The Joint Combat Assessment Team (JCAT) community continued to broaden its collaboration within the operational and acquisition communities through several efforts over the first half of 2025. These efforts were in conjunction with its goal to ensure JCAT can provide value-driven assessments for future potential conflicts and be able to operate in a myriad of potential combat environments.
In February, members of the Navy Reserve Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) China Lake hosted members of the NR NAWCAD North Island Fleet Readiness Center detachment to conduct joint JCAT and Forward Deployed Combat Repair (FDCR) training at the Weapons Survivability Laboratory (WSL) aircraft boneyard facility. The FDCR mission is closely aligned with Aircraft Battle Damage Repair (ABDR) efforts and would be used in theater to conduct combat-related repairs along with depot artisans. As the FDCR mission would be working to return aircraft to the fight after battle damage, there is a natural relationship between the JCAT and FDCR mission sets, where JCAT would lead the initial physical forensic analysis, followed by FDCR’s more detailed, engineering-driven activities.
The February cross-training at China Lake focused on the ability of FDCR members to conduct JCAT assessments in lieu of JCAT assessors if the aircraft was delivered to the FDCR site before JCAT could conduct its assessment. This scenario would be probable in a large area of operation, such as the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, where time-distance and adversarial anti-access/area denial challenges would exist. The event was valuable for both communities and was leveraged in the Talisman Sabre 2025 exercise, where JCAT and FDCR partnered in executing theater wide operations.
Following the success of the cross-training, JCAT held its annual Phase 2 training course at NAWS China Lake. Students from the U.S. Navy Reserve Program, U.S. Army Aircraft Shoot Down Assessment Team, U.S. Air Force ABDR teams, and U.S. Marine Corps participated in several field training exercise events to collect and analyze threat damage from exhibits in the WSL boneyard in both day and night conditions using forensic principles to inform combatant commanders and the survivability community about threats to multiple types of combat aircraft.
This year’s live fire event provided students with a highly relevant scenario involving an unmanned aircraft system surrogate threat. Students observed several events, one that demonstrated threat weapons effects employed against Navy tactical air (TACAIR) maritime aircraft. Using TACAIR and rotary exhibits, an enhanced capstone project event was executed, including a mock intel brief, a mission debrief from the aircrew, and simulated assessment briefs to squadron commanding officers, ensuring the Phase 2 students could confidently execute a real-world assessment.
In conclusion, the successes of the first half of 2025 are laying the groundwork for follow-on JCAT efforts, which will include a significant tactics, techniques, and procedures update for JCAT advanced concepts of operations and the unitization of the TTPs at two large-force exercises.
