Getting Kiwi gunners to be good integrators
• The RNZA's integration skills are a major force-multiplier for a force as small as the NZDF
• The NZDF is 'talking the talk' on precision, but does not have organic means to 'walk the walk'
In military terms the secret of being able to do a lot with a little is to "be a good integrator", Vice Chief of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) Major General Tim Keating told IHS Jane's . At the heart of this capability lies the Royal New Zealand Artillery (RNZA). The RNZA's inventory of L119 howitzers is being re-lifed to last until 2030, but the debate continues on how to give its batteries a precision munitions capability in the intervening period. (NZDF)
In total, the NZDF has 13,720 personnel, including civilians. The ready element of its land component is 1 (NZ) Brigade, 3,300-strong and headquartered at Linton on New Zealand's North Island.
As exemplified to IHS Jane's by brigade commander Colonel Chris Parsons during a visit to Linton, his command's 'contract' with the government is to be able to concurrently deploy, and sustain indefinitely in the field, an independent land task group of 250 soldiers and a combined arms task group (CATG) of 600 soldiers. The two task groups could, if the need arose, be combined to provide the core of a sustained battlegroup deployment. In theory, it would also be possible for the brigade to contribute the basis of a rather bigger coalition joint task force, although in such an eventuality any contribution above 800 personnel would only be supportable for a limited period.
Col Parsons told IHS Jane's "as a small force, one of the things you have to be good at is being multipurpose, be that in terms of the scale of the conflict; the role; or the environment you might be working in". The NZDF routinely conducts independent company operations at strategic distance: "a lot of armies prefer to use larger organisations than that", he pointed out.
"Excellence begins in the detail," noted Col Parsons. First it is necessary to provide a soldier with a wide baseline of skills, and only then is he or she trained in a specialist area. "For a small military, specialisation to the exclusion of broader utility," he suggested, "is a luxury", NZDF personnel commonly undertake extensive cross-training in a variety of skill sets - typically artillerymen will do CIMIC (civil military co-operation) and light infantry training, while officers - both commissioned and non-commissioned - will receive all-arms training in addition to their special-to-arm training.
Besides the headquarters (HQ), Linton houses several of 1 (NZ) Brigade's subordinated units. Among them is the NZDF's solitary artillery regiment (16th Field Regiment, RNZA), plus infantry, engineer, combat service support, signals and medical battalions.
Under its most recent reorganisation initiated in 2011, 16th Field Regiment comprises an HQ battery and three scalable 'hybrid' howitzer/mortar batteries (including 161 and 163 Batteries from the regular force and 11/4 Battery from the Army Reserve).
1448638The NZDF's 81 mm L16A2 mortars have now been consolidated within RNZA hybrid batteries, while a 60 mm mortar has been adopted for its infantry battalions in their place. (NZDF)
The functions of the individual hybrid battery include traditional fire support - the provision of surface-to-surface fires including the planning, command and control (C2) of up to six L119 105 mm Light Guns or 12 L16A2 81 mm mortars, or a mix of both. However, the battery now also has a significant co-ordination capability, the better to support the combined joint operations precepts of contemporary coalition operations.
According to the regimental commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Matt Weston, the battery HQ organisation is able not only "to assist integrate, co-ordinate and at times control the direct fires systems available within the CATG" [such as the infantry's Javelin anti-tank missile], but also "any coalition indirect fires that may be available". On top of that, "the application of fires provided by coalition air and maritime force elements are integrated with land manoeuvre via the Joint Fires Effects Coordination Centre [JFECC] and Joint Fires Teams [JFT] provided by the hybrid battery. This includes the provision of Joint Terminal Attack Controllers [JTACs] and Joint Fires Observers [JFOs] to control and co-ordinate aerial platforms".
For linking the IFPS with dismounted JFTs and mortar detachments, the RNZA employs use of smaller notebook-sized portable data units (foreground. These use software common to the ETC, enabling firing data to be generated at these levels too, if required. In this training set up, the data communications bearer is an ITT RT-1523 SINCGARS VHF frequency-hopping manpack, both the radio and the display requiring their own battery power supplies.
Another of the hybrid battery's functions is battlespace management. The JFECC and JTAC elements provide the CATG with a link into coalition airspace co-ordination with the air component elements deployed. The JFECC deconflicts fires whether generated from air, land or sea, this being "an area of increasing importance as the NZDF seeks to engage in amphibious operations". On behalf of the CATG commander, it also leads the targeting process within the CATG, concerting the application of information operations (IOs) and civil-military co-operation (CIMIC) operations as well as kinetic effects. The battery itself has teams trained in CIMIC operations, although the latter is increasingly becoming an all-arms task.
Lastly, the hybrid battery provides an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capability to the CATG, not only by means of its JFTs but also through the potential deployment of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs).
The agency principally responsible for inculcating the necessary skills within the NZDF's exceedingly compact fire support community is the School of Artillery, also at Linton. In conversation with its Chief Instructor, Major Kristian Dunne, IHS Jane's was told that he had 17 staff devoted to training 16th Field Regiment, most of the school's multiplicity of courses being staged between January and July each year.
Enlisted personnel gravitate between three trades, namely weapons (covering guns and mortars), command systems (survey, signals and fire control), and targeting. The latter trade is for soldiers/non-commissioned officers (NCOs) who have already been command systems-trained and designated to work in forward observation posts or battery/brigade co-ordination cells.
There are yet more courses for senior ranks (assistant instructors gunnery, training NCOs etc) and for officers. The latter start with the young officer's (YO's) course, GPO (gun position officer) and AFO (artillery forward observer) courses. The trained GPO is, in effect, a senior technical lieutenant able to deputise for the battery captain, while an AFO is a captain versed in fire planning and capable of acting as the CATG's or battlegroup commander's fires adviser, as well as being able to run a forward observation party. As part of the AFO course, students receive an introduction to the control of naval gunfire support.
Artillery captains and majors can also find themselves attending all-arms courses at the Land Operations Centre, Palmerston North, while those scheduled to be battery commanders could be sent either to Australia or the United Kingdom for in-depth instruction in subjects such as influence/effects planning, brigade targeting, land targeting, and joint fires targeting.
Air-land integration hurdles
In the RNZA the traditional artillery forward observer party has now become a JFT, and is broadly analogous to the six-soldier fire support teams (FSTs) found within British Army artillery regiments. There are four such JFTs per hybrid battery, and in addition to artillery these are capable of controlling mortar, air-delivered and naval gun fires.
Within the JFT, the commander and his/her assistant will both be qualified as JFOs, capable of conducting Type 2 and Type 3 terminal attack controls with fast jets or attack aviation under the control of a certified and qualified (CQ) JTAC or forward air controller. The latter would normally be found at brigade or battlegroup/CATG level.
JTACs are in short supply in the NZDF, which has no fast jets of its own with which to conduct their certification training and to help them remain qualified thereafter. According to Col Weston, there are just four JTACs available within 16th Field Regiment, plus an (unspecified) number within the NZ Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment. Each CQ JTAC requires (a minimum of) 12 live controls for certification, and six further controls every six months thereafter in order to remain current.
The lesser-trained JFO has found favour with the NZDF as an expedient means of widening the NZDF's terminal-attack control capacity on operations, since certification can be achieved in simulation.
The first JFOs from New Zealand received their training overseas towards the end of the past decade, but latterly a national three-week JFO course has been established with Australian assistance. This course is due to be assessed for US accreditation in January 2014, and is intended to be run three times a year.
Meanwhile, to sustain its JTAC establishment the NZDF continues to send candidates (among them JFOs) to the Australian Defence Force, whose air-ground operations school has received accreditation in line with the US Joint Close Air Support Memorandum of Agreement (JCAS MOA). The NZDF's certified JTACs likewise have to go abroad - mainly to Australia - for their currency/qualification training.
Precision conundrum
Recognition of the absolute necessity of having a precision fires capability to minimise collateral damage on future battlefields is writ large in the Future Joint Operating Concept 2035 publication, the official roadmap for NZDF evolution. Its authors state: "Future operations will require the Joint Task Force to operate with increased targeting discrimination, sensitivity, and proportionality to minimise unintended and consequential effects. In deterring and defeating a range of threats, the NZDF will need to exploit technology to attain greater precision and discrimination .... Retaining the ability to conduct precision and area strikes while minimising unintended effects will require the Joint Task Force to be equipped with, and have access to, precision joint fires capable of delivering flexible and pre-planned targeting." As a rider to that, it adds: "Key to this will be ensuring that joint fires capabilities are available in a responsive way to lower levels of command than has previously been possible".
The modular Elbit IFPS is used primarily as a standalone system for battery-level ballistic computing and for maintaining an artillery-related situation display, based on demountable ETC vehicle-borne terminals and Barco desk displays. This IFPS classroom training installation at Linton has a battery-level ETC computing display (left) linked to another (right) allocated to a gun detachment as a gun orders display. Data is relayed via Thales AN/PRC-148 handheld radios, one of which is visible (centre). Note also the Selex PRR in foreground for supporting related voice communications with and within gun detachments. (Rupert Pengelley)
In the light of this clearly stated aspiration, and of the NZDF's previous exposure to its practical implications when engaged in coalition operations in Afghanistan, it seems anomalous that target co-ordinate mensuration (TCM) and exploitation of full-motion video capabilities are apparently not an established part of the JFTs' training curriculum at Linton. Allied forces' experience and practice are indicative of the need for this, as the only practical way of attaining and sustaining not merely the desired level of precision but also the desired level of responsiveness.
Col Weston told IHS Jane's that NZDF personnel have trained on TCM software, including the portable Precision Strike Suite - Special Operations Forces (PSS-SOF) originally developed for US JTACs for the generation of Cat 1 target co-ordinates (to within 6 m in three dimensions), "but not in this country". As for full-motion video, he noted that while in Afghanistan NZDF JTACs/observers had habitually made use of ROVER 4 remote video terminals.
The DRS colour layer's display and control unit adopted for the Selex G-NAPS navigation and pointing system, which will automate position determination and laying with the NZDF's L119 Hamel guns. Its inherent potential for on-gun ballistic computation and networking with higher-level command systems is set to remain unexploited by the NZDF for the time being. (Selex ES)
However, the NZDF's training exposure to the wider utilisation of ROVER-compatible remote video terminals, which allow cross-operation and networking with coalition manned or unmanned airborne sensor platforms, will not have been aided by the adoption of a non-standard terminal and datalink for the indigenous Kahu UAS. The NZDF has been using Kahu for experimentation in airborne ISR asset exploitation at the lower tactical levels for the past five years.
In terms of the precision of its indirect-fire offensive support weapons, Weston told IHS Jane's "there will need to be a discussion around precision versus deployability and flexibility". One difficulty is that for the NZDF's current choice of weapon calibres no precision munitions capabilities have progressed beyond the development stage in the last 20 years. Those technologies that have matured are only being produced for 155 mm and 120 mm munitions. "In the South West Pacific there are likely to be mostly short-notice operations, and [logistically] our reaction time is likely to be affected if we go for systems bigger than the 81 mm mortar or 105 mm Light Gun," Col Weston explained.
"The current systems do allow us to develop competence and also to neutralise area targets: to build a precision [kinetic-effects] delivery capability beyond what we can already achieve using a select group of observers [ie with JTACs and air-delivered weapons] will require a new indirect-fire weapon," and in this case "even the [M777A2] lightweight 155 mm howitzer may well be too heavy for us", suggested Col Weston.
Meanwhile, the NZDF's L119 Hamel 105 mm Light Gun inventory is being put through a rolling rebuild programme to extend its service life to 2030 and beyond. Executed by BAE Systems in Australia, this rebuild began in 2011 and is due to be completed in 2015; it involves renewal of the Hamel's recoil, buffer and recuperator mechanisms.
Significantly, training is also due to begin in early 2014 on an improved gun navigation and pointing system (G-NAPS) for the Hamel, which prospectively has a bearing on the precision of the effects that it can deliver.
The signing of a contract with Selex ES for the supply of G-NAPS was announced in May, and the first delivery from the United Kingdom is scheduled to take place in November. In principle it serves to automate the laying and gun management functions, although the RNZA still intends to keep a reversionary manual sighting mode. The 16th Field Regiment has accordingly been testing the suitability of the C2 optical laying sight (originally developed for the L16A2 81 mm mortar, and for the 7.62 mm general-purpose machine gun [GPMG] when operated in predicted-fire mode) for application to the Hamel, hoping thereby to keep the training burden within its hybrid gun/mortar batteries to a minimum.
G-NAPS is closely related to the new LINAPS Mk 2 laser inertial aiming and pointing system, which Selex has been producing for the British and Canadian armies. Unlike its progenitor, however, G-NAPS does not have a direct-fire computing sight capability of the kind the British Army successfully implemented with the original LINAPS. This was done in 2009-10 in response to an urgent operational requirement to ensure both precision and improved responsiveness when engaging direct-fire targets out to 6 km, using the 'Dragon Gun' version of the L118 long-barrel model of the Light Gun in Afghanistan.
The LINAPS Mk 1 variant employed on the Dragon Gun provided rapid compensation for ballistic variables using a South African ballistic kernel integral to its monochrome Denel WMS205 layer's display and control unit (LDCU). This, its South African inventors had had the foresight to include to give the users an on-gun computing option, even though it was not part of the British specification. This capability has since been replicated in LINAPS Mk 2 using a new DRS colour LDCU in combination with the NATO armaments ballistics kernel (NABK). While G-NAPS does have the DRS LDCU, the NZDF has apparently not asked for the NABK, although it could be argued an autonomous on-gun technical fire-control computing capability might in future be useful for precision munitions shoots by single guns and patrol-base deployments by independent gun pairs, as well as for direct-fire engagements.
In the light of its de facto adherence to massed fires and battery-level ballistic computing, another seemingly anomalous choice (doubly so in the era of the NZDF's 'Network Enabled Army' [NEA] concept) is the 'air-gapping' of G-NAPS and 16 Regiment's higher-level Indirect Fire Prediction System (IFPS). The firing data generated by the IFPS, developed by Israeli contractor Elbit, will therefore need always to be entered into G-NAPS manually, and any status returns from the guns likewise will have to be by voice and manual injection. Industry sources have suggested to IHS Jane's that an online data transfer capability would be easy enough to implement, assuming any related commercial confidentiality issues between Elbit and Selex could be cleared up.
The NZDF started training on the IFPS in 2010, when it began to phase out the previous MAS Vanguard battery computing system. In principle, IFPS is capable of being used at levels up to battalion (regiment) for both tactical and technical fire control computing purposes, but in the NZDF's case battery-level operation is the norm.
The standard vehicle-mounted terminal used with the IFPS is Elbit's 5.2 kg Enhanced Tactical Computer (ETC) with a 10.4-inch XGA display, running Combat NG/Beacon artillery and mortar C2 software. (The latter has elements in common with Elbit's TOR2CH situational awareness software, also adopted for use with the Australian Defence Force's BGC3 battle-management system.) Smaller, notebook-sized portable data units are employed by the JFTs and mortars. All devices have common software enabling firing data to be predicted at every station if required.
Article continues in Part 2
