U.S. Navy photo by Doug Davant Larry Taylor and Rob DiCarlo (back turned) of Via Sat, a San Diego based company, demonstrate a mobile vehicle with communication equipment that could be used in natural disaster⁄emergency situations.

“They come ready, get up to speed fast with a day or two of training and are ready to go,“ U.S. Marine Corps Col. Howard Thomas, one of the military's lead members at this year's event, said of the reservists.

“We spend two weeks here for our annual duty. We get here ready to go and the ability to work with Marines and our Army partners is extremely beneficial to us in case we have to go to Iraq or Afghanistan,“ echoed Cmdr. Guy Miller, a Navy Reservist who works for the Navy Operational Support Center in Baltimore as a government civil servant in his full-time job.

This year, a lot of those reservists came from Air Force National Guard units from North Carolina, Delaware, Virginia and Pennsylvania. As well there were six members from the Army National Guard from Ft. Pickett, Va.

They responded to multiple imaginary natural disasters such as a hurricane striking the eastern seaboard while handling fictitious local emergencies ranging from a barge crashing into the U.S. 301 Harry Nice Bridge to a hazardous-waste cleanup along the railroad line in Fredericksburg. The warfighters reacted to the local and national events while engaged in scenarios that demanded skills to fight a war.

Reservists also showed off the latest developments in communication systems, computer programs and other high tech equipment they were testing that would be required to stand up to the rigors of real time and real life wartime events and natural disasters.

They also did it by training across traditional military operational specialties for CWID.

Staff Sgt. Steven Gillatt of the Virginia National Guard, is a human resources “forty-two alpha“ manager in his traditional Army duties but served as a security expert in demonstrating the “SecureD“ device used to protect computer hard drives while away from a laptop. As a civilian, he runs a bookstore near Richmond. For CWID, he had to not only become familiar with all of the intricacies of the vendor-supplied encryption equipment but the mission and cohesive interoperability goals to make the event a success.

Likewise, Staff Sgt. Nathan Balanger of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, whose military specialty was wideband telemetry systems, tested and evaluated a multiple translator on computers in which multiple world languages were simultaneously being worked for applicability while Staff Sgt. Kevin Hand (also of the Pa. ANG) worked with Canadian homeland defense partners while at CWID.

Aside from the military reserve aspect, another interesting fact about the annual demonstration at Dahlgren is that it has grown almost exponentially since it began a decade and a half ago “a small conference room of building 1490,“ according to Dennis Warne, NSWCDD's civilian manager of CWID.

“We had 94 military here this year and 234 badges checked out,“ said Warne. “That's a lot of folks when you considered where we began.“

Also, Dahlgren has become headquarters for the U.S. Army's CWID involvement over the last four years despite the fact that its Signal Corps (the Army branch that would normally deal with computers and communications) home installation (Ft. Gordon) is located near Augusta, Ga.

Dahlgren, the largest U.S. CWID site, has traditionally been the home site for the U.S. Marine Corps, giving spectators the opportunity to see how the Dept. of the Navy's infantry would work in coalition with its sea service partners. On display were USMC equipment such as its regimental command tent that could handle both data and voice over three frequency spectrums (UHF, VHF and HF) for 16 workstations, and an iridium satellite phone used in battlefield situations where a small unit command could have almost instantaneous worldwide communications.

Additionally, Dahlgren was the home location for the U.S. Coast Guard's CWID participation and the USCG's mobile command and control van - an enclosed prototype structure that also features three-frequency availability and can support up to 50 people in cases of natural disasters or emergency situations - was one of the featured high tech “stars“ here. The USCG van will be used, according to Coast Guard officials at CWID, at the upcoming Republican National Convention this year.

CWID is an $11.2 million annual demonstration and “definitely gives the biggest bang for the buck,“ Col. Thomas said. It falls under the U.S. Joint Forces Command and was funded with an additional $1 million for next year.