Not long ago, building integrated and authoritative maps of the world's littorals was something done by Buck Rogers in the 25th century of science fiction-today it is reality. In harsh polar areas, the National Ice Center (NIC)/Naval Ice Center (NAVICE) produces data that are being used by operators as well as scientists to plan operations near and under the ice in support of arctic military missions and studies of long-term climate changes. In a March 2000 message, Vice Admiral Edmund Giambastiani, then commander of Submarine Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, noted, "Accurate knowledge of the marginal ice zone and pack ice location is essential for continuing submarine operations in the arctic. Submarines operate in the vicinity of the sea ice for a variety of missions spanning cooperative scientific research to theater and national operational tasking. Arctic operations remain a key component of the submarine force's flexibility to operate anywhere, anytime."
The NIC/NAVICE now offers a digitized compilation of 23 years of weekly ice charts that is available online from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. By using interactive computer systems, meteorological and oceanographic (METOC) intelligence, logistics, and operational information can be merged and used to help decide such operational matters as "go or no go," routes through the littorals, and phasing of the general offload during an amphibious assault. In maneuvering across the littorals, Marines use software packages such as "C2PC" to automatically track the status of enemy positions, determine patrol routes, and plot waypoints on digital maps going from strategic to tactical scale. However, for maximum efficiency, naval forces should be better equipped so that they can collect high-resolution data, update databases, provide customized products, and present information in a web-based manner useful to war fighters.
Overhead satellites collect and provide vast quantities of global data. NIC/NAVICE uses satellite data from the Canadian RADARSAT- 1 as well as other weather satellites to produce global ice products. Aerial sensors augment baseline data sets for tactical-scale products. The Marine Corps' Coastal Battlefield Reconnaissance and Analysis program aims at improving the ability of airborne sensors to detect buried and underwater mines, at day or night and in adverse weather. Some platforms provide sequences of beach images taken at regular intervals over time. Use of remote sensors is revolutionizing the war fighter's ability to see a four-dimensional battle space. The Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle is being tested as a high-altitude platform for state-of-the-art reconnaissance and aerial surveys; it can loiter over target areas for up to 24 hours at altitudes above 60,000 feet and carry electro-optical, infrared, and synthetic aperture radars. Families of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are being operated at depths of ten feet in support of mine countermeasure operations and amphibious landings. Their payloads include scanning sonar, profiling sonar, altimeters, and acoustic Doppler current profilers. The Naval Postgraduate School uses AUVs to upload data directly to the Mine Warfare Environmental Decision Aids Library for mine countermeasures studies. When linked with systems such as the Joint Deployable Intelligence Support System and the Global Command and Control System, imagery products can be transferred in near-real time to operational commanders. Data products can be merged to develop a common operational picture for indications and warning, cueing, rapid strike tasking, and combat assessment.
The Office of Naval Research and the National Air and Space Administration's "Mission to Planet Earth" have supported various remote sensing efforts to enhance development of coastal geographic information systems (GISs). Researchers have combined thematic mapping and scanning radar altimeter images from a P-3 Orion aircraft to build two-dimensional maps of wave topography that were used to better understand how waves change form as they move from deep to shallow water. Similar studies demonstrate the use of hyperspectral remote sensing to give the war fighter a means of probing the depths of the littorals to a much finer resolution than was available with conventional remote sensing techniques. By discriminating very narrow bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, hyperspectral remote sensing makes use of optical wavelengths to estimate depths, bottom composition, and water column characteristics. With so much high technology available for surveying littoral battle spaces, further development should focus on preparing products that support tactical plans and decisions more effectively.
Today, the emphasis should be on preparing combat forces to readily exploit large quantities of data. Interactive data processing and analysis systems are being developed that allow different types of data at varying scales to be merged into a common baseline. These types of GIS applications represent the most rapidly expanding technology for visualizing battle-space environments. They are software programs designed to work with spatially or geographically referenced data. GIS operations require the use of a database and graphics system to display desired layers of information; tasks include digital image processing and geospatial analysis as well as manual interpretation of "hard copy" imagery. Military planners concerned with remote sensing use GIS to manage and analyze a wide range of imagery acquired by airborne and spaceborne remote sensing platforms. METOC personnel may use GIS databases to describe environmental impacts on particular weapon systems or courses of action. For these reasons, the Navy and Marine Corps, and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) are focusing research and development on populating high-resolution data sets for many missions.
The littoral battle space is the most complex to characterize because it is the area where air, land, and sea conditions meet. It poses a great challenge to naval expeditionary planners charged with developing databases and systems. Processing the amount of diverse data needed to develop intelligence and customized presentations requires highly trained GIS operators. METOC personnel already rely on GIS to systematically record, store, retrieve, analyze, and portray geographically referenced information. Data layers available on standardized formats usually are geopolitical boundaries and environmental areas such as elevations and watersheds. Typical geospatial analyses range from multilayer stacking to automatic construction of digital maps.
The NIC/NAVICE uses GIS to support operations. For example, every day the center receives more than nine gigabytes of digital data in the form of satellite imagery, METOC, arctic buoy, and model data, foreign ice center chart information, and aerial reconnaissance observations. They are analyzed and compiled into a weekly global and tactical ice chart in GIS or standard Navy over-the-horizon formats and can be overlaid directly on the common operational picture. Figure 1 shows the utility of this data when it is merged with bathymetric and other specialized data to make it suitable for mission planning and navigation. Soon this data will be overlaid automatically on the Electronic Chart and Display Information Systems-Navy that assists ships in navigating in and around ice edges. Submarines currently rely on the ice-edge data display.
Because plants and geological materials reflect light differently, collection of remote sensing data on the littorals gives planners a spatially extensive starting point for environmental assessment of the battle space. Analysts at the Naval Oceanographic Office and NIMA routinely evaluate coastal features such as coral reefs and mangrove forests. These agencies are working together to develop littoral warfare data for the Marine Corps. New technologies for processing and displaying satellite and other data can be used to produce valid approximations of the shoreline. Littoral warfare data will provide high-resolution coastal information such as riverine features, bank slopes, main channel slopes, and river flow. The Naval Oceanographic Office provides innovative products to the fleet. The special topographic oceanographic intelligence chart (STOIC) often includes beach surveys from the Marine Corps' topographic platoons. The STOIC gives analysts the means to integrate several pieces of spatial, text, graphic, and tabular data into a single page or poster-sized presentation, thus providing a ready reference for mission planners. The rapid environment assessment chart-tactical (REACT) provides several pieces of littoral battle-space information to the mission planner in a simple desktop GIS package. Using GIS, REACT developers provide a means of delivering digital spatial data sets—as well as the associated GIS-based software for viewing and querying the data in "layers." Data and software are installed on the laptop and personal computers of deployed personnel and have proved invaluable to planners involved in exercises from the Korean Peninsula to the sands of Egypt.
Today's remote sensing and computer technologies are providing critical spatial information to naval expeditionary forces and establishing a common framework for depicting factors that affect weapon systems and maneuver elements. This information supports functions ranging from routine navigation of the littorals to combat ashore. Joint task force planners rely on large-scale imagery and imagery-based digital maps and charts. Thus, rapid access to high-resolution battle-space data has become a reality. Lieutenant Buck Rogers can access the master map database and compute derivative survey information for posting to earth directorate web pages and use by follow-on "Star-fighters."
Lieutenant Colonel Nichols works on applied meteorological and oceanographic projects, and is president of Marine Information Resources Corporation in Ellicott City, Maryland. Commander Willis, a specialist in meteorology and oceanography, is commanding officer of the Naval Ice Center and director of the National Ice Center.