News

June 11th 2008 - General Dynamics UK Plays Key Role at Coalition Warrior Demonstration

General Dynamics UK will demonstrate the latest capability for allied forces at the 2008 Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstrator (CWID) at Portsdown from 13-20 June, 2008.

CWID 2008 will showcase technologies that are likely to benefit allied operations in Afghanistan in 2011. General Dynamics, a leading UK systems integrator, is the 2008 CWID System of Systems Integrator (SOSI) for the Land Environment.

“CWID provides an environment in which the defence industry and Britain’s military can show and develop key capabilities for the future,” said Jim Ironside, Chief Scientist of General Dynamics UK. “We will be working with the MoD and our colleagues in industry to make CWID 2008 a great success and showcase significant integration of advanced technologies which could provide our forces with important battlefield advantages.”

Specific General Dynamics UK technologies on display at CWID will include:

• Bowman CIP – The latest increment of the tactical communications and data system currently rolling out to the UK Armed Forces, known as BCIP5 (ComBAT, Infrastructure and Platform Battlefield Information Systems Application [BISA]) Also demonstrated will be potential capabilities for future Bowman increments.
• OSIRIS® – a tool derived from the Defence Technology Centre in Data and Information Fusion that enables the harvesting of information from open, unstructured text sources. It allows users to map information that helps in planning for military and civil reconstruction operations.
• BlaDE® – a capability that simulates a virtual environment for test and training purposes that links into General Dynamics UK’s developing innovation centre, The EDGETM UK. BlaDE provides realistic synthetic forces to play in live exercises, enhancing realism and scale.

In addition, General Dynamics UK will lead several experiments to demonstrate interoperability between joint and coalition forces. These include:

• Secure exchange of Blue Force (friendly forces) Situational Awareness with both Coalition and UK units;
• End-to-End ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance);
• Full-motion video across the General Dynamics Bowman System, the British Armed Forces’ communications and data system;
• Linking the Asset Tracking Systems for Helicopters and Ground Assets (known respectively as HeATS and GrATS), now being used in Afghanistan for the first time, with Bowman and other information sources via the network;
• Exchanging logistics information across the Land and Joint environment, to prove the utility of End to End date exchange;
• Linking the Land Tactical Environment to the Enterprise Service Bus using a Web service.