Organizers of the multinational Empire Challenge intelligence sharing demonstration have moved the event’s 2010 headquarters to Fort Huachuca, Ariz., to better reflect conditions in Afghanistan, U.S. Joint Forces Command announced June 18 after concluding a planning conference.

“We looked and Fort Huachuca presented the right operating environment for us. It was a good mix of the kinds of environment they have in Afghanistan – the desert, mountains, valleys, vegetation,” said John Kittle, program manager for Empire Challenge 2010, in a press release posted on the JFCOM website.

The event is scheduled to run form July 26 through Aug. 13. In past years, it was centered at the U.S. Navy’s China Lake test range in California’s Mojave Desert. But after last year’s Empire Challenge, a top JFCOM official ordered planners to tune the event more closely to the networking challenges presented by Afghanistan.

As in past years, U.S. officials will fly sensor-equipped aircraft over test ranges to prove they can share the intelligence information widely. The data will be shared over the U.S. military’s Distributed Common Ground/Surface intelligence networks; with coalition sites in the U.K., Canada and Australia; and with the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency in the Netherlands. Also linked in will be labs at U.S. intelligence agencies, plus JFCOM’s Joint Intelligence Lab and Joint Systems Integration Center in Suffolk, Va.

The event’s command and control network “will closely mirror” that used by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, JFCOM said.