Electronic Systems Center officials at Hanscom AFB, Mass., this month expect to release a planning and management tool called EMPIRE-A that will support personnel overseeing overhead intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance assets in a theater. It will provide a more complete view of the battlespace, they say. “EMPIRE-A allows a team in a [combined air operations center] to look at all theater assets collecting full-motion video and decide how to best manage task requests,” said Capt. Casandra Wolak, advanced development team lead in ESC’s airspace mission planning division. The first EMPIRE-A prototype appeared in Southwest Asia in February. Refinements since then have resulted in “a more mature and capable version” that is ready for CAOC installation, said Wolak. EMPIRE-A stands for Evolved Mission Planning Interface to Raise Enterprise-level Awareness. (Hanscom report by Patty Welsh)
The Pentagon’s new counter-drone task force will play a direct role in arming Airmen with new weapons to defend Air Force agile combat employment, or ACE, air bases in austere locations against enemy drone attacks, the director of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 said Oct. 14.
