Transforming To Meet the Need for Theater Deployable Communications

The 435th Communications Operations Group at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, is the U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa’s (USAFE’s) only combat communications and systems support for NATO and the U.S. European and African commands, providing command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) for combat environments. 

The group provides theater deployable communications, expeditionary airfield system assets, specialized maintenance, airfield and navigational aids, weather systems, and operation and maintenance of the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), the Global Command and Control System, the Theater Battle Management Core Systems and various ISR networks across the USAFE area of responsibility.

To meet the challenges of the complex operating environment, the 435th Communications Operations Group and its three squadrons are fundamentally changing, explained Col. John “JJ” Riester, outgoing 435th Air and Space Communications Group commander. The leader spoke to SIGNAL Media before he left Europe to become the J6 for the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Liberty, North Carolina.

The units are all part of the 435th Air Ground Operations Wing at Ramstein, which provides expeditionary airfield operations and communications, integrates joint fires and weather intelligence across the full spectrum of conflict, and offers theater-wide combat support and training.

As of June 27, the group, which was the 435th Air and Space Communications Group, has been redesignated as the 435th Communications Operations Group. This significant transformation brings the group and the three squadrons squarely into operations and under one commander, Col. Riester stated.

“Why that is so powerful is that you essentially have every XCOMM [expeditionary communications] discipline under the unity of one 06-commander,” the colonel stated. “So, if it is engineering and installations, tactical communications, or deployed JWICS, or the routing and switching that we need to do with BlackNet, having those three entities under one commander allows us to integrate those capabilities together seamlessly and at the speed of operational need.”

The move streamlines decision-making and avoids the previous set-up of having to go to different agencies to provide their capabilities, Col. Riester continued. “It is all under one umbrella, and having unity of command, unity of effort will allow us in this theater specifically to react quickly and put out the necessary capabilities at a time and a place of our choosing.”

As a so-called “COG,” the communications operations group—akin to its sister cyber operations groups, like the 688th Cyberspace Wing in San Antonio—will shift its organizational culture to be more focused on operations, the colonel explained. They will focus operationally on how to employ traditional signal and communications.

“[It is about how we] integrate that into and stitch the battlefield together with the multiple waveforms that we can manipulate,” he said. “That is very powerful as we change our culture from more of a support entity to now a ‘no kidding’ operational entity in a very sophisticated and complicated integrated air defense that our adversaries possess.”

The group’s shift also aligns itself more closely to support the U.S. Air Force’s continued, multiyear transformation into agile combat employment (ACE), where the service sends out smaller, more agile teams of airmen, technology and aircraft that are equipped to survive and move quickly in a contested, near-peer environment. 

The to-do list that Col. Riester leaves his successor involves furthering the group’s operational abilities under a contested environment. This would include advances in how they sense the spectrum, the ability to manipulate different waveforms, as well as how they understand an adversary’s intent and abilities against U.S. waveforms, he said.

In addition to the group’s own evolution, each of the three squadrons—1st Air and Space Communications Operations Squadron (1st ACOS), 1st Combat Communications Squadron and 1st Communications Maintenance Squadron—is shifting. 

Over the last two years under its commander, Lt. Col. Phillip Alvarez, 1st ACOS has adroitly advanced BlackNet, the groundbreaking transport layer engineered for a dispersed, contested environment.

BlackNet integrates an abundance of communications choices such as military satellite communications, Starlink, fiber optics, commercial cellular and Ethernet connections, and command and control across different enclaves. And while the Air Force’s BlackNet that has supported JWICS is nothing new, how the 1st ACOS is integrating it into other enclaves—in addition to JWICS for different mission environments—is cutting-edge. The squadron is applying it to multiple ISR systems across the theater in Europe and Africa. 

“We have been able to extend any enclave—SIPR [Secure Internet Protocol Router Network], NIPR [Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network], special access, coalition, it doesn’t matter,”Col. Alvarez said. “If you want it, we can provide it. It is no problem.”

Now, Maj. Daniel Shockley has taken the lead of the squadron. With his Air Force intelligence community experience, efforts in deployable communications for the Air Force Special Operations Command and recent Air Command and Staff College cyber and operations education, he will advance BlackNet, the Global Command and Control System and other systems further. 

“The JWICS enterprise only stood up in 2017, so it is a relatively new enterprise compared to some of the other networks,” Maj. Shockley said. “And under Col. Alvarez, they’ve done a lot of progression and a lot of big leaps. And I hope that I can capture that momentum and continue it.”

He will work on continuing the “deep ties” with allies in the theater, making sure that interoperability of all forces can occur and do so rapidly. They will ensure forces on all sides of the partnership are properly trained and equipped so interagency or partnerships can quickly interact or communicate. 

“We are close to the line, so there is little room for error,” Maj. Shockley stated. “We have ongoing support operations for the warfighter and national decision-makers. And if our network has to go down, it’s not OK. There are planes in the air or folks on the ground who need access to this information in a timely manner. Being in the European area of responsibility with everything going on right now, you [definitely have to be] more attentive to certain issues and collaborate with our partner nations. It definitely requires you to bring your ‘A game.’”

And while there is “a big spotlight” on the European theater, maintaining stability in Africa is also a priority. The 1st ACOS will continue to work with African partners and make sure U.S. military teams operating there are properly supported. “I’m so fortunate to work in a squadron that has such a large breadth,” he said. “USAFE has invested in the squadron and has developed the teams to a point where they can provide a lot of capability.” 

Maj. Shockley said he would continue to support the greater Air Force’s application of its networks—including BlackNet—to other major commands, such as the Pacific Air Forces. “Because the squadron is as far forward as you can get, and it has that close connection with the customers, we’ve learned and adapted and started developing capabilities that now bigger Air Force is looking at and saying, ‘Yes, we need to implement this across the entire Air Force.’” 

Meanwhile, the 1st Communications Maintenance Squadron at Kapaun Air Station near Ramstein is in the process of transforming into an engineering and installation squadron, explained Maj. Caleb Mays, the squadron’s commander. 

For USAFE, the squadron is responsible for delivering specialized communications capabilities, such as theater-related electromagnetic spectrum operations, rapid network restoration, network extensions and optimization operations. “Think big installation projects,” Maj. Mays said. “How the data moves, that is what we take care of, so we are talking about fiber optics. We are doing copper and radio waves. We are putting cable in the ground. Think permanent; we are not doing temporary installations. That is what engineering and installation brings to the fight.” 

The transformation into an engineering and installation unit will require the squadron to shift some of its processes regarding training, quality assurance and project management and add personnel. 

“There’s an aspect of growth in that,” he said. Some of the airmen already receive their engineering and installation training—including cable, antenna, network, tower climbing and radio instruction—from the Pennsylvania Army National Guard’s Lightning Force Academy at Fort Indiantown Gap. Maj. Mays expects to send airmen to the academy more frequently than before once they are fully an engineering and installation squadron.

What will not change is the squadron’s need to work with allies and partners, especially across NATO, to provide crucial long-term communication capabilities. Installation in the AOR requires navigating through other countries’ processes and bureaucracies, with a wide geographic range from the North and South and across to NATO’s eastern flank. 

“It is certainly further east from Estonia down to Romania, down to folks in Greece. It’s all along the edge,” the major stated. “Geographically, it can be challenging right now, particularly in the NATO countries,” he stated. “When we talk about getting dig permits, we are working with the host countries. We respect them, and we are not just at peace with them but also in alliance with them, and they have processes too. We are not going to step on their toes.”

Another emerging capability in which the squadron is expanding is radio frequency (RF) identification. According to the major, they are pushing the bounds of RF identification to know what jamming they are seeing from a radio perspective. “It is being able to say, yes, that is coming from a signal emitter over there,” he explained. 

Maj. Mays is especially proud of the squadron’s short-notice missions, whether to restore communications after a cable cut or a fiber degradation. “I’m proud of the team for their rapid-response capability and their ability to do [those types of installations]. I’m proud of the quality that we produce. We deployed to Africa recently, a team of four airmen, and they got to do a project start to finish, to the tee, by the book, on how it should be, and the quality was top notch.” 

Meanwhile, the 1st Combat Communications Squadron has undergone a complete overhaul. They purpose-built their mission set and the equipment that is now required. The squadron’s commander, Lt. Col. Melanie Strodtman, who, before June, was the director of its operations, has had to help balance the squadron’s mission set while undergoing the transformation, which, as busy as it has been, “really takes a full team of support personnel,” she said. “We have tried to make sure that our equipment and our personnel and the mindset that they carry into operations is forward-looking and responsive to the changes that are in the environment.”

The squadron’s customers across USAFE, NATO and the two U.S. combatant commands need more agility. “We’ve got a lot more movement as we’re trying to align to the Air Force’s ACE concept,” Col. Strodtman noted. “There’s a lot of demand for missions to be more mobile and dispersed, not as tethered to one fixed location. At the same time, you have increasing adversary capabilities and threats that we need to make sure that we are also ready to respond to so that we can continue executing the mission, even as we encounter things like spectrum interference, whether it is malicious or just environmental.”

Over the last year, the 1st Combat Communications Squadron has worked to develop and codify a more mobile digital infrastructure and a unit-type code for equipment packages. They have configured small communications packages with power solutions that can be placed in a vehicle or other platform meant to be more agile and meet all kinds of different environments and mission requirements. 

“There’s been a lot of work in terms of taking technology that we have already had and scaling it to be more agile and putting it together in a way that you can use that as a template to meet a variety of diverse missions without having to specify the type of operation,” Col. Strodtman explained. “It is a capability that you can take off the shelf and support whatever mobile type of operation that you need for whatever your customer is demanding.”

The 1st Combat Communications Squadron was a big achievement to formalize the agile concepts and meet the increased demand, Col. Strodtman said. And that formalization will allow other units to replicate that in other theaters, such as in the Indo-Pacific.

It is the form factor that has improved in the packages, the commander continued. They did not necessarily include different technology. The squadron also focused on how the equipment can scale from providing capability for a very small team all the way up to providing combat communications in a new space for hundreds of users. 

“I think we’re finding more and more that the demand is for smaller packages rather than those fully established airbase capabilities,” Col. Strodtman said. That’s probably the biggest thing that I’m seeing. It is not that we are having to buy so many new technologies as understanding how we need to be more agile to support the smaller teams that need communication support.”

The HEAVY RAIN exercise, in particular, was crucial to the squadron’s evolution. Held in Grostenquin, France, in November 2023, the biennial USAFE-led command and control exercise integrates communicators, operators and aggressors from joint forces in contested environment conditions. 

“HEAVY RAIN was one of our big accomplishments as a squadron, executing in a contested communications [environment] that was planned at the squadron level, with both joint and combined multinational participants,” Col. Strodtman noted. “We really pulled in our partners with the goal of getting realistic communications exercise practice that allowed our airmen to respond to complex scenarios in the environment, trying to test their ability to continue providing services in a degraded or contested space. And bringing in our partners was what made it incredibly valuable.”