Copernicus Offers a New Center of the Universe

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By Lieutenant Commander Michael S. Loescher, U.S. Navy

Today, in the wake of the Cold War, the Navy is restruc­turing its command, control, communications, and intelli­gence (C³I) strategy, from the seabed to the stratosphere, in a comprehensive manner not undertaken since World War II. In Operation Desert Shield, our command-and- control systems are the finest we have ever built. But to move into the 21st century, we must solve two problems. The first is to develop new technologies to integrate sen­sors, facilitate tactical decision-making, and solve com­munications capacity problems. For that, we will need the help of industry. The second is to build and articulate a new architecture, organizational infrastructure, and doc­trine to integrate both modern war at sea and crisis man­agement. For that, industry needs our help.

This article provides a look at the Navy’s new C^JI strat­egy for the post-Cold War era. The term “Copernicus Architecture'' is appropriate; we are in the process of shifting the center of the universe.

Vice Admiral Jerry O. Tuttle, U.S. Navy

New challenges require new approaches. In the next decade, the U.S. Navy will go through a period of great transition. Political policy will affect naval strategy; technology will influence tactics; and the new world order will cause the naval force structure to change.

Tactically, we will find ourselves in an exciting military era—a technological revolution spawning a tactical revo­lution. History will prove the last ten years of the 20th century as a time—not unlike the 1930s when air power rose to new heights—of great innovation in naval warfare: the technological achievement of global C³I and the tacti­cal emergence of space and electronic warfare (SEW).

The rate of change in technology is already accelerating before our eyes. The downside is programmatic; the gen­eration length for a microcomputer is now less than the average tour length of Navy men and women and approxi­mately one-third the length of the acquisition cycle. The upside is operational; the astounding growth of the micro­computer and workstations and the sophistication of shore-based sensors have at last made global surveillance and electronic warfare a real possibility. But we must de­velop the C³I infrastructure to support it.

Doing so will require a markedly different command- and-control strategy. As a result, the U.S. Navy is shifting its perspective in C³I for the first time in nearly 45 years.

The development of naval C³I in the last 50 years passed through three eras. The great innovation in the World War II U.S. Navy was the organization of com­mand and control into a system. Communications con­nected organic sensors, nonorganic sensors, and intelli­gence fusion centers to the task force, which used these assets to support and develop tactical doctrine. This devel­opment paralleled, and in no small sense made possible, the successful deployment of large carrier-based task forces.

A period of great technological innovation in C³I fol­lowed World War II. Various Navy and national organiza­tions built increasingly complex and independent sensors and communications systems. This preoccupation with form—the technology of C³I—has accelerated in the past two decades with the advent of the computer and satellite communications. During the past 20 years, the compo­nents of naval C³I have grown increasingly out of propor­tion to the system.

The third era is beginning today. We are determined to restore operational and technological proportionality and build a new C³I system to unite form with function—to found a new school of naval tactical thought. This school, perhaps best described as “operational technology,” will take as its mission the welding of high technology to new command-and-control doctrine. This will be nothing less

In 1543, Copernicus swept away superstition to assert that the sun was the center of the universe. Today, the Navy is striving to simplify its C³I system in a similar manner. This universe will center on the operators—such as these in the Independence (CV-62) in the Middle East.

than a shift in perspective from technology per se to opera­tions. We call this shift, which will take the decade to complete, the “Copernicus Effect,” and the resulting new system the “Copernicus Architecture.”

Copernicus and the Simple Solution

In the Renaissance, science awoke from superstition. The distinguished Polish churchman and astronomer Nich­olas Copernicus published a volume in 1543 that changed the world: De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (The Revolution of Heavenly Orbs).

His thesis was published when he was 70, after a life­time dedicated to the proposition that nature must be sim­ple, that the mathematics of astronomy had grown so com­plex and had so many contrived variables that it was outdated and invalid.

The analogy between Copernicus’s dilemma and ours is fanciful, but useful. For Copernicus, the problem was that the geocentric view, the earth as center of the universe, necessitated unwieldy and unnecessary calculations. Co­pernicus thus rejected the geocentric view and placed the sun at the center of the universe. This simplified and cor­rected astronomy: individual planets revolve in their own elliptical orbits around the sun.

We need only look at our current C³I to see a similar problem. The proliferation of sensors, their different for­mats, protocols, organizational sponsors, complex pro­grammatic agendas, and conflicting operational goals have made the mechanics of our C³I “astronomy” far too complex. Each shore-based sensor, each organization that feeds and cares for it, has become its own center of the universe.

The 1970s saw the development of the national and Navy sensors and the organizations and doctrine to sup­port them. By the early 1980s, the product from these sensors began to flow seaward to the officer-in-tactical- command (OTC) in the form of variously formatted record messages—each of which required dedicated communica­tions nets to send it to sea.

The proliferation of these nets brought several serious problems that still plague the Navy. First, these nets waste precious ultra-high-frequency (UHF) communications capacity. Second, they are sensor-specific; they do not consolidate information from all sensors. This presents both technical and operational problems of correlation at sea and ashore and requires human intervention to consoli­date the data. Third, they tend to be locked in technically and doctrinally to focus on the Soviets.

Great inroads into these problems of all-source fusion and over-the-horizon targeting (OTH-T)—the central tac­tical dilemmas of the 1980s—have been made in the last

five years. The advances have come from computer work­stations, which are beginning to correlate diverse sensor inputs into a consolidated targeting output. Nevertheless, a trio of persistent problems—multilevel security, a resid­ual poor communications architecture, and a proliferation of different hardware and software—still exacerbate the consolidation of tactical data streams.

The solution should be as simple as Copernicus’s: To create a new center of the universe that can control, yet

’ accommodate the individual “planets”—the shore-based and afloat sensors—that revolve around it.

We therefore are constructing a new top-down “plane­tary” architecture—built around common technology and I centralized standards, but with a decentralized implemen- I tation that will maximize innovation.

Shortfalls in Current Architecture

From an engineering standpoint, the current system is not responsive to the operators, who get what can be de­veloped within the budget and acquisition constraints rather than what they need.

Moreover, C³I components, once procured and in­stalled, are generally a technological generation behind commercial counterparts. Once we field a system, if it is technologically obsolete, we then have to await the next opportunity within the programming cycle to upgrade the system. One does not need a crystal ball to see there will be fewer such opportunities in the future.

We cannot solve this problem by arguing endlessly for acquisition reform, and we certainly cannot solve it by constructing complex vertical C³I architectures that risk collapse when appropriations shift beneath a big-ticket building block. We should expect and plan for the builddown of the Defense Department to be less orderly than its recent buildup. And we must therefore devise a flexible investment strategy.

Operationally, the thawing of the Cold War portends a new national strategy to contend with contingency and limited-objective warfare operations and regional con­flicts. C³I to support prolonged regional conflict or spe- i cific crisis intervention is quite different from that required for blue-water operations. We have learned much about C³I requirements for contingency operations in the last decade. In the past, most of our contingency operations have had ad hoc connectivity and makeshift—and largely inadequate—command centers.

The central C³I problem in contingency operations is how to focus many sensors—often the entire national in­ventory—in area. The capacity is there, because we make it available to the detriment of other communications. But the intelligence doctrine and the C³I support infrastructure are not there.

In marked contrast, the central C³I problem for blue- water operations is buying battle space—which is time— through early, certain indications and warning (I&W) ob­tained during emissions control (EmCon) and minimal communications. OTH-T assumes a central role in sea control. The task becomes deciding how to pipe the right amount of correlated intelligence seaward, using limited (because it is shared rather than concentrated as in the contingency scenario) and vulnerable satellite capacity.

We also have several technological problems. The Navy is transfixed by the communications systems and keeps looking for ways to fit more and more into static satellite channels.

We in the Navy are mesmerized by capacity. Like pre- Copemican astronomers, however, the problem with our constellations is staring us in the face. Of course capacity

is a problem if we view the UHF and extremely high- frequency (EHF) constellations as merely alternate, redun­dant paths, and if we continue to ignore super-high fre­quency (SHF). Of course capacity is a problem if all we do is transfer our existing data streams up to EHF one-for-one or down to the lower baud rates of high frequency (HF). We have to change our data streams and look at the con­stellations and the lower-frequency media as a whole sys­tem, a switchable rail system over which compatible trains can operate. We do not have a true multifrequency capa­bility—we cannot use HF, UHF, SHF, and EHF inter­changeably.

We also need a “volume switch”—the ability to slow the baud rates in our data-exchange streams in times of short capacity. We must use new multiplexers to expand the capacity of individual channels. This would allow true dynamic band-width management—the ability to load the channel tactically. And we are ignoring media that can be useful—sophisticated graphic displays, video, facsimile— while so clinging to record traffic that we have built a culture around the morning message meeting.

Organizational and doctrinal problems are also evident. We have lacked properly equipped command centers, es­pecially for contingency operations. Only now is the intel­ligence community making hard decisions about the amount and types of data to be passed to the fleet. We are working hard to place upper limits on communications capacity for intelligence and to nail down realistic require­ments. However, we continue to lack a true handshake between the intelligence fusion centers ashore and flag plot afloat—the tactical flag command center (TFCC)— principally because our connectivity from the sensors to the shooters still looks like steel wool—or perhaps like pre-Copernican astronomy.

The Copernicus Architecture

To solve these problems, we intend, like Copernicus, to find a new center for our system: the operator. The Coper­nicus Architecture will structure C³I around four pillars:

• A series of eight, theater-wide, parallel Global Informa­tion Exchange Systems (GLOBIXS), constructed to ac­quire, standardize, and concentrate shore-based sensor and other data for Navy and joint uses
• A consolidated fleet command center (FCC), marrying the functions of several existing organizations to several new ones, to form a single, high-technology focus for the commander-in-chief ashore
• A series of 14 Tactical Data Exchange Systems (TAD1XS) that serve the purpose of exchanging non­organic sensor data from the GLOBIXS with organic sen­sor data afloat
• The TFCC at sea, which through the use of the GLOBIXS-TADIXS information exchange, can make concentrated, tactical use of that data

The GLOBIXS/TADIXS architecture—the Copernicus Architecture—properly realigns the focus of our C³I to center on war-fighting functions: consolidating sensor, battle management, and shooter linkages into a single, flexible system capable of support across the maritime bat- tie continuum from cueing and I&W to tracking, target­ing, and battle damage assessment (BDA). It will shift the perspective of our C³I in the future from the Naval Com­munications Area Master Stations (NavCAMs), which are components of the communications subsystem of C³I, to the FCC and TFCC, which, as the operational centers of command and control, are more properly the center of the architecture’s universe.

On the shore-based side, the eight GLOBIXS networks will each have a common intersection with the FCC. These wide-area networks, the precursors of which are in place today in several communities, will be operated the­ater-wide (and, in some cases, globally) over the Defense Data Network (DDN) and the Defense Satellite Communi­cations System. The FCC would consolidate, size, and format the shore-based data from the GLOBIXS to suit the tactical situation and send it cross-mission to sea over the TADIXS.

The TADIXS should not be considered separate com­munications nets. In implementation on the Copernicus communications subsystem, the TADIXS information will be compiled and consolidated for piping over the various satellite constellations at the NavCAMS and shunted onto the dynamically multiplexed channels.

Instead of attempting to load more rigid data on inflexi­ble channels, we will organize a communications subsys­tem with structured, flexible input onto dynamic channels. The operator, not the communicator, engineer, or pro­grammer, will occupy the center of a system that will op­erate much like air traffic in stacked patterns, sharing common runways cued by controllers.

The parallel, mission-specific GLOBIXS—the aircraft traffic patterns—reflect the modem requirement for global I&W derived from the shore-based sensor communities. The construction of GLOBIXS networks allows us to le­verage our shore-based I&W infrastructure for tactical use within specific mission areas. At the same time, the cross­mission TADIXS focus the product from the GLOBIXS for tactical use—a 21st century force-multiplier effect stemming from the ability to concentrate sensors and data that is analogous to concentration of forces.

GLOBIXS also provide the new organizational and doc­trinal base required for the post-Cold War contingency missions. Each mission-specific GLOBIXS can bring to bear skilled shore analysts sharing analytic software with TADIXS analysts afloat. GLOBIXS components will in­clude the specific sensors, platforms, and analysis centers within the mission area belonging to the GLOBIXS. In addition to a common intersection with the FCC, some GLOBIXS will intersect each other to accommodate cross-sensor fertilization in the shore-based analytical pro­cess. The precise connectivity and nodes of one GLOBIXS will differ from another in order to tailor the connectivity to the mission function.

The consolidated FCC will assume five missions:

• Provide a coordinated theater- and campaign-level pic­ture for the shore command authorities
• Provide a joint and combined gateway into the Navy Copernicus Architecture as well as intratheater connectiv­ity among other FCCs
• Provide direct, multiformat high command (HiCom) connectivity from the shore command to the task force commander at sea—especially critical for contingency missions
• Provide the organizational and technological infrastruc­ture to facilitate the handshake between the shore-based sensor community and the composite warfare commander (CWC) afloat
• From the GLOBIXS’ input, the FCC will build tailored, consolidated intelligence and targeting TADIXS for trans­mission over satellite constellations

The TADIXS, like the GLOBIXS, have precursors today. TADIXS in the Copernicus Architecture share a common function; they provide the tactical linkages among the shore-based sensors and the at-sea organic sen­sors, tying the FCC with the TFCC to provide as near a common tactical picture as possible.

It is the ability of the GLOBIXS and TADIXS to lever­age and concentrate information for tactical use that revolutionizes C³I. The FCC and the TFCC, operating with tailored doctrine established by each OTC, will have the technological capability to determine whether and to what degree to filter shore-based data. Operationally, two major innovations are achieved.

First, much tactical discussion in the 1980s centered on the question of whether to fuse intelligence data ashore or afloat. In hindsight, the debate was to a great degree a technological issue in the guise of an operational one. Copernicus provides the technological ability for simulta­neous fusion ashore and afloat. It does so by decanting operational traffic from administrative traffic, by provid­ing increased computing and communications capacity, and by making direct organic and nonorganic data correla­tion possible in a tactically significant timeframe.

Second, and also stemming from a 1980s tactical con­cept, the movement toward a tactical goal of an increas­ingly shorter “sensor-to-shooter” vector was the mirror image of the fusion issue above—it was an operational issue in reality, in the guise of a technological issue. One of the clearest lessons of naval history is the importance of BDA, the determination of whether the naval tactical goal of “attack effectively first” has in fact been achieved after the initial salvos. (See Fleet Tactics, Captain Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., U.S. Navy [Retired]. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1986.) While a sensor-to-shooter vector can provide targeting for the first OTH-T salvo, accurate BDA in the 21st century with large battle space requires a nonorganic-to-organic sensor cycle in which the OTC is provided a continual and agile, “Look, Look, Shoot” capability.

To complete our architecture, we must recognize two additional communications requirements: the continuing need to record traffic, and the urgent need to consolidate and secure the research and development and weapons development community.

Record traffic is important. Today, however, the fleet broadcast is a potpourri of tactical traffic, war plans, oper­ations orders, logistics data, and staff directives. Worse, it occupies much of the jam-resistant communications ca­pacity available at the expense of other, more critical nets

The new C³I system will be built around 8 Global Infor­mation Exchange Systems (GLOBIXS) and 14 Tactical Data Exchange Systems (TADIXS). The channels will be dynamic and flexible, much like air traffic in stacked patterns, sharing common runways cued by controllers.

U.S. NAVY

and does so in a rigid format: 16, 75-baud subchannels. We have only rudimentary ways of sifting the potpourri: setting “minimize,” adding software toggles to eliminate administrative messages (as long as they are manually flagged by the originator) and, to some degree, dropping old messages from the system.

But these address the symptoms, not the disease. Mini­mized conditions arise because we pump messages from 33,000 originators into the 16 trickling garden hoses. The task force commander, lacking another vehicle to pass traffic of any length, is forced to send messages round­about—to the NavCAMs ashore and back to sea on the fleet broadcast—to communicate with his own task force only miles away. Like astronomy before Copernicus, C³I today revolves around communications, when communi­cations should revolve around C³I.

OTCIXS was the first-generation cut at the problem, and it solved a multitude of difficulties associated with the tactical exchange of data. But the full solution is to boil off the fleet broadcast and pour the several supernatants into separate nets. The remaining record traffic will be princi­pally administrative in nature, which we propose to shunt into NAVIXS, which will then compete with the other TADIXS for space on dynamically managed channels.

The final GLOB1XS component of our new architecture involves the research, development, test, and evaluation community. This is not a C³I problem per se, but a com­munications security problem—a critical one. Currently the system commands, their laboratories, and test ranges have no structured communications system. The security risk is as obvious as it is worrisome. The computer net­works that exist are largely unsecured. Cooperative ex­change of data is limited.

The answer lies in expediting secure telephones to these critical commands and in establishing data exchanges over the DDN networks—MILNET and DSNET I, II, and 111. We must do so under an umbrella architecture, however, to ensure a secure and efficient structure. This structure will be the Research-and-Development Information Sys­tem (RDIXS).

The new architecture offers several other advantages over the current one. Because it is a standardized blue­print, it provides the ability to produce a viable investment strategy over the six-year defense plans. From a program­ming and technological perspective, as long as uniform architectural standards and formats are imposed, the fur­ther down echelon net composition decisions (software applications, for example) can be made, the better. Al­though the communications backbones and the TADIXS terminal equipment will have to be proscribed centrally, much of the GLOBIXS and RDIXS, especially analytic software, can be tailored within the parent community.

Operational experts, not bureaucrats, will develop the nets themselves in a decentralized manner. Ten years ago, this was not possible; today, the communications back­bones are understood increasingly by the user, the end

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Can We Manage the Radio-electronic Battle?______________ I

terminals familiar, and the software application specific. Navy men and women are becoming increasingly sophisti­cated technologically. By developing the mission-specific components of the architecture, such as the application software within a community, we ensure for ourselves an ability to innovate operationally. This is not the strong suit of programmatic staffs.

The focus in the next decade will shift to four tasks:

• Build GLOBIXS and the required analytical tools
• Formulate and format the right mix of TADIXS to sup­port both the blue-water sea-control mission and a contin­gency-power-projection mission
• Construct the FCC and TFCCs
• Systemize our constellations, develop a dynamic multi­plexing system, and incorporate DDN ashore to build the architecture’s communications backbone.

Operational Advantages: Space and Electronic Warfare

The chief advantage of the architecture lies in its opera­tional advantages. GLOBIXS help us manage the battle space—air, surface, subsurface, space—and the array of sensors and invisible wizardry on which modern naval war depends. TADIXS conserve satellite capacity through true redundancy—multiple paths—instead of the dangerous il­lusion of redundancy we currently have (for example, in our intelligence reporting to the fleet). And together the exchange systems provide a truly coordinated and consoli­dated tactical picture.

Like its World War II antecedent, the Copernicus Archi­tecture is a true, coordinated, war-fighting system; it is not merely a collection of high-tech gee-gaws amalgamated by acronyms.

Some critics of REBM go fur­ther, asserting that existing sys­tems cannot and future systems will not be able even to manage the C² data. While accepting the REBM notion as technically fea­sible on paper, they say that in practice it ignores real-time deci­sion-making limitations, and it is too expensive. One source even questions the technical feasibil­ity, noting that REBM-type links j and associated software are not sufficiently established in to­day’s worldwide military com­mand and control system to en­able the system to function effectively in peacetime, much less in a nuclear environment.

As for the problems of real­time decision making, Admiral Boyes says that he and others had their reservations over whether an REBM system can close the crucial gap between the tactical action officer (TAO) and the commanding officer (CO). Regardless of the sys­tem’s capability, the TAO is not always accessible to the CO in combat. Operators note, how­ever, that whether under a com­bat system doctrine, a CO’s bat­tle orders, or both, a TAO will have weapons release authority. Even so, says Vice Admiral Henry C. Mustin, U.S. Navy (Retired), “Because the problem is not solely one of processing

Soviets will not need to be com­prehensive. Proponents counter by saying that information sys­tems and sensor technologies will continue to advance and become available to the Navy and that REBM will certainly have its application in any con­flict or situation involving the use, or possible use, of naval forces.

Vice Admiral Jon Boyes,

U.S. Navy (Retired), a leading participant in the Navy-21 REBM Group, says that two schools of thought emerged from discussions among the 19 mem­bers of the group. The first, he says, was the technology school, which had an “enchantment with REBM, thinking that the Soviets had a capability that we didn’t.” A second school, how­ever, was more practically ori­ented and focused on the com­mand and control (C²) aspects of REBM as “tools” for a com­mander. The first group re­flected the view of the informa­tion resources manager, while the second leaned toward the viewpoint of the operational commander. The key difference, says Boyes, is that the first group believed—incorrectly in his opinion—that it is possible to “manage battles,” while the second was looking only to “manage C².”

Two years ago, the National Research Council and the Office of Naval Research released the Navy-21 study—requested by the Chief of Naval Operations— that looked at the implications of advancing technology for naval operations in the 21st century.

In that study the term radio­electronic battle management (REBM) referred to surveillance, combat information, and com­mand, control, and communica­tions (C³) as “an organic whole.” An REBM system, says Navy-21, is supposed to improve the operational com­mander’s ability to target enemy forces and to prevent them from targeting his.

For some, REBM may be a new paradigm in maritime war­fare that could challenge the tra­ditional naval command structure as well as the war-fighting doc­trine based on the carrier battle group. REBM critics, however, are quick to note that the Navy- 21 study has become dated, for a key assumption in the study was that the Soviet Union will probably remain the Navy’s pri­mary antagonist. Now, two years later, many take issue with that assumption and argue that in the new era of regional threats, the applicability of an REBM system conceived to fight an all-out war with the

Proof of genuinely new military innovation lies in its ability to permit genuinely new tactics. The architecture will provide the support to conduct true space and elec­tronic warfare. All modern navies have recognized the need to control and manage information. The Soviets have had a radio-electronic combat doctrine for 20 years—the same basic concept as our SEW—but, like all other na­vies, they lacked the organizational and technological le­verage to conduct it. Successful modern warfare requires all three.

The heart of space and electronic warfare is the ability to collect, manipulate, and disrupt the enemy’s C³I, which in turn requires a global capability to move data and analy­ses about SEW operations in a coordinated ashore and afloat organization. More than any other discipline, SEW requires a rapid, coordinated horizontal flow of informa­tion across the community—and that community, also more than any other discipline, will be a multiservice, joint effort. We must provide for simultaneous offensive and defensive operations in all sorts of conflicts. Most important, tactical SEW operations require the same glo­bal and theater handoffs that ASW and A AW currently do.

Lacking these capabilities, the huge amount of discus­sion in the past about electronic warfare, C³I countermea­sures and radio-electronic combat will have amounted to wishful thinking.

Commander Loescher is Special Assistant for Cryptology to the Direc­tor, Space and Electronic Warfare.

By John F. Morton

and software but one of the human’s ability to deal with the information, no technical solu­tion has been provided to man­age the data in a timely way to respond.” At issue here is the well-known possibility of ‘‘com­munications overload.”

Proponents believe advancing REBM technology will enable the CO to make a ‘‘nano-second decision.” Then a question arises as to who decides ‘‘what experienced knowledge goes into the device,” says Boyes. ‘‘Op­erational commanders with salt on their brass don’t have time for that kind of drill.” For the moment, the problem is more a “cultural” one that, he says, will improve over time, as com­puter-savvy junior officers rise to become the next generation of ship drivers.

As for cost, it depends on what level REBM system would get deployed. The system ought to apply both to a ‘‘cold war” situation, i.e., until the first shot is fired, and to a hot war situa­tion, once hostilities have com­menced. The application of REBM to antiair warfare (AAW) Problems illustrates some differ­ences between the two. Much of the present published AAW doc­trine dates from the Vietnam War era, when naval forces were in a reactive mode and where

Implications of Advancing Technology for Naval Operations in the Twenty-First Century

Volume I: Overview Hi. ■

m m

A key member of the Navy-21 REBM group, Vice Admiral Jon Boyes, USN (Ret.), says electron­ics should influence command decisions, not dictate them.

one MiG might venture forth to attack a naval force on Yankee Station. In this ‘‘cold war” in­stance, an aviator cannot take his own initiative. He must re­quest permission from his CO to fire. Some SEW opponents say that such a case requires one rel­atively simple level of REBM system.

Some war-fighting scenarios studied at the time of Navy-21,

however, envisaged attacks by regimental-sized forces of Soviet Backfire bombers, using decep­tion and other electronic coun­termeasures, which require an entirely different set of proce­dures and equipment. If the as­sumptions about the Soviet Union are no longer relevant, say the critics, then the Navy no longer has a requirement for this level of REBM system. The equipment is simply too expen­sive to justify, in view of the trade-off against other weapons priorities more relevant to war fighting across the whole con­flict spectrum. Such technologies seem to evolve without any re­quirements to guide them. In this case, the Navy does not have an operational communica­tions concept.

On the other hand, REBM may be a useful C³1 tool in an era where technology and weapon systems allow and re­gional threats still require the dispersal of maritime power pro­jection capabilities. The Navy-21 study speaks of redistributing main combat power from a “unipolar” configuration based around the carrier to a “flexible triad” in which the carrier is only one element of a three-part battle group that includes mis­sile-launching surface combat­ants and missile-launching sub-

marines. REBM would allow the battle force commander to com­mand and control ships in differ­ent oceans in operations that can be both joint and combined.

This capability leads Admiral Boyes to ask whether the tech­nology renders obsolete tradi­tional naval organization.

REBM, he says, could provide a paradigm that would “clean up the command structure” and reduce much of the “layering.” Operational commanders re­luctantly acknowledge that within the Navy itself, the tradi­tional notion of command is weakening, both with respect to

the authority of the CO and to the inviolability of the chain of command. Many object, how­ever, to the assumed virtues of a highly centralized command structure that they see as implicit in REBM. They note the irony that while the centralized com­mand concepts of the Soviet doctrine of radio-electronic war­fare may have influenced some of the thinking behind REBM, the Soviets themselves are mov­ing toward decentralization as the result of their experience in Afghanistan. The centralization assumptions in REBM and Navy-21, they also say, contra­

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Space and Electronic Warfare Comes of Age

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On 1 August after almost a year of conceptual preparation, the Navy’s Space, Command, and Control Directorate, OP-094, be­came the Space and Electronic Warfare Directorate, and Vice Admiral Jerry Tuttle, who had been OP-094 Director since 23 May 1989, remained at the helm. With the establishment of space and electronic warfare as a directorate on par with surface, air, and undersea warfare, the radio electronic battle management (REBM) concept suddenly had an institutional home and a high- powered advocate. Says Admiral Tuttle, “REBM is definitely a new warfighting area which we have changed into a more appro­priate acronym, ‘SEW,’ for space and electronic warfare.”

The deployment of naval over-the-horizon targeting systems in recent years—the Tomahawk missile for instance—contributed to the establishment of SEW as a new warfare area. Over-the-hori­zon targeting must rely on shore-based sensor fusion systems and global command, control, communications, and intelligence

tern shore terminal from surface warfare (OP-03) and the A ^s XII IFF and passive horizon extension system air terminal > J) air warfare (OP-05). As a three-star advocate, Tuttle could ^CL O lenge the program world directly during the program objeity memoranda process, but instead he is going to the fleet and!¹"⁶'

(C³I) architecture—hence, SEW. The two overarching objectives for the new office are first, the development of SEW doctrine and second, the development of a new C³I architecture that will serve all warfare areas.

Contrary to the view of the REBM skeptics, OP-094 does not speak so much of battle management, but rather the necessity to provide the Navy with C² links that are “transparent and inter­operable.” SEW supporters argue that the technology is now available at an affordable cost. OP-094 has nearly solved the all­shore fusion problem in its C² links. “What cost $250 million in 1980 now costs $25 million on a Sun workstation,” says one source.

By comparison to the so-called platform sponsors, OP-094 has a relatively small annual budget of roughly $3 billion for SEW authority. Responding to the assertion that his office has very little program authority, Admiral Tuttle says, “I don’t have to own the Cadillac to drive it.” Of the some 30 SEW-type pro­grams added to OP-094’s charge, the Admiral says, “We inher­ited the orphans and the waifs” like the Mark XV identification friend-or-foe and the battlegroup passive horizon extension sys-

1990,         OP-094

hosted a confer­ence at Dam- Neck, Virginia, where a number of senior com­manders met to discuss SEW, assign projects, and set date lines. Among key par­ticipants were:

Admiral Richard Macke, Commander Carrier Group Four;

Admiral Richard Allen, Commander Carrier Group Six; am

Admiral Thomas Paulsen, Commander Cruiser Destroyer

d^'te

Two. While these senior officers are all Atlantic Fleet flag

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manders, staff representatives of many Pacific Fleet comn^i;_U|_f attended as well. According to Admiral Tuttle, Rear A^ '

Ronald Zlataper, Commander Carrier Group Seven, is 3.

.                                                                       . .                                     ®Vy

sponsor of the SEW effort in the Pacific.                                          u

The SEW function will enter into the composite warfare ^ mander concept, says Admiral Tuttle. Most carrier group^ cruiser-destroyer group commanders retain the electronic function at the staff level, he says—a fact that could inflty_{ta (}

how SEW will fit into the composite warfare commander coflj

He would like the SEW to be on the group commander’s

andpcture. With respect to the i bo|d w_ar scenarios, the Navy ntrarV have to accept a greater thfpee of political intrusion by in ,°^Se authorities than it would T^^e- Admiral Boyes, a submari- ivff’ notes that as the capability ivlid two-way communication with in A Marines improves, the com- telyi^an<l authorities may see partic- !^<lr value, for example, in com­at ifnicating directly with a verged missile submarine as- 5 f^r^^nc<J to a battle force, for ex- ₁ly^flPle, that could compromise

the battle force commander’s ability to use the asset—or other assets—as he may see fit.

How an REBM system would affect COs and the chain of command also relates closely to rules of engagement issues. Admiral Boyes is worried that “severe” rules of engagement would force COs themselves to bypass the command structure and use an REBM system to deal directly with the command authorities. Other operational commanders express the concern differently with an eye to C² with their subordinates. They worry over whether the combi-

hi

n<iⁿ_f^terconnect                        Sea, the Gulf of Oman, and the Persian

ins

UP,”¹' Combined forces now have a system, he says, that “main-

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.^ctUre

shooters that have already deployed. The current C² archi- transmits shore-to-ship large quantities of unprocessed,

pever, he will leave it for the fleet to debate and decide ^lether a SEW will be a coordinator or a commander as in AAW

ASW.

2 yt As f_or q2 _within the battle group, Tuttle says that SEW will j| i^,Centralize those functions without changing their structure. As d ^c!|^² external to the battle group, the Admiral does not fear that edv W will result in intrusion down the chain of command. Instead, nd'^verses the question, saying that the system will improve the ts.Jmission of information up the chain.

• f Admiral Tuttle believes that the Navy will grow in SEW exper-

'ⁿ the same way as it does with ASW and the other warfare ■^as- Although currently short on SEW training, the Navy, says ^ Admiral, has already made some positive changes in the post­date school curriculum. Tuttle has purposely gathered around • ^a staff of officers with command-at-sea experience. He says ae would prefer to have the perspective of destroyer squadron

• inlanders to hit that of those with typical electronic warfare

grounds who “see the world a through a Pod 9 or a SLQ- H' The Admiral also appears to be drawing upon the naval ■^igence community, saying that the relationship between OP- I and naval intelligence (OP-092) has never been as fully inte­as it is now.

, ^utde says that his biggest gains so far have been in proce- _;t;f ^£s, doctrine, and connectivity. Operation Desert Shield, says X ^.Admiral, particularly illustrates how far the Navy has come in :r; 'A ^c°nnectivity. Military representatives from France, the idf'^ed Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Italy met in Bahrain to ^ w '^S^ communications that would be interoperable and secure "'ould use high frequency and satellite communications links

- ^an entire, incredibly complex air picture.” The on-scene d commander can now talk to the multinational navy, army, e ^l_Cs^air forces in Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emir- u_P,_u]°n secure communications. Three years ago, the U.S. Navy \V3f-r?. ^not do it.

^Ie OP-094 goal is to find a better way to transit new targeting unanalyzed data in the form of messages. The result is “reams of paper in alpha-numeric form” that the shooter cannot digest. In­stead, Admiral Tuttle wants a system to process, analyze, and display for the shooter the over-the-horizon targeting data in the form of a “green dot” on a screen. What he needs most in the near-term is even higher frequency—“bigger pipes” with wider bandwidths.

OP-094 says that its proposed architecture, intended to accom­modate SEW and all the other warfare areas, should not be seen as just a vector-like sensor-to-shooter link, but rather as a cycle— sensor-to-shooter-to-sensor and back again, i.e., simultaneous fusion ashore and afloat. Standardized fusion boxes throughout the net means that the ship will have the same capability as those shore-based. SEW advocates say that this capability would decen­tralize command to the flag commander afloat, because he would have at his disposal all the C³I data that until now is only available ashore.

Advanced data fusion is already here within a platform. When the Saratoga (CV-60) deployed for Operation Desert Shield, she had on board the first Navy Warfare Tactical Data Base, a new information correlation system. It uses the Standard Desktop Computer II and a fully rack-mounted Sun-4 workstation to host the software for display systems such as the joint operational tacti­cal system two and the tactical flag command center II Plus. The Independence (CV-62) battlegroup, now deployed with Desert Shield, has the Standard Desktop Computer II and the Sun-4 for operational evaluation. All battle groups will now get the system as they deploy. Admiral Tuttle says that in February a follow-on system will begin development to go into the fleet. The goal is to upgrade the system every 18 months. The Navy intends to outfit the system on all its ships in the combatants and logistics force.

The idea behind the Standard Desktop Computer II, says Tut­tle, is to get “a standardized operating system, in a common language with common protocols and interfaces and make it seamless all on a distributive local area network within the plat­form.” The connectivity with signals intelligence and general sur­veillance networks will come later, he says, and “will accommo­date with national systems during my watch.”

John F. Morton