Joint Blue Force Situaltional Awareness Tracks
Friendly Forces in a Number of Conflicts

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (1/18/06) -- Helping alleviate the risk of friendly fire and increasing integrated, interoperable, friendly-force tracking among a number of forces is the number one priority of Joint Blue Force Situational Awareness (JBFSA).

This multiforce tracking capability is a mission area supported by The Aerospace Corporation's Space Operations, Requirements and Technology Group, or SORT, located in Colorado Springs, Colo., as well as other Aerospace departments across the country. Working with the Department of Defense, Aerospace is helping to integrate a host of friendly-force tracking systems used in a variety of missions and conflicts.

Once completed, the Blue Force Situational Awareness system will provide integrated, unified identification, location, intent, and status information about all allied or “blue” forces to the system's users.

The JBFSA capability has come a long way in a short time to support critical efforts such as the war on terror, where JBFSA is playing a major role. Aerospace senior project engineers have spent significant time working on various portions of JBFSA since developing this capability became a top priority for the military in 2003.

As of January 2006, 11 disconnected tracking systems, ranging from commercial to U.S. military to foreign-developed systems, have been integrated into a comprehensive Joint/Coalition Blue Force Situational Awareness capability. This capability presents an integrated picture of friendly-force position, status, and intent across the battlespace to commanders and users at strategic, operational and tactical levels.

The capability has also been successfully transitioned into the Army’s JBFSA Mission Management Center. Through this capability, warfighters in Iraq now have improved awareness of friendly forces around them. Use of the system has resulted in several documented incidents where friendly fire was avoided.

This same capability has supported several domestic operations for U.S. Northern Command, including the last presidential inauguration and rescue and relief efforts following hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Aerospace employees are currently working to integrate additional force tracking systems into the capability, including those used by Army and civilian logistics units, civil agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Agency, and allied forces including the United Kingdom and NATO.

The Aerospace Corporation, with headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., is an independent, nonprofit company that provides objective technical analyses and assessments for national security space programs and selected civil and commercial space programs in the national interest.