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Naval Special Warfare Hosts Trident Spectre 2010

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS100512-13
5/12/2010

By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Matt Daniels, Naval Special Warfare Group 2 Public Affairs

FORT STORY, Va. (NNS) -- Naval Special Warfare Group 2, Support Activity 2 (NSWSA2) hosted Trident Spectre 2010 from April 26 to May 12 at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, Va.

The annual event in its sixth year was an invitation-only venue for special operations, intelligence, interagency, and law-enforcement personnel to test and evaluate emerging technologies both from government and commercial industries in tactically-focused scenarios.

"Trident Spectre is truly unique. It is not just about experimentation but more about operational experimentation," said Cmdr. Alec Mackenzie, commanding officer, NSWSA2. "No other venue features tactically-oriented experimentation of intelligence and technology at this level for the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Intelligence community."

During the two-week period, more than 270 experiments were conducted and more than 700 personnel were involved, including direct participants and distinguished visitors. The scenarios implemented and integrated maritime, air, ground, and individual tactical platforms and technologies. Engineers and technicians from more than 50 companies brought their latest technological advancements to Trident Spectre to be tested by end-users during tactical experiments.

"The magic of Trident Spectre is that the command provides special operations operators – SEALs (Sea, Air, Land), SWCCs (Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewman), and Navy technicians, most recently returning from deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, to actually use the gear and validate the technologies in tactically-oriented scenarios. This way, the government and industry engineers receive immediate feedback from the operators on the effectiveness and applicability of the technologies involved for current and projected operating environments," said Mackenzie.

According to Mackenzie, the effort is truly a collaborative approach.

"We also start out with an initial list of experiments, and then the 'mad-science moment' happens by mixing the operators with engineers, spurring creativity and innovation to take the technologies in new, and novel, directions," said Mackenzie.

The value, according to organizers of the event, is utilizing the technology in an operationally focused setting.

"We are excited to host Trident Spectre, to run it, to provide the operators and to script the complex scenario. Philosophically, this is a different approach and creates an environment in which technologies can be validated and vetted in an operational scenario, rather than building a venue around a piece of technology to see if it will succeed," said MacKenzie.

Because of the collaborative work environment created, participants receive instant feedback on functionality from special operators and are able to incorporate technology from other capability providers to produce a more-beneficial product to the users

"All invitees are united by the common desire to do better with technology for DoD, the interagency, and law enforcement because all share the need to constantly improve in the areas of collection, analysis, and dissemination," said Mackenzie. "Trident Spectre is a venue that consistently offers a lot to many different, and diverse, participants. We all want to get these technologies in the hands of folks who need them, more quickly, and more apace of the rapid technological advances in business and industry."

This is the sixth year of Trident Spectre, which was a ground-up initiative, built out of necessity to seek and attain better technologies to address gaps in capability. But as Mackenzie explains, there is also a need to synchronize and to remember that technology is really just an enabler – that it's about the human-oriented applications of those technologies, not just about the technology itself.

"Forward-deployed service members were sitting in an operations center watching troops in contact, on seven or eight different monitors of multiple systems that were not integrated and therefore not always effective for situational awareness and command and control," said Mackenzie. "They also thought that there might have been better technologies out there that would have helped get the job done and keep people alive."

This lack of integration of equipment can create hazards for end users, the operators utilizing technologies in the field.

"When NSWSA2 was commissioned, it initiated Trident Spectre to rapidly identify, validate, and assist with the transitioning of technologies to the operator, expediting procurement processes," said Mackenzie.

Trident Spectre continues to mature as an experimentation venue, where participants are attacking the technical problems to ultimately find solutions, with the troops on the battlefield in mind.