ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. -- A groundbreaking ceremony held May 19, at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, marked the beginning of construction for a new Battle Management Combined Operations Complex.
Representatives from the 461st Air Control Wing, 950th Spectrum Warfare Group, 472nd Electronic Combat Squadron and the Army Corps of Engineers were on hand to lay the groundwork for the multiyear construction phase.
“It took a lot of time, effort and investments to get this building where it's at,” said Col. Adam Shelton, 461st ACW commander. “ACC has put a lot of time into this to make sure that we get it right.”
The $109 million facility will house the 461st ACW, the 950th SWG, the 319th Reconnaissance Wing, the 116th ACW and the 472nd ECS missions. This consolidation of units into a single location is designed to enable Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, a key element of the Air Force's modernization efforts for future warfighting.
“This building will be the operational heartbeat of what we are going to be providing from an electromagnetic spectrum perspective to the warfighter,” said Lt. Col. Laureen James, 950th SWG deputy group commander. “It is the pinnacle hub for delivering electromagnetic spectrum operation assessments to all of the combat Air Forces.”
The BMCOC will house the 728th Battle Management Control Squadron operations center and a headquarters suite, featuring a tactical operations center, rapid deployable payload control element staging and storage, a maintenance operations center, and comprehensive training and academic space for hardware and software testing. These are all supported by raised flooring, a 239-rack server room, standby generators, an uninterruptable power supply, robust utility and communication infrastructure, and mission-critical power redundancies.
“This facility will build on future cooperation with all our stakeholders in future sustained Battlefield Airborne Communications Node aircraft missions supporting the global joint force coalition,” said Lt. Col. Richard Elmore, 472nd ECS commander. “It will be a lot of people working together in a collaborative partnership to ensure that major command mission sets are prioritized and executed.”
During the groundbreaking ceremony, the same shovel from the 1994 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System building groundbreaking was used, a symbol of the transition from legacy systems to emerging technologies as the Air Force moves toward ground-based tactical command and control weapon systems.
The BMCOC will serve as a CONUS theater-agnostic, long-range kill chain integrated targeting cell. It will connect legacy command and control agencies and joint multi-domain affecters, improving 728th BMCS’s technical capability and capacity.
“I can safely say that these three missions will be tightly integrated, whether it's the spectrum side, airborne communications and networking, or to the future of what we're doing from a ground-based battle management perspective,” said Shelton. “This site is going to be the future of where the Air Force plans to fight from.”
The Air Force is establishing the Air Forces Central Battle Management mission at Robins AFB, providing 24-hour distributed battle management command and control to Central Command year-round. The mission integrates dispersed sensors across the region to provide air surveillance.
The BMCOC represents a significant investment in the future of air dominance and underscores Team Robins commitment to supporting the Air Force's evolving mission requirements.
“It's pretty phenomenal - this emphasis and recognition within the Air Force that we have a dedicated space and opportunity to move forward,” said James. “We're definitely going to get to the future faster.”