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TESTIMONY OF
DR. MICHAEL P. BAILEY
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
U.S. MARINE CORPS TRAINING AND EDUCATION COMMAND

BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
AND
THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES
HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

REGARDING
JOINT NATIONAL TRAINING CAPABILITY

 March 18, 2004
 

I.  INTRODUCTION

Mr. Chairman, Congressman Meehan, and distinguished Members of the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to appear before the committee to discuss the Marine Corps involvement in the Joint National Training Capability (JNTC).   

In January of this year, JNTC Prototype Event One was held in the Western range Complex including Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California.  In order to participate in this event, several Marine and Joint training capabilities came together to execute an instrumented live training event with constructive simulation augmentation and limited virtual simulator involvement.  This event was designed to evaluate performance of Joint Close Air Support, as well as to evaluate the JNTC technical approach.  Preparing for and executing this event provided lessons learned on both fronts. 

II.  RANGE INVESTMENT STRATEGY 

In order to fully participate in future Joint National Training Capability events, and to adequately support our Service training, the Marine Corps must upgrade and modernize our training ranges.  We have developed a strategy, the USMC Range Investment Strategy, which would develop and field instrumentation capability that is interoperable with the JNTC.  Our approach is economical, and reflective of the Marine-Corps-unique aspects of our training.  In particular, our modernization strategy for Twentynine Palms provides automated tracking and recording, target-based opposing force representation, and after-action review -- without compromising our live-fire training.  This strategy will bring JNTC interoperability to Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Camp Pendleton, and Camp Lejeune.  The Marine Corps itself needs all of the capabilities embodied in the Range Investment Strategy, but the JNTC has raised our level of urgency.  

The first phases of implementation of the Range Investment Strategy will commence this year with the support of the Congress, and will continue as we institutionalize support for this Program in our Service.  Other Programs, including our Deployable Virtual Training Environment (DVTE), our Combined Arms Command and Control Training Upgrade System (CACCTUS), and our Aviation Simulation Master Plan are critical to our effort to establish and maintain robust live-virtual-constructive training capabilities. 

III.  INTEROPERABILITY 

For Event One, ranges and command centers shared ground truth data using the training and Testing Enabling Architecture (TENA) protocol.  It is our understanding that Joint Forces Command and the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness) advocate using TENA as our range data interoperability standard of the future, and the Marine Corps concurs.  As we develop and field our range instrumentation systems, we will not only use TENA as an external standard for communications, we will implement TENA as our native standard for intra-range system interoperability. 

IV.  TRAINING VALUE

JNTC brings Joint context to Service training events by synchronizing these events and injecting elements of the shared Joint common operational database into each.  JNTC also has an evaluation component that is designed to document the performance of the training forces as they execute Joint Tactical Tasks (JTT's).  The Joint context and the assessment are of extremely high value to the Marine Corps, provided we remain appropriately focused on Joint command and control activities.  Event One illustrated that the JNTC community still has some work to do in definition of the focus of evaluation, as well as meaningful promulgation of the Joint context to the exercise force.

V.  CONCLUSION 

The Marine Corps supports the JNTC Program, and is fully engaged in Training Transformation, following the lead of the Undersecretary and his staff.  We are in the process of upgrading and modernizing our range infrastructure to meet our own Service training needs, as well as to enable Marine Corps participation in the JNTC. 

Mr. Chairman and members of the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, thank you again for your steadfast support, and for this opportunity to appear before the committee to discuss how the Marine Corps is evolving our training program.