Military Technology 05/2021

C4ISR Forum MT 5/2021 · 57 In the Royal Air Force, fighter crews arguably got into high-end re- connaissance roles in earnest with the deployment of the RAPTOR high-­ fidelity, dual-band reconnaissance pod for TORNADO in the 1990s. With the service entry of the F-35, what have hitherto been ‘fighter’ pilots are now expected to conduct complex, multi-disciplinary information-gather- ing missions on a routine basis. As a result, pilots now require combined skillsets that would previously have been separate specialties - roles such as navigator, weaponeering, imagery analysis, EW analysis and commu- nications specialist are all now, in effect, amalgamated into one job done by the pilot of a single-seat aircraft. So, training needs to accommodate these new realities, but the infor- mation included in synthetic training systems also has to be collected, interpreted, validated, properly understood, and secured – not just by trainers and trainees, but by the Air Force and its partners in industry. This is, in itself, a significant challenge. “We’ve learned that the data is out there, but it’s all owned by differ- ent people, and the compatibility in the data exchange is quite difficult,” explained Jez Milne, Head of Operational Training at BAE Systems, and a It is always the big-ticket items – invariably bristling with weapons, laden down with interest from potential customers, and arriving with at least one confirmed order for the marketing and business-de- velopment teams to shout about – which tend to attract most atten- tion at major defence trade shows. But none of these systems will perform any kind of useful function without accurate, reliable and properly contextualised intelligence to enable commanders to de- ploy them effectively, and security systems placed around the data sets they ingest and produce. Suitably, then, the majority of keynote speeches, seminar presentations and panel sessions during the 2021 iteration of DSEI in London in September featured significant discus- sion on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) issues – even if the headline topic of each session was more geared towards a platform or technology optimised for other roles. For instance, aircrew training may not appear to be the most ISR- dominated corner of the military-technology field, but even here the dis- cussions around data and security are detailed, acute, and challenging. Air forces have come a long way from when aircraft could be designated ‘fighters’ or ‘reconnaissance,’ and be considered as distinct and separate. With a professional writing background that covers issues as diverse as cricket, music and crime fiction, Angus Batey has strong credibility in aerospace and C4ISR issues as well. He will become a regular contributor to Mönch publications. Angus Batey The Digital Challenge Threat Impact of Perhaps Greater Importance Than Threat Nature

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