATO countries were very impressed with the capabilities of the system and by the end of the exercise, they were asking for more information about our program,” he said.
The CAF began working on its advanced, automated system for CBRN defence warning and reporting more than a decade ago, as part of an overall program to modernize our CBRN defence capabilities. Canada’s system was similar to most other military CBRN procedures still in use today: information from chemical and biological detectors in the battlefield was manually input into specialized software, usually hosted on a laptop computer, where it was analyzed and interpreted. The software generated a hazard plot, or predicted plume, taking into account such factors as the sources of the threat agent, air temperature, and wind direction and speed. These predictive models were then relayed manually, by telephone, by radio, or by boots on the ground to in-theatre commanders. The process was often slow and cumbersome.
The SI & DS Project set out to build an integrated system that automatically accepts CBRN sensor data, transfers it to the military’s classified networks to be interpreted by specialized CBRN analysis tools, and then delivers it to commanders through their command-and-control systems.
To accomplish this, the Project first had to work with industry to develop a standardized interface, or a common language, between proprietary CBRN sensors and a controller. System developers also had to ensure that sensor data was rendered in digital form so that the transfer from sensor to decision support tools to command-and-control systems could be automated.
“We chose an open architecture based on existing NATO standards as well as proven intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance standards already used jointly in the Canadian Forces,” said Maj Petchiny. “Using this standardized, common-language approach, Canada has been able to progress faster than any other country in integrating its CBRN sensors.”
The system also includes two unique bridges that transfer data. In the first instance, a data diode transfers CBRN sensor data across from the unclassified to the classified domains where it will be analyzed. Next, output of the CBRN hazard prediction tools is bridged over to command-and-control systems. Both of these bridges are unique to the Canadian SI & DS system.
This summer, the SI&DS Project team followed up their successful demonstration at Ex Brave Beduin with another demonstration, Ex Precise Response in Suffield, Alberta, at the Defence Research and Development Canada facility. For this live-agent training exercise, the team linked a series of fixed-site chemical agent sensors and vital point biological agent sensors to their common controller, and integrated the sensor data to CBRN analysis tools and then on to the command-and-control system. This enhanced considerably the earlier exercise demonstration since here, at Precise Response, live CBRN sensors were now part of the integrated system. This was no longer a table-top exercise.
“At commanders’ briefings during the exercise, situational awareness was brought to a new level as commanders saw CBRN threat assessments in near real time,” said Maj Petchiny. “I think they were quite impressed.”
