Army prepares for Network Integration Evaluation 13.1

The Army will continue to refine its tactical network for the battlefield of the future during the fourth iteration of its Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) scheduled for October and November at Fort Bliss, Texas, and White Sands Missile Range, N.M., according to a Sept. 17 story published on the Army's website.

NIE 13.1, which will be conducted by 3,800 Soldiers of the 2nd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, is part of the service's ongoing semi-annual field exercises designed to further integrate and mature the tactical network.

The upcoming evaluation will conduct several program tests for record, additional tests for record from distributed sites and less formally evaluate more than 20 industry and government capabilities, known as systems under evaluation (SUEs), the story said. The incorporation of the SUEs in NIE 13.1 resulted from pairing down more than 140 capability submissions using formal white paper evaluations and assessing potential candidates in government laboratories before the start of NIE integration.

NIE 13.1 also will provide a first glimpse of the Capability Set 14 (CS 14) network baseline, which builds on the CS 13 network architecture that was validated during the previous evaluation earlier this year.

Three organizations -- the Army Test and Evaluation Command, the Brigade Modernization Command and the System of Systems Integration Directorate -- will manage the evaluation.  

Among the key NIE 13.1 network-related goals are:

• Initial evaluations of the CS 14 network baseline.
• Integration and assessment of CS 14 onto heavy vehicle platforms.
• Evaluation of mid-tier radio waveforms.
• Additional network operations convergence.
• Assessments of operations-intelligence application convergence.
• Continued establishment of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance baseline.
• Evaluation of command post capabilities.
• Integration of mission command capabilities.