The Common Operational Picture product line (COP PL) of Offshore Systems International Ltd. (OSIL), North Vancouver BC, will be one of the international trials at the Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (CWID) scheduled for June at nearly 30 sites around the globe.

CWID is an annual exercise hosted by the US military Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with 26 coalition countries participating, including diverse military services and government agencies.

According to OSIL, CWID participants will conduct 50 interoperability trials to formally assess technologies for their ability to solve interoperability challenges facing Joint, Coalition, Homeland Security (HLS) and Homeland Defence (HLD) operations.

This year’s trials are focused on solutions to address the global war on terrorism that can be purchased and deployed within 18 months of the exercise.

Sponsored by the Joint Intelligence Information Management (J2IM) Division of the Canadian Department of National Defence, OSIL's COP PL will be evaluated on the international stage in both a warfighter and geospatial intelligence context.

A core objective of CWID for the warfighter is to enhance interoperable situational awareness capabilities among coalition forces. COP PL will be tested in nearly 100 different coalition and joint force warfighting scenarios over 10 days of assessment.

It will be formally evaluated against situational awareness objectives by 13 warfighter assessors representing all forces (navy, air force, land force, marines, special forces, intelligence analysts), and at over 10 locations in Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand.

Formal after-action reports on the product line’s performance will be submitted to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and receive broad circulation to all 26 participating countries.

“The military scenarios are set up to be as realistic as possible,” OSIL President and CEO John Jacobson says. “Warfighters and intelligence analysts will use the technology as they would if the events were happening in real-time. Throughout CWID, there will be intensive interaction with our COP products internationally to assess their capability.”

Test sites include the host combatant command site for the exercise, US Northern Command at Colorado Springs CO, the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren VA, the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) in San Diego CA, and the Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom AFB, Massachusetts.

COP PL is designated as one of the main interoperability trials at each of these venues. The software will be accessible to all 26 countries and multi-agency participants over a secure, classified CWID network hosted at the Canadian Forces Experimentation Centre near Ottawa.

With map, image and tactical display capabilities, the tools will allow intelligence analysts, warfighters, military operators, battle commanders and selected government departments to view simultaneously, in near real-time, geospatial and tactical situational awareness data from many different sources in a single picture.

“It’s like going to CNN to get the latest, up-to-the-minute report of the news as it unfolds,” Jacobson says. “A battalion commander in Canada, a ship’s captain in Australia, and a geospatial analyst at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency could all be sharing information with each other and at the same time, via the secret web, looking at the exact same picture of what is occurring in the field by using our COP technology."

The benefit is superior information for decision-making in mission planning and execution,” he adds.

Another key capability of OSIL’s COP PL is the ability to provide a live display of all red and blue force positions as well as their operations.