RAA Liaison Letter – 2025 / 2026 Edition 100 night shift in the Control and Reporting Centre (CRC) as the aircraft come back. Our TCO blinks and looks at the screen harder. Four unknowns, closing from the North-West. For some reason, they haven’t populated as friendly. Odd, they think, as they turn to the Tactical Control Assistant next to them. “Are we up on Link?”, they ask – green gumballs, we should be good, so why – shit. Dial up the ADAFCO. Nothing. Not uncommon for comms to drop, but super untimely. Do we not have the right codes?! Is that why there’s no IFF?! “These guys are getting close, boss – can I radiate?” asks the TCA, reminding the TCO that they are not using their own organic sensor, as the authority to employ is currently held by the ADAFCO. Radiating the sensor will be the electronic equivalent of turning on a lighthouse on a moonless night – all and sundry will know we’re here, and I’ll get my arse kicked. The tracks continue to close… In this close-in environment of ambiguity and uncertainty, vital seconds tick by. What happens next? Does the link picture re-establish alongside the voice comms, with the soothing tones of the ADAFCO listing track numbers for correlation and readback alongside friendly recognition codes auto populating in the system? Or are the unknown tracks a group of hostile UAVs, launched from a small fishing vessel just offshore and cued by low-signature sympathisers or SF elements, tasked with detonating alongside the FDC and the sensor, rendering the system useless and opening a hole in the defences for larger munitions to be launched at the now (un) Defended Asset? For many in the modern joint environment, the instinct is to wait for positive control direction from higher echelons. But in the short-range air defence (SHORAD), especially with a system like NASAMS, reaction windows are too narrow for such delays. If the Tactical Control Officer hesitates, the opportunity to protect their assigned asset may vanish. In this context, a point-defence system’s survival—and the survival of what it protects— depends on a procedural-first approach. Positive control from higher is valuable and is absolutely vital in its ability to force multiply and truly put the “I” in the Integrated Air and Missile Defence system, but it must be an overlay—not the foundation—especially when it comes to the goalkeeper standing on the goal line. The Current Control Paradigm In joint air defence operations, Weapons Engagement Zones (WEZs) are an Airspace Control Measure (ACM) defined to deconflict fires and delineate responsibilities between different weapon systems and control nodes (Joint Chiefs of Staff [JCS], 2014). A Missile Engagement Zone (MEZ) is that portion of airspace where surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems have the primary engagement responsibility (Department of the Army, 2020). In recent practice, many MEZs are managed from the “outside-in,” with ADAFCOs or Air Battle Managers (ABMs) defining the dimensions and then providing positive control over each engagement. This approach offers advantages: coordination of multiple fires (for example, where both longer-range and shorter-range systems have valid firing solutions on the same track), real-time deconfliction between air and missile assets, and assurance to commanders that engagements are deliberate and scarce assets are preserved until their use is absolutely necessary. However, over-centralisation can have downsides in point-defence. Communications delays over a single, degraded, narrowband SATCOM channel, decision-making bottlenecks and single points of failure, and, most importantly, over-reliance on higher headquarters can erode Tactical Control Officer initiative and reduce lethality. In the short-range fight against fast-moving leakers, these delays can be fatal— to both the asset and the crews (Air Land Sea Application Centre [ALSA], 2022). The Procedural-First Approach A procedural-first approach begins with defining the MEZ based on the maximum kinematic energy boundary of the longest-range effector available in the defended asset’s protection scheme. This is a conservative, physics-based definition: it assumes worst-case conditions and ensures that, if a blue aircraft only knows the MEZ boundary, it can make a reasonable assumption that it is less likely to encounter an outbound missile if outside that space. The “big sky” theory becomes less effective the closer one gets to the defended asset. This approach aligns with Joint Publication 3-52, which states that procedural control is the default method of airspace control, with positive control applied “when feasible and appropriate” (JCS, 2014, p. III-8). For NASAMS and other SHORAD systems, procedural ACMs ensure
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