If the area can not be seen by the Wide Area Surveillance Thermal Imager cameras, it is up to the sector defenders to find out what has triggered the alarm. If it is determined that the alarm was tripped by an aggressor, the appropriate action follows to defend the base and its assets. Before the implementation of the FPC2, operators inside the CDOC would have to look at a wall map and rely on memory or a defender's description of the area which has been penetrated. The wall maps had plastic overlays marking previous incidents, sensor placements, grid coordinates and much more information to aid in defining the best course of action for each incident. With the FPC2, which was used for the first time in August at Joint Expeditionary Forces Experiment '99, the maps, with all of the overlays, are in the computer.
Every layer adds more information, making it difficult to read.
With the computer system, layers can be added or taken away with the click of a mouse, depending on what information is needed. By clicking on different locations on the map, digital pictures of the some of the areas are available, canceling the need to go by memory. Operators can also use the FPC2 as a lessons-learned tool. They can plot aggressor incidents as they are called in, showing history of the events in the different areas. Everything, or just certain parts on the maps, can then be sent to other command and control operations as they need it.