Vice Admiral George P. Nanos Jr., commanding the Naval Sea Systems Command, will head a joint-service systems engineering initiative to support a single integrated air picture (SIAP).
The new office will define the requirements for the integrated air picture, an elusive concept debated intensively among the services' requirements staffs, operating units, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), and other Department of Defense agencies for the past year. Broadly, it will be a single, comprehensive, integrated data display of air-defense tracks detected by the air-, ground-, and sea-based sensors of all the services.
It would be updated continuously based on the use of Link 16, the joint-service tactical digital information link (TADIL) that employs the TADIL "J" message format. Link 16 now is extensively (though not completely) fielded throughout all the services. The new display would be available to support targeting by Navy ships, tactical aircraft, and Army and Marine Corps airdefense sites.
The Pentagon's decision to create a systems-engineering group was based on a recommendation by the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), which last year began considering the challenge reconciling the concept's combat effectiveness with differing service concepts. In August 1999, the JROC asked Admiral Harold Gehman, Commander, Joint Forces Command, to convene a senior panel to consider various organizational structures for carrying out the systems-engineering requirements.
In December 1999, the panel reported on two options: first, a Navy-led, jointly staffed group that would report to Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Jacques Gansler through a non-Navy SIAP acquisition executive; and second, a new group within BMDO that would report to Gansler through that organization's structure. Gehman recommended the BMDO approach, but Secretary of Defense William Cohen picked the Navy.
The organizational tapdancing has much to do with the roiling competition among the services for key roles in the evolution of new joint doctrine. "What service wouldn't like to lead the SIAP?" asked one BMDO staffer, a Navy action officer, adding that the project deals with the cutting-edge issues facing the services: joint integrated air defense, systems interoperability, new technology.
SIAP as a key theme for joint service collaboration was reflected in the theme of the all-service combat identification evaluation team (ASCIET), directed by the Joint Forces Command but based at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. This year's exercise, ASCIET 2000, carried out in late February and early March, featured extensive demonstrations of SIAP and SIAP-like capabilities. The Aegis destroyer Mitscher (DDG-57) exchanged air-track data with an Army Patriot air-defense battery, a Marine Corps tactical air operations module, plus Navy E-2C Hawkeye and Air Force E-3 airborne warning and control system surveillance aircraft. A Navy official with the ASCIET management team said afterward that a joint control team maintained a single integrated air picture was maintained throughout the exercise, adding that the team was made up of seasoned controller and datalink experts from Carrier Group Two and Atlantic Fleet headquarters: "We stacked the deck a little. . . ."
Early data indicate that the SIAP demonstration was successful. It was considered an off-line objective, however, because the technology is not mature. One staffer called it as a "pseudo-SIAP," reflecting the view that, because of the range of complexities of the air-surveillance environment, dissimilarities in service systems, missions, and priorities, achieving a true SIAP is impossible.
That the Navy got the leadership nod lends credence to the view that the Navy's progress in developing its cooperative engagement capability (CEC) has moved it ahead of the other services in the integration of air-track data. The CEC, based on a hardware suite designated USG-2 and built by Raytheon, aims at providing a consolidated air picture to ship, aircraft, and ground nodes participating in a network. The picture then can be processed for use by air-defense weapons for target engagement.
Currently the Aegis cruisers Hue City (CG-66) and Vicksburg (CG-69) and the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy (CV-67) are fitted out with the Navy's full-up CEC hardware and software; the amphibious assault ship Wasp (LHD-I) has current-generation USG-I hardware, but not the newest software.
The program executive office for theater combat systems (PEO TSC) is preparing CEC for a May 2001 operational evaluation that should say much about the Navy's ability to manage integrated combat systems in a SIAP environment. Planning also has forced the program to calibrate finely the employment of tactical data links for passing track data.
The Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps, which will be obligated to participate in a SIAP development that could mean adapting CEC, are monitoring the operational evaluation preparations, looking closely at how it will impact their air-defense and surveillance systems—and adding up the potential costs.