
For this installment of “JCAT Corner,” we briefly focus on the Naval component of the Joint Combat Assessment Team (JCAT)—the Next-Gen Naval Combat Assessment Team (NCAT)—and some of the issues and challenges it is expected to face in conducting timely aircraft survivability assessments in future peer-level conflicts.
The work of the U.S. Navy, Army, and Air Force JCATs has long relied on physical evidence as part of their aircraft survivability assessments. This attribute is well documented in the assessments the JCATs have conducted over the past 20 years in support of overseas contingency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, where most aircraft losses were the result of small-arms fire and man-portable weapons. The availability and accessibility of the physical evidence from these incidents were largely dependent on the location of the attacks (i.e., over land), the caliber of the munitions or threat used, and the fact that many of the aircraft losses were low-flying fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, which often allowed for the accurate determination of engagement location and with largely intact aircraft.
However, in future peer-level conflicts in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) (and other extremely large commands), it is expected that aircraft survivability assessors may not always be able to rely on these legacy forensic techniques, especially in the early phases of conflict, in which physical damage may be unavailable and the window for providing useful assessments on combat incidents may be small. Accordingly, NCAT is working to develop new tools and techniques to try to address these new and emerging challenges.
The USINDOPACOM’s area of responsibility (AOR) is substantial. It covers more of the globe than any other geographic combat command, contains more than 50% of the world’s population, and includes vast stretches of ocean. Thus, any future assessment of aircraft loss in this AOR could be extremely difficult. The standard JCAT tools—which include physical inspection of the aircraft, crew debriefs, and threat information—may not be possible as U.S. maritime and tactical air assets may be spread out over far-reaching distances. Moreover, advanced threats may prevent the electronic transfer of aircraft loss details or the movement of JCAT assessors to the necessary locations.
Compounding these challenges to the NCAT mission is an increasingly critical time component, which places high demands on assessors to quantify aircraft loss data quickly and allow the Warfighter and others to incorporate appropriate changes to tactics and/or survivability equipment. As seen in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, the warfighting community has relied on JCAT assessments to rapidly adjust to threats.
Compounding these challenges to the NCAT mission is an increasingly critical time component, which places high demands on assessors to quantify aircraft loss data quickly and allow the Warfighter and others to incorporate appropriate changes to tactics and/or survivability equipment. As seen in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, the warfighting community has relied on JCAT assessments to rapidly adjust to threats.

And this adjustment is expected to be even more critical during a peer-level conflict in which warfighting assets will be stressed and commanders will have to accept even higher levels of risk to achieve mission success. In short, NCAT knows that operational commanders and the acquisition community will continue to depend on timely, highly accurate survivability data to balance the likelihood of higher-risk engagements.
NCAT is also exploring new and better methods of leveraging intelligence tools and sources in its assessment practices. In the past, JCAT assessments have often relied on intelligence as just one piece of the overall puzzle. However, for many assessments in future peer-level conflicts—where intelligence information may be the only “evidence” available—it is expected that assessors will need to maintain a much closer interaction with, and monitoring of, the intelligence community and the information it collects and stores on classified networks. It may be that these intelligence products will likely be more accessible than the aircraft or crew. Additionally, because command and control nodes can monitor this same information, they also represent an ideal central location for NCAT assessors to quickly collect available information about the loss event and provide an assessment of the threat environment responsible.
In the end, at the onset of a future peer-level conflict, threat briefings, enemy order of battle, and intelligence collection methods are expected to be the primary arrows in the NCAT quiver, allowing for the proper and timely decomposition of aircraft loss events, as well as the incorporation of the necessary survivability enhancement features to keep U.S. aircraft and aircrews safe.