Implementation of network-centric warfare at the tactical level has been flawed. Typifying incompatibilities is the software in the Navy’s F-14D which was unable to synch with Air Force electronic reconnaissance aircraft over targets in Iraq. A systems approach and coevolution of capabilities are needed now.
With all the clamor about network-centric warfare (NCW) and the U.S. Navy's evolving ForceNet, one would think the Navy is moving rapidly toward a well thought out, connected force with seamless data paths that reach from sensors, through appropriate command and control, to our wide array of available weapons. At least in the near term, this is not the case. The Navy has failed to make significant progress in applying network-centric warfare concepts to tactical weapons and sensors that are deployed or under development. This is particularly true in naval aviation, where we continue systems acquisition and development in the same platform-centric manner.
To implement network-centric warfare effectively and connect our tactical forces intelligently, we must reorganize. Each mission-area kill-chain sequence—detect, decide, attack, assess—must be examined to determine information exchange requirements among all platforms contributing to that mission area. The reorganization must link our operators to the technical experts who will develop and connect our systems. Only then can we implement the coevolution of systems, organization, and doctrine that will allow us to reap the benefits of network-centric warfare.
Conceptually, the Navy has embraced NCW. The Naval Transformation Roadmap describes tomorrow's Navy-Marine Corps team as "A Networked, Jointly Integrated, Sea-Based Power Projection Force." To implement NCW and add emphasis to the human element, the Navy's ForceNet concept connects "sensors, networks, weapons, decision aids and warriors from seabed to space," providing accelerated "speed and accuracy of decisions across (the) spectrum of command." Numerous efforts are under way in the Navy to implement NCW and ForceNet, including introduction and exploitation of ship-based systems, such as IT-21. While these primarily Web-based efforts significantly have improved staff work and operations on our surface platforms, they include little connectivity to aviation assets.
In the Navy, the vaunted common operational picture displayed on Global Command and Control System-Maritime, and through which force self-synchronization is supposed to occur, takes only a one-way passive feed from tactical data links. Information available in the common operational picture from other sources is not "pushed" automatically and cannot be even digitally transmitted to tactical platforms via data link. Without this information push, crucial tactical information is not supplied to the platforms with the sensors and weapons that enable target engagement unless it is passed by voice. The organizations implementing NCW have left large gaps that prevent naval NCW from achieving its promise.
The developing joint fires network (JFN) is another major NCW effort designed to address critical operational deficiencies in time-sensitive targeting/time-critical strike against rapidly relocatable targets. Although JFN has demonstrated significant improvements in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance management and integration with targeting, command, and control functions aboard ship, it has limited ability to provide engagement information to the weapon systems that can engage relocatable targets rapidly.
Navy experimentation efforts, led by the Naval Warfare Development Command, have focused on NCW and time-sensitive targeting/time-critical strike. Fleet battle experiments were a development and proving ground for the JFN concept and demonstrated sufficient warfighting advantages that the current JFN structure was rushed to deployment. The experiments have improved our understanding of how to accelerate time-sensitive targeting/time-critical strike, but they have been weak on integrating with actual weapon systems. During Fleet Battle Experiment India, target packages were transmitted to airborne strike fighter aircraft via the infrequently carried AN/AWW-13 Walleye data link pod. The Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center argued strongly to connect all aircraft, not just the small minority that would be carrying pods and be in direct line of sight (LOS) to JFN ships. The center argued that future experimentation needed to link JFN to naval aviation's primary future data link with beyond-LOS capability: Link 16. Unfortunately, the Naval Warfare Development Command did not place high priority on integrating Link 16. Fleet Battle Experiment Juliet (2002) did not integrate JFN and Link 16; Fleet Battle Experiment Kilo (2003) demonstrated a connection with the software of only a single platform, the E-2 experimental van.
A fallacy in naval NCW implementation has been acceptance of the precept that the information age has made distance less relevant. This may be true in the static world of ground-based systems connected to fiber-optic cable, but in a world of hundreds of rapidly maneuvering tactical platforms with limited communications apertures, it is not. For at least another decade, small data pipes combined with huge amounts of information derived from tactical sensors will dictate where tactical decisions are made. To implement near-term NCW, we must ensure bandwidth to and from our tactical platforms optimally supports our kill chains.
Here, a second NCW fallacy comes into play: the belief that free-flowing information across the network will produce the optimum result. In large, complex, time-sensitive military engagements, this is flat wrong. Decision makers require focus. Winning a tactical engagement requires completing the kill chain faster than the enemy. Extraneous or poorly integrated information that confuses or delays the decision process can be lethal to friendly forces. War games have demonstrated that focused, "predigested" information delivered in the appropriate format to decentralized decision makers increases combat power. Ensuring our networks transmit the information required for combat should be the focus of NCW efforts.
The Link 16 Connection
Navy leaders understand the need to link naval aviation to the network. To achieve this goal, naval aviation's focus has been on enabling effective tactical networks by procuring systems such as the Multifunctional Information Distribution System and Link 16. Relying on Link 16 makes tremendous sense. It is a nodeless, multifunctional, secure, jam-resistant tactical data link. These critical features will allow NCW operations even over an opponent's homeland, and are in keeping with another key DoD transformation guidance principle, "Protect information systems from attack."
Link 16 has been in development for decades and is now reaching the fleet and the joint world in large numbers. This year there will be well more than a thousand Link 16 terminals in the four services, and the number will climb to 2,359 by 2005. F/A-18 variants alone should account for 274 of the deployed terminals in 2005. By using Link 16 as the primary NCW path to tactical platforms, the Navy enables interoperability with the numerous joint and multinational platforms scheduled to acquire Link 16. Other solutions would be more costly, result in reduced interoperability, and be in conflict with DoD published direction to use Link 16 as the "primary tactical data link."
Link 16 capacity is an issue. Currently, terminal capacity is approximately 54 kilobytes per second using normal data-packing structures, or double that with a reduced antijam margin. It is important to understand that Link 16 uses a stacked net structure with units performing different functions on different nets at different times (see Figure 1). This allows increased effective bandwidth for the force while not sending every bit of information passed over Link 16 to every unit. Optimizing platform net use by mission, or even mission phase, can ensure high-priority information is available to the war fighter when needed. Planned Link 16 improvements will increase efficiency and throughput.
Link 16 uses a highly defined and fairly rigid message format. Although message standards are available to support virtually every required tactical NCW function, the process of changing the standards is complex and limits flexibility to some extent. The advantage of this standardization is that the Navy's NCW network, once tied to Link 16, will be able to connect to sensors and weapons of other services and nations. The power of networks increases with the number of nodes. Joint and multinational forces are implementing Link 16 now. Switching to another tactical communications path would devastate interoperability for more than a decade as the new system is developed and fielded in sufficient numbers of platforms. It is time everyone gets on board with connecting other NCW efforts to Link 16.
The leaders who decided more than three years ago to focus on NCW, particularly in the area of time-critical strike, would be shocked to realize the lack of coherence in Navy and joint NCW implementation. Incompatible Link 16 message standard implementations have been fielded on platforms because of the complexity of message standards and lack of coherent direction. Currently, no Navy or joint organization provides authoritative direction on which Link 16 message data elements a platform must implement. As a result, many different and incompatible approaches have been taken.
After observing numerous data link message standard implementation incompatibilities, the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center commissioned the Center for Naval Analyses to study both internal Navy and Navy-Air Force message standard implementation to support time-critical strike in three scenarios. The Center for Naval Analyses concluded, "Current Navy and Air Force platform implementations of Link 16 are insufficient to support either the detect/decide phase or the attack/assess phase of [time-critical strike] against [tactical ballistic missile transporter erectors/launchers], mobile [surface-to-air missiles], or moving tank columns." The studies include a virtual sea of internal Navy and external joint incompatibilities and contain a very strong recommendation for the Navy to "establish a systematic process to allow operational [time-critical strike] concepts to coevolve with platform Link 16 message implementation."
Organizing for Success
We are failing because of our organization. Leadership has placed us on the path to implement NCW, but our structure remains the same. Platform program offices pursue their own implementation paths without specific NCW direction. Tactical data link operational requirements continue to be controlled by the Operational Interoperability Requirements Group, which is not staffed or qualified to oversee the dramatic changes required for NCW. Similarly, the Naval Center for Tactical System Interoperability, responsible "for planning, establishing and maintaining Navy, Joint and Combined [command, control, and communications] systems interoperability," is not manned with sufficient operators or organized to develop concepts on NCW implementation at the tactical level. Who then is leading our NCW revolution?
A central concept of initial network-centric warfare writings was "coevolution," in which "interrelated changes in concepts of operation, doctrine, organization, command and control approaches, systems, education, training, and people" occur as NCW develops. A central tactical NCW organization, staffed with knowledgeable war fighters, must be established and manned to coordinate NCW and "coevolution" efforts at the tactical level. The tactical NCW organization should be organized along warfare mission-area lines and would coordinate directly with centers of tactical excellence and platform program offices. Close coordination with centers of excellence will ensure that NCW implementations account for critical operator workload and man-machine interface issues. The new organization, centers of excellence, fleet commanders, and Naval Warfare Development Command would coordinate experimentation of new NCW concepts. Interaction with program offices will ensure the new tactical NCW organization understands the many constraints faced by platforms, as well as their current and intended implementations. Developing mission-area NCW concepts then would be synchronized with other service and DoD organizations. Through this coordination, coherent recommendations on data link operational requirements and required resource allocations can be made based on systemic mission-area NCW requirements rather than platform-specific interests.
While initial focus of the tactical NCW organization will be on rapid correction of current interoperability shortfalls, its mission-area-based analysis will result in development of a long-range NCW plan that is synchronized with the other services. Marine Corps operators must be included in the organization to provide the interface to all relevant Marine Corps systems. The plan must include a means to pass relevant digital data from the Army's Tactical Internet to supporting naval tactical units. A coherent plan integrating and deconflicting naval aviation with Army artillery and naval fire control systems is required. Multiplatform sensor-integration efforts, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency AT3, which uses time and frequency difference of arrival techniques to rapidly geolocate enemy radars, must be coordinated to ensure both Navy and Air Force platforms can participate. Information from assets in space should be integrated directly into tactical kill chains.
The new tactical NCW organization would be aligned under the new Naval Network Warfare Command because this command reports to Commander, Fleet Forces Command, and to fleet commanders and is tasked as the central authority for "space, information technology requirements, network and information operations in support of naval forces afloat and ashore." Given its broad responsibilities and coordination requirements, the new tactical NCW organization should be headed by a knowledgeable captain with a tour length of four to five years to ensure consistency. Military mission-area leads should be commanders or senior lieutenant commanders supported on site by long-term technical personnel, either government or contractor. A lieutenant from another community would be assigned, providing a balance of experience and perspective to each mission area. Mission-area leads would coordinate coevolution within their warfare areas, supported by designated points of contact at systems command headquarters and individual program offices. Tactical NCW organization manpower should ensure broad platform representation.
Each center of excellence should have an NCW coordinator designated for each platform represented. This operator would gather observed link/NCW deficiencies, collate NCW innovation ideas, and train on current NCW capabilities and on tactics, techniques, and procedures development to work around NCW deficiencies. Centers of excellence should be augmented to fill this position for each platform, as tight coordination between the tactical NCW organization and centers of excellence will be key to the coevolution process.
DoD and the Navy are committed to network-centric warfare as a foundation of transformation. Unfortunately, NCW implementation at the tactical level has been lackluster. There is no overarching NCW vision or plan at the tactical level. Platform-centric decisions have driven the problem and left us with incompatible implementations. Contractors, who have little incentive to make the systems we already have work together, offer new capabilities that would take years to field and still not provide the joint and multinational interoperability we need.
We need to reorganize to make the systems we have work together, getting the critical information to the right location at the right time. We need to take a systems approach and coevolve capabilities that will support missions throughout the detect, decide, attack, and assess sequence. Experimentation will help us correct for fire. As we optimize information flow through current systems, network limitations will highlight areas for future investment based on mission versus platform needs. The key is to reorganize now and start the process. NCW has a long way to go.
An E-2C naval flight officer, Captain Hardesty commanded VAW-113 and recently transferred to the Naval War College after serving as the Command and Control and Electronic Warfare Training Officer (N6) at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center at Fallon, Nevada.