Empire Challenge pushes precision ISR
Empire Challenge pushes precision ISR
By Guy Norris
Aviation Week
July 22, 2009
New methods of gathering and sharing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data and getting information directly to the soldier in the field are entering a final demonstration phase in California before entering service with coalition forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The three week-long Empire Challenge '09 (EC09) is demonstrating some 40 initiatives for gaining a tactical edge across the extensive ranges of the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Station here. Run by U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM), the "live fly" EC09 includes simulations of ambushes, sniper and "shoot and scoot" mortar attacks, making and planting improvised explosive devices (IED), kidnapping and other elements of irregular warfare.
"The whole focus is to make sure critical ISR data gets down to the tactical edge, whether command and control goes from a three-star general to a staff sergeant in a Humvee with a laptop," says Air Force Col. George Krakie, USJFCOM Joint Intelligence Directorate military lead for EC09. Initiatives are aimed at digitally speeding up data dissemination, making it more precise, of better quality and developing seamless flows from service to service as well as between coalition partners.
EC09 involves real-time distribution of ISR data around 1,700 personnel worldwide at sites in the U.S., Australia, Canada and the U.K., as well as NATO, where analysts from Germany and France are also handling the feed from China Lake. Participating U.S. sites include the Joint Intelligence Lab in Suffolk, Va., the Combined Air Operations Center-Experimental at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va., as well as several service distributed common ground/surface system (DCGS) labs.
Airborne assets involved in EC09 include the DHC-6 Twin Otter-mounted AngelFire, a wide area persistent surveillance system containing a high-resolution wide-area imaging array, datalink equipped Shorts 360 Constant Hawk, Boeing F/A-18E/F and E/A-18G, ScanEagle unmanned air vehicle (UAV), Lockheed Martin F-16CJ, P-3C littoral surveillance radar system (LSRS), and U-21 Beechcraft King Air fitted with an L-3/Wescam-developed high-definition video system.
Others include the AeroStar UAV, equipped with UHF and S-band uplinks and an L-band downlink, the RC-135 Rivet Joint, Bell 407 fitted with the joint multi-mission electro-optical system (JMMES), a prospective U.S. Army and Navy sensor, and an advanced synthetic aperture radar (SAR)/camera-equipped U-2. A Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk also is involved as part of evaluations of MAJIIC (Multi-sensor Aerospace ground Joint ISR Interoperability Coalition), a system set up for cooperative data sharing between the U.S. and coalition forces.
Although U.S. Air Force-operated General Atomics Predator Bs are all in operational use overseas, Department of Homeland Security Customs and Border Protection-operated Predators also are scheduled to participate and demonstrate communications intelligence and interoperability. A General Atomics-flown King Air, fitted with a Lynx SAR, electro-optics/infrared system and a specially developed control and integration software package also is participating as a Predator surrogate. Late last month the company's Lynx Block 30 radar completed initial test flights on a Sky Warrior Block 1 UAV in support of the planned deployment of the first four units under the Army's extended range/multi-purpose unmanned program.
In use for the first time at EC, which has been held annually since 2004, is the SAIC-developed SensorWeb system, which provides open standards interoperability for a wide range of sensors. Other firsts at EC09 include the use of high-definition video, a wireless 3G tactical network that allows streaming video to be sent direct to handheld units, and a variant of the ScanEagle with a miniaturized SAR.
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Last edited by Lt-Col A. Tack; 07-30-2009 at 11:20 PM. Reason: fixed link
A member of U.S. Joint Forces Command's Joint Battlespace Awareness/ISR Integration Capability Team sets up operations
on Naval Weapons Station China Lake's Slate range during the Empire Challenge 2009 experiment. Conducted at sites around
the world, the demonstration is designed to test emerging technologies in a real-world field environment before they are
fielded to the troops in combat. (Courtesy photo)
Empire Challenge organizers take on the high-definition problem
By Ben Iannotta
July 21, 2009
RIDGECREST, Calif.
For the first time, an airborne high-definition video camera is feeding imagery into the U.S. and NATO intelligence network as part of the annual Empire Challenge ISR interoperability demonstration based at the Navy’s China Lake range in the Mojave Desert.
“We know high-definition is coming,” said Air Force Col. George Krakie, director of intelligence operations at U.S. Joint Forces Command, which organized the sixth-annual Empire Challenge demo.
Officials need to make sure their existing data standards and communications pipelines can handle it.
“Once this high-definition is coming down, it’s just like high-definition in hour house; there’s a lot of bandwidth issues with that,” said Krakie.
Versions of the camera, an L-3 Wescam MX-15, eventually will be carried by Predator-class unmanned aircraft, officials said. At the moment, the full motion video cameras flown over Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere deliver analog, coarser video, Krakie said.
During Empire Challenge, a piloted King Air turboprop aircraft is serving as a surrogate for the Predator. This gives organizers the flexibility to fly over the adjacent Navy base and the town of Ridgecrest, Krakie said.
The Federal Aviation Administration closely regulates flights of unmanned aircraft over populated areas.
High-definition flights aboard the King Air were hampered by a pressurization issue with the plane’s cockpit, Krakie said. “It looks like all those problems have been solved and it will be flying operationally tomorrow,” he said.
The King Air is owned by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the Predator manufacturer.
The new high-definition camera and traditional cameras on U-2 aircraft, Global Hawk UAVs, and ScanEagles are scheduled to look down on a series of Afghanistan-inspired simulation “vignettes” planned to run through July 30.
In some cases, F/A-18 fighters will drop inert bombs onto targets as forces practice responding to them.
The vignettes run the gamut from mock sniper attacks, to convoy ambushes, to simulated IED explosions, with members of a local Navy Reserve unit serving as the enemy.
Empire Challenge organizers hope to prove that intelligence analysts as far away as Australia and the NATO Command, Control and Communications Agency at The Hague can watch events unfold as they occur, and chat about them in online discussions, as officials said they must do more efficiently in Afghanistan.
So far, French and German imagery exploitation analysts have received data, Krakie said.
Until this year, Empire Challenge was organized by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, but Pentagon officials ordered Joint Forces Command to take over because of its mission of improving intelligence sharing among the military services and with U.S. allies.
“The whole focus of the event is to make sure critical intelligence gets down to the tactical edge,” said Krakie. “But it’s more than just the tactical edge. It’s the whole command and control structure,” he added.
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An empire challenged
Coalition demo will focus on better intel-sharing in Afghanistan
By Sean Gallagher
July 01, 2009
Applying ISR to the challenges of irregular warfare in Afghanistan and integrating it more effectively in support of airstrikes will be among the major themes when American, British and other coalition officials gather in July in California for the fifth-annual Empire Challenge networking demonstration, which will involve more than 2,500 coalition forces around the world.
With the U.S. shifting its emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan, officials in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and U.S. Joint Forces Command plan to focus on the specific coalition intelligence-sharing capabilities commanders will need there. Perhaps to make the point, they have assigned Joint Forces Command, which has spearheaded U.S. efforts to improve sharing among its own forces, to lead the demonstration centered at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif.
During the July 21 demonstration, coalition partners will operate ISR aircraft, including ScanEagles and other UAVs, at China Lake. Organizers chose the site partly for its geographic similarity to Iraq and Afghanistan. They will attempt to share intelligence information among one another using the latest intelligence-sharing software.
“The key thing for us is our relationship with the coalition forces,” said U.S. Air Force Col. George J. Krakie, the deputy director of intelligence at Joint Forces Command. “It’s not enough anymore for our Predator feeds to feed into our systems — they have to feed into everyone’s systems.”
U.S. and British officials have been pushing for advances in coalition warfare for years, but commanders and policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic have said international forces waging the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan must work harder on interoperability if they are to succeed there.
The renewed emphasis on sharing intelligence is embedded in the Defense Department’s latest Capstone Concept for Joint Operations, signed in January by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Other commanders have also reiterated the need for better international coordination.
“Our strategy must acknowledge and embrace that we fight in coalitions. We must have a coalition-friendly command and control, and a coalition-friendly approach to operations,” U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation and commander of Joint Forces Command, told attendees at the Joint Warfighting Conference in May.
Raptor
Empire Challenge — the name refers to the British empire — had a low-key start in 2005. U.S. and British defense officials wanted to see if they could each use photos from Britain’s Reconnaissance Airborne pod, or RAPTOR, which is installed on Tornado jets.
“What started this was a question that a U.K. flag officer asked to one of his American counterparts,” said John Kittle, the project manager for Empire Challenge ’09 at the Joint Forces Command, which hosts the exercise. “Essentially, he said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this great new airborne platform sensor, and it gathers a lot of data, but I can’t process or exploit it all. Nor can I seamlessly get it to my American coalition partners. What can we do about that?’”
The conversation led to the first Empire Challenge exercise at China Lake, which consisted of two aircraft: a Royal Air Force Tornado G4 equipped with a RAPTOR imaging pod, and a U.S. U-2 spy plane, plus a prototype imagery ground station and about 50 people, Kittle said.
Since then, the event has nearly doubled in size each year, he said, “to the point where last year, we had 2,000-plus people participating,” including some at far-flung locations around the world. Joint Forces Command began participating in the event in 2006. This will be the first time the Pentagon has put Empire Challenge completely under the joint command’s management. Previously, the U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency managed it.
The number of participants in Empire Challenge is projected to be the largest ever, with more than 2,500 military and civilian personnel involved around the world.
The scenarios for the exercise this year will focus on four areas, Kittle said. “The first is irregular warfare and the counter-IED [improvised explosive device] problem, which of course is very big right now, both in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said. “The second is ISR in support of strike operations, which we call ISR-Strike Integration.
The third one is joint ISR management, which is a capability we’re trying to develop to make maximum use and efficiency of the ISR capabilities we have. And the last is multidomain awareness, which is kind of an umbrella term for multiple areas — improving the situational awareness information for war fighters across the maritime, ground and air operational domains.”
Much of the work in those four areas will revolve around testing of the Distributed Common Ground/Surface system (DCGS) — a network of intelligence work stations that, once completed, will allow uniformed analysts from all U.S. services to share information seamlessly. Organizers plan to test the integration of the DCGS network with NATO-member ISR systems.
Last year’s event was a major test of interoperability of the U.S. services’ implementations of the DCGS Integration Backbone (DIB) — the middleware that facilitates the distribution of ISR. It also was the first major test for connections between DCGS and the Multi-Sensor Aerospace-Ground Joint ISR Interoperability Coalition (MAJIIC) project Coalition Data Broker, a variation on the DIB developed by Raytheon for NATO. It allows NATO members to access the ISR data coursing over the U.S. DIB system.
“We’ve been pretty successful in making the basic data exchange process work in previous years, and we’re trying to build on that for this year.”
For last year’s exercise, Raytheon put 29 DIBs in place, and installed them all around the world, said Mark Bigham, director of business development for Raytheon Defense and Civil Mission Solutions. The DIBs were then interconnected, or “federated,” for “four different classification levels, in seven different countries, all interfaced together, sharing intelligence information across the coalition enterprise,” he said.
Interoperability issues
The testing last year exposed a number of issues with interoperability among DCGS stations — not just between coalition partners, but among the individual U.S. military services.
The most glaring involved the U.S. Navy, which chose to lock its DIB behind a firewall to demonstrate a possible alternative approach called Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES), which would achieve data compatible through common standards. The Navy was able to share some data with other services, but the DCGS at Charleston, S.C., came up red on the official Empire Challenge scorecard, meaning other services could not access enough of its data. “Making sure that both sides use the right data, so we can pull off each other’s systems and push products back and forth — those are lessons learn that we had last year, and we’re continuing to improve on as well,” Kittle said.
There are several major revisions of DCGS up for testing at Empire Challenge this year, Bigham said. The latest version of the DCGS software, called 10.2, will be partially tested. “For the very first time, we’re going to expose some of the DCGS 10.2 capabilities to the Empire Challenge enterprise,” Bigham said.
As for the latest DIB software, DIB 1.3, will allow for DCGS systems connected to a common network to automatically recognize and integrate with each other. “We’re going to cross-federate three different domains,” Bigham said.
Testing that federation of systems is one of the major goals of Empire Challenge ’09.
“This year, one of our key things that we’re trying to do is develop an interface between the U.S. collection management system and its counterpart on the NATO side, the NATO collection management system,” Kittle said. “We’re actually engineering an interface between those two capabilities, so at the end, a coalition member can participate in the joint or coalition forces collection management process. That is, a coalition member on his side can nominate a collection target, or an exploitation requirement, and that gets into the U.S. collection management system, and it’s acted on from there. That will be a very big win that we’re anticipating this year, and there’s a lot of technical requirements, and issues related to that, building the right interface, and then testing it during this event.”
The ISR data generated out of China Lake will be shared over eight different networks to sites across three different security domains — U.S. only, 4 Eyes (meaning Australia, Canada, the U.K. and U.S.), and 9 Eyes (meaning NATO). The networks will connect to several U.S. sites as well as ISR centers in the U.K., Canada and Australia, as well as the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency in the Netherlands.
The source of most of that data will be the field portion of the exercise at China Lake. The U.K.’s Ministry of Defence is sending a Sea King Mk 7 airborne surveillance and control helicopter, Kittle said. “They like to bring those kind of airborne platforms to China Lake because it represents the operational environment that they’re going to be deploying to — Afghanistan or Iraq — high, hot and dusty.” he said.
On the ground, Kittle said, the U.K. contingent is “bringing a system they’re developing that’s a force-protection system that’s a mix of various types of sensors — cameras on sticks, or man-portable detection systems that they use for both base defense and personnel defense.” The Canadian armed forces are bringing “a couple of exploitation systems with them in the hope that they can get access to U.S. or other coalition partner data, and work with that data collection information on their exploitation systems,” Kittle said.
The amount of ISR equipment on hand at China Lake will be less than overwhelming, however, for precisely the same reason the U.S. and its partners are conducting the demonstration. The hardware is busy supporting forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Some of the coalition members are a little strapped as to being able to provide assets,” Kittle said. “Their uniformed services are fully committed — sometimes they just can’t spare additional platforms because they’re all deployed.”
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Raytheon Unveils Several Firsts at Empire Challenge 09
Intelligence demonstration shared vital reconnaissance information among joint and coalition operations
CHINA LAKE, Calif., Sept. 1, 2009 /PRNewswire/
Raytheon Company unveiled several firsts while playing a significant role in Empire Challenge 09.
A recent joint military demonstration, Empire Challenge 09 highlighted how U.S. and coalition forces can better work together to collect, share and analyze intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) information.
Raytheon's technology, including the U.S. Air Force's Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) Block 10.2 and the DCGS Integration Backbone (DIB), was prevalent in several key systems during the demonstration.
Raytheon also unveiled a new multi-intelligence tool called MULTI-INT Exploitation Tool, or MIETool.
Raytheon used its rapid High-Speed Guard cross-domain solution to share secure data between enclaves. The service enabled ISR information exchanges between U.S. and coalition partners at sites worldwide via the DIB and Raytheon's Multi-sensor Aerospace-ground Joint ISR Interoperability Coalition system.
For the second year, Raytheon High-Speed Guard transmitted multiple, simultaneous high-definition and standard-definition video feeds while supporting thousands of cross-domain DIB queries and product retrievals. High-Speed Guard moved hundreds of imagery files and a half-million cursor on-target messages every day. The High-Speed Guard supported more than five times as much traffic as previous Empire Challenge events while using the same legacy hardware.
"Bringing the best and most innovative information-sharing technologies to this year's Empire Challenge provided our engineers the opportunity to test best-of-breed technologies in a real-world environment," said William P. Jones, vice president of Raytheon's Defense and Civil Mission Solutions. "We had the opportunity to unveil several new firsts that will provide new capabilities for our warfighters and give them an advantage in current operations."
Raytheon and the Air Force demonstrated a scalable DCGS system with enhanced flexibility for mobile units and small units at the demonstration. They showcased key elements of the DCGS Block 10.2 by delivering imagery exploitation, Web-centric information sharing and situational awareness for command and control ISR within a single integrated solution. Raytheon leveraged the open standards DIB v1.3 by seamlessly integrating the key imagery exploitation, National Imagery Transmission Format (NITF) data and multi-intelligence visualization aspects of DCGS 10.2 provided by the scalable DCGS service.
Raytheon and the Air Force achieved another significant first when fourth-generation fighter "TWENTYGLOW ELINT" data was successfully ingested and cataloged by the scalable DCGS system and displayed in near-real time in unison with other intelligence data using the DCGS Block 10.2 multi-intelligence visualization capability provided from Langley Air Force Base, Va.
Raytheon also unveiled its new MIETool, which successfully produced an exploitation product depicted on Google Earth containing electronic intelligence information overlaid on a Global Hawk NITF image. This application provides analysts with a single integrated application for multisource exploitation and fusion with a detailed DIB query capability, an automated image and video retrieval mechanism and a user-controllable overlay system.
The MIETool allows analysts to spend more time on the exploitation and fusion process and less time on the information infrastructure, allowing them to complete their tasks quicker and with greater accuracy. The MIETool also boasts retrieval and exploitation capabilities, video stream playback with frame capture, and image retrieval and creation of moving target indicators and tracks from motion imagery and full-motion video.
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Lockheed Martin Leverages Sensor Capability Of Fighter Aircraft To Improve Battlespace Awareness
F-16 Provides Innovative Way to Increase Tactical ISR Persistence
Denver, Colo., September 1st, 2009
Existing on-board sensor capability of tactical fighter aircraft can be leveraged to provide near real-time intelligence and enhanced situational awareness, as demonstrated by Lockheed Martin during the recent U.S. Air Force Empire Challenge exercise.
For the first time, the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) received and processed electronic warfare data from an F-16CJ aircraft, which relayed signals information from the air to a ground station and pushed report-level data out to the intelligence and operational communities.
“In this era of irregular warfare, it’s imperative to get real-time intelligence to warfighters that are in theater,” said Jim Quinn, vice president with Lockheed Martin’s Information Systems & Global Services-Defense. “Taking advantage of the fact that fighters get to the tactical edge faster than conventional ISR platforms, we proved that we can enhance intelligence sharing across both the ISR and command and control communities by using the Air Force DCGS to process and relay sensor data from fighter aircraft.”
Typically, fighter aircraft operate in the forward-edge of the battlespace with self-protection sensors. But those sensors could also provide increased intelligence collection over hostile areas by sending their data off board for analysis and integration.
During the Empire Challenge exercise, the Lockheed Martin team used a modified F-16CJ aircraft equipped with a HARM Targeting System pod to send signals intelligence directly to the Air Force DCGS via a developmental Advanced Tactical Data Link.
By leveraging the power of modern data links and Global Information Grid-like networks, the F-16CJ was able to down-link sensor data real-time to the DCGS at Langley AFB in Virginia for processing.
In seconds, the resulting SIGINT report was posted to the DCGS Integration Backbone, which contributed to enhanced situational awareness and enabled tactical and strategic users to receive the reports. Lockheed Martin’s fighter-based ISR initiative proved both the technical ease and operational benefit of leveraging existing sensor systems to improve persistent surveillance of the battlespace.
Empire Challenge 09 is an annual exercise hosted by U.S. Joint Forces Command to demonstrate enhanced ISR and C2 interoperability and capabilities.
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Nice.
Making that tactical Int. grid all the closer. Now all they need is to roll it out across the board, and utilise it in a meaningful way in the near future.
Sniper ATP Demonstrates Enhanced ISR Capability at Empire Challenge
ORLANDO, FL, September 15th, 2009
Lockheed Martin’s Sniper® Advanced Targeting Pod (ATP) demonstrated its advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capability during the recent joint forces Empire Challenge exercise.
The enhancements respond to U.S. defense officials' call for improved ISR for convoy route reconnaissance and battlefield situational awareness.
During the joint and coalition military exercise conducted at Nellis Air Force Base, NV, and China Lake Naval Air Station, CA, pilots demonstrated a Sniper pod with enhanced algorithms, a digital data recorder and a high-definition sensor and datalink. U.S. Air Force crews flew the pod on an F-16 in support of the exercise’s key objective – to evaluate proposed ISR solutions for Warfighter requirements.
“Field reports from ongoing contingency operations routinely attest to the use of the Sniper ATP to conduct non-traditional ISR missions,” said Ken Fuhr, Fixed-Wing Program director at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. “To better serve the Warfighter, we’re expanding the pod’s role as an ISR tool. Empire Challenge provided an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the pod’s capability in support of improvised explosive device search, convoy support and armed overwatch.”
During the exercise, Sniper pod’s ISR capabilities demonstrated autonomous reconnaissance and data collection, providing a complete battlefield picture for intelligence operations. Directed by pre-defined or pilot-designated flight points, this capability can be used to monitor convoy routes or wide areas of interest, in addition to capturing images of infrastructure such as oil pipelines, power lines and roadways.
Packaged in a single lightweight pod, Sniper ATP’s enhanced image clarity provides critical long-range, positive identification of both moving and stationary air and ground targets, as well as real-time targeting for advanced laser-guided weapons. It is also equipped with a video downlink that relays high-resolution streaming video to forward-deployed forces for non-traditional ISR and rapid target coordination.
Competitively selected as the U. S. Air Force’s advanced targeting pod in 2001, the Sniper ATP is used by the U.S. Air Force in current combat operations and is actively deployed on five different U.S. and coalition platforms.
With a proven 98 percent field availability rate and demonstrated supportability worldwide, Sniper ATP is designed to be “plug-and-play” for optimal flexibility.
The Sniper pod is operational on U.S. Air Force, Air National Guard and multinational F-16, F-15, B-1, CF-18, Harrier, A-10 and Tornado aircraft. It is currently being integrated and is flying on the B-52. Sniper pods provide discriminating capability to the U.S. Air Force, Air National Guard and 11 international air forces, including coalition partners.
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U.S. Air Force F-16CJ Block 50 equipped with a Sniper advanced targeting pod. [Photo by LMTAS]
Remember that bit, because you may just be seeing a UCAV built around a SNIPER pod system in the near future.During the exercise, Sniper pod’s ISR capabilities demonstrated autonomous reconnaissance and data collection, providing a complete battlefield picture for intelligence operations. Directed by pre-defined or pilot-designated flight points, this capability can be used to monitor convoy routes or wide areas of interest, in addition to capturing images of infrastructure such as oil pipelines, power lines and roadways.
As an ISR asset, its worth its weight in gold.
Intriguing idea.Originally Posted by 2495
Completely agree.As an ISR asset, its worth its weight in gold.
The pod is operational on many different aicraft types and multiple aircraft of each type could be involved. Any aircraft carrying a Sniper pod could be collecting ISR data. Lot of data collectors.
(nice to see someone posting in this thread besides me)
Every SNIPER pod equipped aircrfat can now be used in an ISR role - including the adapted SNIPER (upgraded and mitiurised) fitted into the F-35.
It was this pod inside the F-35 that gave a company the idea to make an entire unmanned long loiter stealthy UCAV (armed precision strike) and have it intergrated into the upcoming sensor net.
Hell of a system, and a life saver many times over already. Oh and the beauty is, the pod can let an aircraft strike without ever turning a radar on.
$73.9M to Raytheon for USAF DCGS Net-Centric Enterprise Services
$73.9M to Raytheon for USAF DCGS Net-Centric Enterprise Services
08-Oct-2009 14:37 EDT
Raytheon in Garland, TX received a $73.9 million contract (F19628-03-D-0015, P00061) to provide net-centric enterprise services, open enterprise service-based architecture, web-based and client-based tools for the US Air Force’s Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) Block 10.2.
DCGS is a distributed worldwide network that began as a move to create common ground stations to receive information from aircraft like the U-2 and Global Hawk…
The upgraded DCGS 10.2 is designed to overcome the limitations of existing ISR systems, which tend to operate independently of each other, the so-called “stovepipe” problem. This inhibits the sharing of vital information across systems and services.
With the introduction of DCGS 10.2 capabilities [PDF], current intelligence data from many different intelligence, surveillance & reconnaissance (ISR) platforms is now posted to the network for immediate use, and can be more easily combined with information from other intelligence platforms to improve understanding of what one is seeing.
The DCGS Block 20 upgrade, which was intended to improve signals-intelligence exploitation and its integration with imagery intelligence, has been cancelled, according to a Jan 27/09 briefing [PDF] by Col Rob Dominguez, commander of the 350th Electronic Systems Wing at Hanscom Air Force Base, which manages the DCGS program.
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DCGS Laptop
Last edited by Lt-Col A. Tack; 10-14-2009 at 06:41 PM.
Battlefield Intelligence: Easy to Collect, Tough to Share
November 2009
By Grace V. Jean
The U.S. military has deployed unmanned aircraft and other information collection devices at a pace that exceeds the capabilities of battlefield intelligence systems to archive, analyze and disseminate the video and imagery. Networks with limited bandwidth further compound the problem by slowing down data transmissions.
To combat the backlog, defense officials have distributed portable video receivers to ground units. While they can now access imagery that a drone is beaming down in real time, troops have complained that the solution tends to yield only a “soda straw” view of the battlefield.
Troops want to maximize the utility of the intelligence exploitation nodes, says John Kittle, project manager for Empire Challenge, an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance event sponsored by U.S. Joint Forces Command.
War fighters are seeking improved ISR support for strike operations and roadside bomb search missions.
They also would like more persistent surveillance capabilities to track insurgent commanders in urban areas, he tells reporters during a teleconference from Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif., where more than 1,700 participants were taking part in the 6th annual event.
Many of them were plugged into the demonstration from distributed sites around the world, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and The Hague, Netherlands, where German and French imagery exploiters were seated at terminals looking at the data being collected and providing their analysis.
The focus of the annual event is to ensure that critical data that are gathered by U.S. and coalition teams can quickly be accessed by troops in battle, says Air Force Col. George Krakie, director for intelligence operations at JFCOM and the military lead for the challenge.
Out on the desert range, troops proceed through live scenarios that emulate battlefield conditions found in Afghanistan and Iraq. California National Guard members conduct convoy operations and cordon-and-search missions and are attacked by Navy reservists playing the role of insurgents. The hope is that the simulation will give the Defense Department an inkling of how technologies would fare in the war zones, officials say.
One of them is a new sensor ball that is being tested to “vastly improve the quality of video that comes down” from surveillance aircraft, says Kittle. With a video stream that will be protected by type I and type III encryption, the MX-15 high-definition digital ball, made by L-3 Wescam, is destined for the Predator unmanned aircraft program.
The system’s demonstration is offering intelligence analysts a first-time opportunity to discover the interoperability challenges associated with high-definition full -motion video. “We’re very anxious to work that problem,” Krakie says.
Army analysts are attempting to receive feeds from other sensors that they haven’t had direct contact with before, he adds. For example, the Navy P-3 Orion’s littoral surveillance radar system — a wide-aperture active electronically-scanned array surveillance radar that captures moving target data — traditionally has fed into naval intelligence-analysis centers. In the exercise, that information is transmitting directly into the Army’s distributed common ground system for the first time, officials note.
The DCGS is a battlefield intelligence system that processes information collected from sensors and other networks.
“All this data has been available at some level out there, but it hasn’t been brought into an integrated architecture so that you can put all the pieces of the puzzle together and get the picture that you’re looking for,” says Krakie. That is critical because an activity that may seem completely benign from one sensor’s perspective could look a little more suspicious when a different sensor is added to the mix. Networking these sensors allows analysts to link those disparate bits of intelligence, he says.
“We’re very excited to have these new sensors and new capabilities in here. But from our perspective, it’s all about moving that data so that it can get to the tactical edge,” says Krakie.
Just because a drone is flying over a town doesn’t mean the troops who are watching its streaming video understand everything that is going on in the town, says Navy Cmdr. Dave Crissman, operations lead for Empire Challenge. “You don’t know where all the bad guys are just because you have an eye in the sky,” he tells National Defense.
In the exercise, he is role-playing a brigade commander at a tactical operations center. In one scenario, a British imagery analyst operating from a node in the United Kingdom chats online with his team. As they simultaneously watch feeds from a Boeing ScanEagle, his analysis assists them in deciding where that drone needs to fly next.
“If you can get that kind of information, start building a picture of who the bad guys are, then you can use that eye in the sky to help execute a mission you’ve figured out needs to be done. That’s what we’re trying to do here,” Crissman says. Providing the analysis to troops in the humvees gives them the full benefit of all the intelligence that’s being developed, he adds.
“They really like it particularly if guys like me step back and let them execute the mission that they’ve been given,” he says.
Pushing more ISR to troops out in the field is not simply a matter of giving them more handheld video receivers and laptops. Crissman says that a lot depends on the communications pipe in addition to the equipment. Teams are testing multiple bandwidth pipes to examine the benefits of higher bandwidth.
“Bandwidth is a challenge. But I don’t see it as a problem,” says David Barton, president of EchoStorm Worldwide LLC, a Suffolk, Va.-based contractor that specializes in video and data management. The challenge in distributing full-motion video in theater relates to the network infrastructure, he says.
It is possible to transmit video to users who have 56 kilobits per second or less connectivity, or even over tactical radios, by reducing resolution and frame rate. In an experiment for the Defense Department, the company was able to push out one frame of video per second with metadata — information about the video including the coordinates, range and speed — over six miles with CB-like communications. “We have been really good at being able to service users who are truly disadvantaged with little communications,” says Barton.
For users who lack network access but who possess remotely operated video enhanced receivers, or ROVERs, the company produces the “Multiplayer,” an installable video player application that allows them to view imagery and the associated metadata over a radio-frequency link.
Other manufacturers are attempting to develop portable products to receive UAV downlinks in the field. Communications company Harris Corp. has unveiled a ROVER in the size, shape and weight of its handheld military radio product line. The RF-7800T can receive L-band, S-band and C-band UAV feeds and display them on an embedded screen or on a monocle to be worn over the eye.
Engineers have incorporated features, such as channel scanning, that are familiar to users of the company’s radios, program manager Chris Martin tells National Defense during a trade show in London. “It’s easy for the user to find that broadcast downlink,” he says.
For the intelligence analysts, a Florida-based software technology company, Modus Operandi, is developing tools to speed up the data filtering and fusion processes.
It has produced an application called joint unified maritime protection system-over the horizon for the Army’s DCGS battlefield intelligence system. Sensor data from eight different sources — ranging from signals intelligence aircraft and automatic information system ship transponders to free-text police reports — is scanned, sorted and flagged automatically by software.
“We’ve automated the process that an analyst would go through in his head, of looking up the status and finding and connecting the dots,” says George Eanes, vice president for business development.
The company plans to deploy the technology to a U.S. seaport for testing as early as next year.
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Seaborne Intelligence Comes Aboard
By Robert K. Ackerman
December 2009
The U.S. Navy’s Distributed Common Ground System–Navy (DCGS-N) is undergoing operational testing aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman.
As U.S. Navy intelligence changes course, a system changes with it.
The U.S. Navy is designing its newest intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting system to fit advanced information systems that already have begun to take shape ashore and afloat. The first increment is receiving its shipboard introduction as a major milestone nears this spring.
The Distributed Common Ground System–Navy (DCGS-N) has been evolving for several years. About two years ago, the program shifted course, and it now is being tested at sea aboard an aircraft carrier.
The Navy is trailing the other services in DCGS implementation, but that may give it an advantage when it comes to incorporating it into the fleet. The Navy knows the networking environment into which DCGS-N will be incorporated, so it is able to tailor the system to fit into that architecture.
And, having a better understanding of command and warfighter requirements than what existed at the beginning of the Global War on Terrorism has enabled the Navy to implement a system that comes close to the users’ wish list. The system is more likely to serve as the basis for new capabilities than as a legacy system that needs to be upgraded or replaced.
Bob Poor, assistant program manager for DCGS-N increment 1, states that DCGS-N will allow the fleet more flexibility from both workstation and work sensor perspectives. In the past, individual intelligence disciplines—the “-INTS”—would be addressed by separate computers. However, DCGS-N workstations can address multiple mission needs.
The onset of the Global War on Terrorism led to a five-year period in which the Navy learned lessons that helped it develop requirements and concepts. Over time, the service incorporated new ideas on how best to optimize the system beyond its original design. The DCGS-N has been able to satisfy some of those ideas, often by reconfiguring existing software. Another approach has been to add software to ships outside of the DCGS-N construct, and the program has coordinated efforts with fleet personnel to facilitate that goal.
For example, the 7th Fleet headquartered in Japan is trying to federate imagery analysis across the Asia-Pacific region. The fleet is working with the U.S. Pacific Command and the Navy’s Pacific Fleet commander in Hawaii.
The aim is to enable different elements of the joint community and the Navy to divide image analysis to avoid redundant activities.
Several applications that are under consideration for DCGS-N fielding were not even under consideration two years ago, Poor says. The DCGS-N program is working to install these applications aboard ship now, after which it would try to incorporate them into a future DCGS-N baseline.
Over the long term, Poor sees DCGS-N achieving two goals. One is to help connect the Navy’s operational intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets to the broader Defense Department and intelligence community enterprise. The second goal is for DCGS-N to act as a tactical gateway to share Navy-unique sensor data across that enterprise.
The first operational unit has been installed aboard the USS Harry S Truman, where it has undergone operational testing. That unit recently completed its initial operational test and evaluation, and formal results will be reported shortly. Informal returns from the ship have been positive.
“The crew loves it,” says Poor of the DCGS-N aboard the Harry S Truman. He reports that the supercarrier’s combat systems officer describes it as a “very stable system” about which operators and maintainers have expressed “significantly more confidence in the DCGS-N applications suite than in any other tool recently introduced in the afloat intelligence, command and control domain.”
Poor also relates that the U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) rated it highly following Empire Challenge 09. JFCOM’s after-action report states that DCGS-N succeeded in meeting its primary and stretch goals.
One of these goals involved proving a full federation between DCGS-N and the other members of the DCGS family. These included the DCGS Integration Backbone (DIB), and it especially involved sharing data among different versions of the DIB. DCGS-N also was able to share different types of imagery through the image product library.
In testing at China Lake, California, DCGS-N was incorporated with the Distributed Information Operations Services (DIOS) and the Battlespace Awareness Sensors Enterprise Service (BASES) portal. In this configuration, it served as a DIOS node in a multilevel security configuration to the National Security Agency. This allowed it to publish data into the DIB metadata catalog and share it during Empire Challenge.
Capt. Robert Parker, USN, is the program manager for battlespace awareness and information operations, Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (PEO C4I). He lauds the support from the user community, saying that the fleet buy-in has been “very spectacular.” The captain relates that DCGS-N has been assembled largely from existing products, and integrating many existing applications into a seamless whole did prove more difficult than expected.
Even though DCGS has close relatives among the other services, interoperability is neither seamless nor assured. Each of the services’ DCGS programs are at different funding and maturity levels. Trying to enable all of the DCGSs to share data in a truly interoperable manner remains a challenge, Poor maintains.
Capt. Parker notes that the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force versions are well-established and have much greater funding than DCGS-N.
For example, the Army’s DCGS-A is extensive with built-in capabilities such as video teleconferencing. It also has a mature human intelligence (HUMINT) capability, which allows it to operate to a greater degree at the tactical level than the Navy is considering.
For the Air Force, DCGS-AF already operates five sites.
“Each one of the DCGS programs of record really is tailored to its individual service’s requirements,” Capt. Parker points out. “Where we come together is where we have the requirement to expose data to one another. We can all have different on-the-ground tactical and operational implementations, and where we actually bring all of the systems together is through our DIB federation,” he says.
The captain allows that the different status of the three services’ DCGS programs makes it difficult for the Navy to keep DCGS-N synchronized on the DIB. Multiple DIB variants already are in operation, and each service builds and uses them according to their own requirements. Keeping the DCGSs synchronized so that they can communicate with one another is a challenge, he allows.
Because the core components of DCGS-N consist of mature commercial and government off-the-shelf products, the Navy system faced its own integration challenges, Poor notes. When a core component specializing in one particular -INT is changed or upgraded, that may affect other core components. Similarly, if a workstation utility product is changed across a ship’s network or even the whole Navy, the DCGS-N’s ability to share data may be affected adversely.
“It can be an ongoing ‘whack-a-mole’ challenge to ensure that the integration continues to be there,” he says.
Poor points out that the Navy’s service-specific approach involves coordinating DCGS-N through the Navy’s networks programs, particularly the Consolidated Afloat Network and Enterprise Services program, or CANES. This program features two core components: a hardware component known as the common computing environment, or CCE; and a software component known as afloat core services.
The innovative nature of the DCGS-N approach entails evolving the program into what would be largely a software program, Poor explains. Future iterations would eschew hardware in favor of software implementation. “We’re looking to leverage as much of the networking infrastructure way ahead as possible,” he states.
Capt. Parker offers that the system can transition gracefully to the CANES environment, where it primarily will be a software provider. By the time it is a part of the CANES hardware baseline, the program will be able to provide new capabilities every two years.
The captain notes that the maritime environment in which the Navy operates drives the applications that will ride on top of DCGS-N. In particular, the Navy connects to different types of sensors than do the Army and Air Force. The Army employs large numbers of ground sensors, and the Air Force operates many unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The Navy’s main concern is to absorb data from a host of airborne sensors, and then provide that data to the other services. For example, the F-18’s reconnaissance pod can provide imagery data that can be used operationally throughout the Navy afloat and ashore as well as by the other services.
Navy intelligence has extremely close ties with the Navy command and control (C2) community, Poor points out.
At the core of intelligence activities always has been the ability to share data seamlessly from the ISR realm to the C2 node.
Beyond that, the Navy is looking at how it can use the Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA’s) Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) to share data with the broader Global Information Grid (GIG) customer field.
The Navy has the DCGS-N Enterprise Node, or DEN, at the National Maritime Intelligence Center at Suitland, Maryland, which aggregates all of the data from Navy ships. The Navy would access the NCES through DEN.
DCGS-N exploitation suites are located at the numbered fleet maritime operations centers and on large amphibious ships and aircraft carriers. The goal is to have 36 exploitation suites—11 on carriers, 11 on large-deck amphibious ships and 14 at maritime operations centers and training sites.
As always, long-term plans run afoul of budgetary constraints, especially during periods of change. The Navy is bringing intelligence and network centricity together, beginning with its new N-2/N-6 construct. That in turn will lead to new approaches for meeting emerging cybersecurity and information dominance concepts and requirements. However, the Navy faces “expectation management challenges” because of its limited budgetary resources, Poor points out.
Capt. Parker adds that DCGS-N is reaching the fleet amid a great deal of pent-up demand for it. Many requirements evolved during system development, and developers needed to be “parsimonious” to avoid changing the system baseline.
“When you go through two years of development, the requirements that were exciting two years ago and the requirements that are available right now are two different things,” he says. “But, a system that is continually developing isn’t a system that’s fielding. It’s a testament to the great relationship we’ve had with the fleet that we’ve managed to stabilize the requirements baseline long enough to get a system out—which then gives us a basis for meeting some of those other requirements that have come out.”
Poor offers that one big challenge facing the program is to maintain adaptability while continuing to satisfy statutory and regulatory requirements. These can range from documentation to testing, and each event adds cost and time to program development.
In March 2010, the DCGS-N program will reach its full deployment decision review. Capt. Parker notes that the program is fielding capabilities in two blocks. The current fielding is the Block 1 baseline, and by 2012-2013 the program will field Block 2. This will allow an upgrade to provide an interface to the various families of Navy UAVs that will be operating at the operational and tactical levels. This data will be available at both maritime operation centers and the joint community.
Poor offers that this might be the key to unifying the diverse UAV data that is burgeoning in the Navy.
These are elements of DCGS-N in increment 1. Experts are beginning the gap analysis to determine the capabilities that will be needed for increment 2. Its target date is the fiscal year 2014 time frame.
Another thrust is to extend the range of DCGS-N. This would entail finding a way to place its capability on unit-level platforms such as destroyers and cruisers. This would make DCGS-N information more widely available.
“In the intelligence business, it’s hard to figure out ahead of time who needs the information,” Capt. Parker says. “So, it’s better to get the information to as many people as possible and allow them to do good work with it.”
The program will award a prime mission product contract in this fiscal year, the captain offers. A strong industry team has supported the effort so far, but the program is looking forward to working with one prime contractor for faster and more efficient fielding.
Capt. Parker allows that the program wants partners that are plugged into the intelligence business line. He wants program goals met using existing elements to the maximum extent possible.
Poor echoes the captain’s point. “There simply isn’t enough money for us to reinvent the wheel. If there is a capability out there that we can leverage, that certainly is what we want to do. We’re looking for industry partners that intuitively understand that in their DNA.”
WEB RESOURCE
PEO C4I: http://enterprise.spawar.navy.mil/bo...=38&subcat=180
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Networking the Navy
Bad grades behind it, the U.S. Navy closes in on joining national intel network
By Evan Sweetman
January 01, 2010
The U.S. Navy is poised to decide in March whether it is ready to link dozens of ships and shore sites in an intelligence network that would be plugged into the national network the Pentagon has struggled to deploy fully in the years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The decision whether to install the new computers and software services will be up to Vice Adm. Jack Dorsett, the Navy’s deputy chief of operations for information dominance. He runs a new Navy headquarters organization called N2/N6 that is in charge of naval intelligence systems. If he gives the go-ahead based on the results of a recent evaluation, the Navy and its contractors will have the job of making up for lost time.
Twice, early versions of the Distributed Common Ground/Surface System-Navy (DCGS-N) failed tests during the U.S. Empire Challenge intelligence-sharing demonstrations. During Empire Challenge, the services collect video and other intelligence and attempt to disseminate it to far-flung sites.
The Navy came up red on the official score card in 2008 because DCGS users outside the Navy could not get enough Navy intelligence to come up on their computers. The service also came up red in 2007.
A Navy manager expressed confidence that a total reworking of the program has overcome those problems. He predicts the Navy soon will be ready to join the overarching Distributed Common Ground/Surface network, which includes Army and Air Force versions, and eventually will include Special Operations Command and U.S. intelligence agencies. Intelligence officials want to ensure commanders can share tactical information, while analysts at the spy agencies watch for evidence of planned terror attacks.
The Navy’s new plan is a challenging one. Between 2010 and 2013, Navy engineers and a team of contractors to-be-decided must install DCGS systems at nine ground sites and on 21 large-deck ships — nine aircraft carriers, two amphibious command ships and 10 amphibious attack ships. That is the first planned increment. Destroyers and cruisers would be equipped in Increment 2 in 2013 and 2014.
“We are a very schedule-risk-centric program because of time lost as a result of the business model and schedule the previous program was using,” said the Navy’s Robert Poor, assistant manager for the first increment. ”As we get into more of a production mode in this program, I see this shifting from a schedule-centric-risk to more of a cost-centric-risk” program.
The Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) began reworking the program after the first Empire Challenge failure in 2007, devising a new schedule and budget.
BAE Systems led the DCGS installations on the first three ships and three ground stations used in the evaluation, but the Navy put out a request for proposals in November for the installation work on the remaining 30 ships and shore sites.
Poor was upbeat about recent developments. In July, the Navy earned a green mark at Empire Challenge 2009, and in September, it completed the operational evaluation trials aboard the aircraft carrier Truman at its home port in Norfolk, Va., and two other ships. The formal test report by the Navy’s Operational Test Evaluation Force was still being completed last month, but officials at PMW-120, the branch of SPAWAR responsible for developing things such as DCGS, were given a peek at the draft. All systems are go, Poor said.
The Navy has launched an information-dominance initiative led by Dorsett’s N2/N6 organization. Because of that work, additional functions will be added to the DCGS system in the future, but specifics have yet to be defined, Poor said. “In terms of capabilities, we’re being proactive,” he said.
The Navy has lagged behind the Air Force and Army in developing and deploying its DCGS system, said officials at the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, which is coordinating deployment of the DCGS systems across the military.
While the current Navy system under the formal DCGS moniker has been in development only since 2004, U.S. forces started to see the need for a multiservice intelligence network during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. As Iraqi soldiers began firing Scud missiles into Israel and Kuwait from trucks, hunting those mobile launchers created the need for a network for sharing intelligence across the services, a Navy official said.
The widespread use of unmanned aircraft and ground vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan has increased that demand as well. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Defense Department and intelligence community accelerated efforts to tie the various networks operated by the services and intelligence agencies into a seamless web. Forces would have better tactical intelligence in the field, and U.S. intelligence analysts would be better positioned to spot evidence of planning for new terrorist attacks. Intelligence analysts no longer would have to rely on friendships, e-mails and luck to share information.
Those in charge of the overarching network have based the computer interface on the Apple App Store, which provides applications for iPhone users. The apps in the case of DCGS are packets of intelligence grouped by categories, whether that is regional, subject matter or type of intelligence. One application will give all available data gathered by the intelligence community regarding a subject.
“Frankly there is more than one app out there that can do the same thing, but there are proprietary issues. Sometimes it can be a package deal where if you get A, you get B as well. It’s a matter of telling engineers: This is what I need.” said Col. Kevin Wooton, a military assistant with the intelligence office.
For the Navy, the operational evaluation was the breakthrough it had been waiting for, Poor said. “First was being able to share data within the skin of the ship and across the command and control center, combat center and other centers,” he said. “Part of the testing needed to show the system’s ability to share info provided by the Navy with the broader joint intelligence community.”
The Navy demonstrated the ability to share intelligence among the ships and to a group of computer servers in Suitland, Md., called a DCGS-N Enterprise Node.
The Navy plans to deploy similar nodes at numerous shore-based headquarters around the country to form a network of gateways through which Navy intelligence would be shared with the broader intelligence community
In addition to the first six DCGS nodes, PMW-120 plans to install DCGS systems onboard 10 ships in 2010, after awarding a contract to an industry partner in March 2010 to help with the work. First in line are the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis and amphibious command ship Blue Ridge.
In keeping to the tight timeline, PMW-120 put out a request for proposals for installation work Nov. 4; responses were due back 30 days later. That way, it would be ready to award a contract if Dorsett approves the deployment decision, as Poor and others anticipate he will.
That contract would include a minor update to the baseline called the Early Adopter Engineering Change Proposal. The goal there is to get the DCGS-N applications integrated with the upgraded computers the Navy plans to install on ships under a separate program, the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) program.
“We want our DCGS-N to run in that so we won’t have to buy as much hardware or buy as many software licenses,” Poor said. The first of the DCGS engineering change installations would be on the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard in late 2010.
BAE Systems has formed a team of industry and academia to bid for the contract for the upgrade and installation work. Joining BAE’s existing team of Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Lab and Athena Consulting Sun Microsystems are General Dynamics, California-based computer tools builder MTCSC and InVisM, a Denver gaming company that specializes in military training systems.
Engineers with SPAWAR and the BAE team face their own challenges. Because the equipment would be installed on ships, engineers are unable to borrow hardware from Air Force and Army systems and must build it from the ground up.
Then there is the bandwidth issue. A typical destroyer has about a megabyte of bandwidth shared by about 350 people, whereas the typical cable Internet service in a home offers about 3.5 megabytes for two computers. When the ship’s bandwidth is divided up, each sailor is left with nearly the same bandwidth as a cell phone. Compounding this difficulty, the typical shipboard communications system is connected to the outside world by a 3-foot wide satellite dish that sweeps back and forth. Sometimes the signal’s on and sometimes it isn’t.
To combat the bandwidth issue, the Navy is developing CANES, and PMW-120 is working to integrate its intelligence-sharing applications into the CANES computers.
“We need to be able to leverage this emerging network infrastructure that’s heading toward CANES. ... So we’re coming in with DCGS-N heal-to-toe after the current networking folks do their own program upgrades,” Poor said. “Ultimately the intent is that the actual hardware footprint for C4ISR capabilities is reduced and the actual number of lines of code is reduced because we’re leveraging [other ISR systems].
From the sailor’s prospective, it should make their jobs easier in terms of number of steps to move information between these systems and to simplify maintenance and systems integration.”
Physical constraints on ships are also a considerable concern. Currently, the DCGS system on the Truman operates on three racks of computers. PMW-120 is hoping to get that down to a single rack when DCGS Increment 2 is rolled out in the 2013-2014 time frame.
The system to be installed on Stennis and Blue Ridge will already be reduced to a two-rack system.
Unlike the Air Force and Army networks, SPAWAR engineers also face the challenge of catching the ships while they’re at port. Since ships can be out to sea for 18 months at a time, and a have limited time in port, engineers must work quickly to get the systems installed.
Installation work on the Blue Ridge would test the ability of Navy and industry engineers to install the systems while away from home port. The ship is on deployment in the Indian Ocean and is scheduled to dock in Bahrain while engineers install its DCGS system.
The DCGS installations, if they are approved, could amount to something of a test for Dorsett’s new N2/N6 organization. “As we go forward, quick sharing of info up and down the chain of command and across the battlespace is what information dominance of the Chief of Naval Operation and N2/N6 is all about,” Poor said. ”I see as we go to the future being a tactical gateway to share unique Navy information up the chain of command and across the joined battlespace.”
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