On the tactical level, the US, British, and French air forces integrate very well, but intelligence sharing, and command and control must be improved to ensure success in more demanding future air campaigns, said senior representatives from each air arm. “In Libya we got away with it, we made do,” said Royal Air Force Air Marshal A.D. Puller during the Sept. 19 panel on allied cooperation at AFA’s Air and Space Conference in National Harbor, Md. “Two of the greatest [difficulties] to any coalition in a truly integrated manner are integrated command and control, and the sharing of information,” added Gen. Gilles Lemoine, head of the French air force’s strategic studies center. Since the beginning of coalition operations in Afghanistan in 2003, “we have seen an explosion in the number of aircraft that can provide intel, surveillance, and reconnaissance,” highlighted Lt. Gen. Frank Gorenc, the Air Force’s assistant vice chief of staff. As a result, “we’re going to have to work our way through each of the capabilities . . . and develop systems that allow for machine-to-machine transfer of data so that data are developed and processed” quickly enough to keep pace, he added.
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.