C4ISR Center Provides Real-Life Training:
The Air Force’s Pentagon Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence-Surveillance-Reconnaissance Visualization Center recently was the setting for Air Force and Coast Guard leaders who played out a homeland defense exercise spread across the country. One scenario featured a 9/11-type situation with a hijacked airliner—it was shot down by two F-16s—and another had an unmanned aerial vehicle heading up the Potomac from some unknown source. The exercise participants in various parts of the country had to communicate and determine a course of action. The center’s computers and huge flat screen TVs provide a means to simulate often-difficult logistical exercises in cyberspace and on networks. The center “provides the perfect complement to live flying with an incredible amount of fidelity and realism,” said USAF Lt. Gen. Michael W. Peterson, the chief of warfighting integration and information.
The Space Development Agency wants to launch hundreds of satellites into low-Earth orbit over the next few years—and thanks to a new contract, it now has a way to get rid of some when their service life is over.
