Factsheet: Ex Forging Sabre 2023 – Multi-Domain Smart Warfighting

Exercise Forging Sabre 2023 (XFS23) is a Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) integrated sense and strike exercise involving more than 1000 personnel from across the SAF and Defence Technology Community. It will include a suite of sense and strike assets from the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) and the Singapore Army. Conducted from 11 to 30 September at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, US, the SAF is able to conduct large-scale and realistic training in a vast training area with an airspace more than 20 times the size of Singapore.

Conducted biennially, this year's exercise is the ninth instalment in a series that began in 2005. XFS23 allows our soldiers to hone their competencies and enables the SAF to validate the capabilities of our assets and units in complex and realistic training scenarios so as to maintain high-levels of operational readiness for Singapore's defence. This year's exercise also features the inaugural participation of the Digital and Intelligence Service (DIS) as a full-fledged Service following its inauguration in 2022, effectively adding to the SAF's Sense-Strike capability.

Working together as an integrated and technologically advanced fighting force, the SAF is able to sharpen our integrated sense and strike capabilities and validate the SAF's abilities to conduct multi-domain smart warfighting.

Sensors and Strikers Across Domains

The suite of aerial and ground sensors from the RSAF and the Army scan the battlefield to collect timely and accurate intelligence of enemy forces to provide the integrated command post with a comprehensive real-time picture of the battlefield. The RSAF's Heron 1 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) provides a bird's eye view of the battlefield, while multiple micro-UAVs employed by the RSAF and the Army operate at lower altitudes to track specific targets at closer range. Commando and STrike ObserveRs Mission (STORM) teams operate on the ground to provide another source of valuable intelligence to further the SAF's mission.

The DIS employs digital capabilities and intelligence analysis to enhance the SAF's battlefield situational awareness using the information that has been gathered from a range of sensors and integrated at the command post. Using this analysis, the SAF can then assess and deploy the appropriate strike assets and weapons from air and land forces against the identified targets. On the ground, the Army's High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) can fire inertial guided and Global Positioning System-aided rockets to destroy enemy targets up to 70km away. From the air, the AH-64D Apache attack helicopters are able to eliminate targets across a wide area of operations with its rockets. The F-15SG and F-16C/D fighters can employ precision munitions to swiftly demolish multiple targets in a single pass, with bomb guidance provided through cooperative lasing by Heron 1 UAVs in the air and Commando and STORM teams on the ground. The upgraded F-16s, with their new and advanced capabilities, are able to both track and engage targets at longer distances. The RSAF's A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) extends the airborne endurance of fighter aircraft through its refuelling capabilities, and is now equipped with Automatic Air-To-Air Refuelling capabilities that optimise the refuelling rate. The F-15SG and F-16C/D fighters, as well as the AH-64D, will also conduct a joint live-firing with the HIMARS on static and moving targets at XFS23.

These capabilities allow the SAF to optimise its suite of sensors and strikers in the battlefield, allowing for their effective employment across multiple domains to secure a swift and decisive victory.

Smart Warfighting

Technology continues to be a key enabler and force multiplier for the SAF to fight "smarter" as a networked and technologically advanced fighting force. Defence scientists and engineers from the Defence Technology Community design, develop and integrate technology capabilities for the SAF. Using data analytics, artificial intelligence, unmanned vehicles and robotics, Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) engineers and technologists work closely with the SAF to upgrade warfighting platforms and systems with innovative features to enable the SAF to "see further, sense faster and strike smarter". During the exercise, they trial and validate new technologies and system capabilities on the field, while delivering mid-exercise adjustments and system tweaks based on real-time feedback. This allows an agile Ops-Tech partnership between the SAF and DSTA, ensuring a seamless integration of advanced technology in the SAF's operations and capabilities

One such example is the Command and Control Information System (CCIS), which the SAF developed together with DSTA. The CCIS was first deployed in the command post during XFS21 to realise the SAF's vision of a Smart Command Post. It leverages technologies such as data analytics and artificial intelligence, and weapon-to-target matching algorithms, to generate warfighting solutions and allow commanders to make informed and prompt decisions to eliminate threats quickly and accurately. Since then, the CCIS has undergone significant upgrades that allow the SAF to work in a more integrated, efficient, and agile manner, reducing the risk of collateral damage and increasing the efficiency of strike missions. This agile and rapid development approach enables the SAF to keep up with the rapidly changing warfighting landscape and technology through continual upgrades that ensure the CCIS' relevance and usefulness to the SAF for years to come.

Main upgrades to the CCIS include an AI algorithm that factors real-time information to provide mission commanders with visual zones where strikes could be conducted to significantly limit collateral damage; improvements in estimating the extent of collateral damage; and a collaboration module within the CCIS to enable rapid information sharing amongst all users (e.g. locations and descriptions of areas of interest), allowing missions to be executed in a highly efficient and calibrated manner.

The CCIS is also now equipped with the ability to provide multiple target solutioning, proposing warfighting solutions that optimise available strike assets to take out multiple targets in a single mission. It has also been enhanced with an inbuilt live weather module to allow for weather conditions to be considered in the proposed solutioning, a 3D Airspace Analysis Module highlighting potential flight path conflicts between flying platforms, as well as a 3D Weapon Safety Zone module to provide mission commanders with greater situational awareness of the pathway of strike weapons within the airspace to avoid collateral damage.

CCIS' Machine Learning Module – Computer Vision Algorithms. To enhance the SAF's sensing capabilities, the DIS co-develops Computer Vision (CV) algorithms with the Defence Technology Community and works closely with the RSAF and Army to integrate the improved CV models into the command post's systems, such as the CCIS' Intelligence Analysis System (IAS). The CV models allow the IAS to automatically detect and classify objects of interest (OOIs) from the video feed of the Heron 1 UAV. With the automation of the search process for OOIs and a comprehensive suite of capabilities^[1], the IAS alleviates the cognitive workload on battle staff, intelligence analysts and operational users, and enables Mission Commanders to plan and execute accurate and deadly strike missions while minimising risks of collateral damage. This contributes to better efficiency and precision of the SAF's operations overall. In other applications, the CV technology has also been introduced as part of the Army's urban surveillance trials at XFS23. The CV models will enable unmanned systems used by ground forces to autonomously detect, identify, and locate urban targets, thereby allowing the SAF to sense and strike faster.

CCIS' Combat Management Module. A Smart Combat Management System (SCMS) for UAVs, linking the command post and the Heron 1 Ground Control Stations, has also been incorporated into the CCIS to automatically plan the deployment of UAVs for mission requirements, and maintain oversight on the sensors' deployment to sustain presence in the battlefield. Through the IAS and the SCMS, location pins (cues) can also be dropped on detected targets, which form crucial shared information that other users of the integrated CCIS can access to carry out their mission objectives.

Ops-Tech Partnership and Experimentation

To ensure that the SAF continues to remain agile and keep up with global developments in military concepts and technology, it needs to constantly test and validate new warfighting concepts. The SAF, in partnership with DSTA, also leverages XFS23 to experiment with new warfighting concepts.

The Army and DSTA will be trialling both aerial and ground unmanned systems to further develop envisaged operational concepts for faster sense-making. This includes trialling the use of multiple micro-UAVs, centrally controlled by a single operator, to conduct simultaneous surveillance. This enables ground troops to have real-time situational awareness and quicker intelligence collection of crucial information such as the location of targets. The Army will also trial an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV), which can sustain autonomous urban indoor exploration over a longer duration.

The RSAF is also working with DSTA to conduct drone swarm experiments, where smaller drones conduct surveillance and track targets at a closer range and lower altitude, thus allowing for more accurate intelligence to be gathered for strike operations. The experiment shows how the swarm is also able to confirm the presence of specific targets under foliage that may have been out of sight of the Heron 1 which operates at a higher altitude, which subsequently results in a successful strike on the target. These experimental capabilities allow the SAF's strike assets to destroy identified targets swiftly and decisively.

Through the utilisation of the RSAF's Mobile Imagery Intelligence Dissemination System, drone feeds confirming the demolishing of the targets are disseminated real-time to the command post, closing the sensor-to-shooter loop.

^[1] The IAS is equipped with features such as past travel history and look-ahead, thermal signature of targets picked up through the IR feed, heat maps, multiple-feed viewing, and 3D mapping of target destruction.

Annex A to XFS23 Fact Sheet – Flowchart for Integrated CCIS

More Resources

Animagraphic: Ex Forging Sabre 2023