For two weeks, from 1 to 12 March 2010, the servicemen from the German 610th Signal Battalion, Polish 100th Signal Battalion, Headquarters of the Command Support Brigade Headquarters (CSB) and Headquarters Multinational Corps Northeast (HQ MNC NE) were testing innovative solutions within the Communication Information Systems (CIS) area.
The annual Compact Yellow exercise was held at the Baltic Barracks. The main aim of it was to conduct a great number of technical tests and to train the personnel from the Battalions, the CSB Headquarters and the Corps Headquarters. “The architecture of the Communication Information Systems (CIS) organised in this particular shape and range has been tested for the first time,” said Lieutenant Colonel Krystyn Bagan, who was the Officer of Primary Responsibility for this exercise.
All in all, there were around 60 servicemen taking part in the exercise. Several transmission shelters, satellite dishes, Remus Cabins and transmission shelters of DAN-BW (Deployable Access Network - Bundeswehr) were located at the Pomeranian Square. It was purely technical training with no tactical background or scenario. There were four command posts created: two at the corps level and two at the divisional level, which were joined via a common Communication Information System.
It was a very important exercise for all units involved. “We have received a lot of new material this year and it is a very good opportunity for us to test it in the field with our partnering Polish 100th Signal Battalion,” said 1st Lieutenant Thorsten Neff, a platoon commander from the German 610th Brigade.
“We have tested several technical solutions, one of them was the ‘everything over IP’ concept, according to which all services like voice and data transfer and videoconferences are transmitted with the use of the Internet Protocol (IP),” Lieutenant Colonel Bagan said. “We also tested our new Blade servers and new software,” he continued. “The most important for this exercise were the new radio shelters from the 100th Battalion; they offer 34 Mbit bandwidth transmission, which makes us very flexible,” pointed out 1st Lieutenant Neff. He also put an emphasis on the new Blade servers explaining the practical importance of them: “If one computer goes down, all the work can be done by another computer. This makes us very independent. For instance, if we set up an e-mail system and one of e-mail computers goes down, the user will never notice it because the other computer takes over the task automatically”. Another important service tested during Compact Yellow was “the Quality of Service”, which refers to the prioritization of tasks. “Services like videoconferences and voice transmission have the priority over data transmission so that they are not interrupted if, for example, someone sends an email with a large appendix”, Lieutenant Colonel Bagan explained.
After two weeks of training, the Compact Yellow exercise finished on Friday, 12 March. “We have managed to conduct all tests successfully,” Lieutenant Colonel Bagan assessed the exercise. “It was a very effective and needed exercise, which provides opportunity to access the new technology, get familiar with modern equipment and, later on, to use it in the field,” admitted the Commander of the 100th Signal Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Marian Matoszka.
