Open Architecture,
The Critical Network Centric Warfare Enabler

Executive Summary
 

The Warfighting Imperative

The evolution of modern maritime warfare was largely motivated by the tremendous warfare technology boost of World War II.  Fundamental to this evolution, the rapidly expanding dimensions of the air threat, in speed, volume, and kinematics became serious battlespace stresses as the world moved rapidly into the Cold War.  The immediate solution at hand was to embrace digital computing as a tool for harnessing the swift command and control required to deal with the high speeds of jet powered aircraft and enormous numbers in which they were being employed.  The advent of Navy Tactical Data Systems (NTDS) in the early 1960's set the Navy on a path of digital computing technology in weapons systems that remains the hallmark of virtually every combat system in use today.  There were, however two "revolutionary" shifts in battlespace in the closing decades of the 20^th Century that profoundly challenged command and control and weapons systems that have driven the Navy to the Open Systems or Open Architecture based information technology imperatives.  They were:

·        The introduction of the low altitude anti-ship cruise missiles that led to a requirement to platform integrate sensor to weapon and streamline command and control.  The result was the AEGIS Weapon System.

·        Post Cold War shift of the maritime battlespace from blue water into the littoral and deep inland operations.  The requirement to net off-board sensors to weapons and distribute weapons control set up the tenants of Network Centric Warfare (NCW).

The Technical Challenge

    The requirement for NCW is driven by the complexities of the joint-coalition battlespace.  The physics of the environment, urban setting, severe terrain and extended inland operations all contribute and are complicated by traditional, non-traditional and asymmetric threats.   Unfortunately, present Integrated Combat Weapon Systems (ICWS) were initially developed with “platform-centric” capabilities to regain the battlespace time constraints of the Cold War threat.  They are optimized for tight platform collocated sensor to weapons paring, encased in the main-framed computing technology.  To compound matters, the rapid technology explosion of the 1990’s moved the commercial IT sector far ahead of these DoD unique computing systems and the gap widens at an increasing pace every year

Relationship to GIG and FORCEnet

    Today, the Department of Defense (DoD) recognizes the power of the commercial IP based information environment, and is defining both the capstone warfare requirements and concepts needed to exploit the Global Information Grid (GIG).  The U.S. Navy has expanded upon these requirements and concepts to develop the maritime information environment called FORCEnet.   Embracing the concepts of these information environments unlocks the underpinnings of joint interoperability and with it NCW.  The key to this unlocking is Open Architecture (OA).  It provides the framework that can adapt and exploit open system design principles, standards, and architecture.  It facilitates a new approach in acquiring and managing reusable software components, while taking maximum advantage of the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) market place.

Sea Power 21

    Meeting the Sea Power 21 challenges to seamlessly connect Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing with the enabling pillars of Sea Trial, Sea Warrior, and Sea Enterprise, FORCEnet must support relationships between three dimensions of the information space:

·        Data Domain - facilitates warriors’ focus on decision making and planning

·        Time Domain - allows warriors to reach out to data from a grid of netted sensors and fuse it with federated information coming from non-real time reach back support capability

·        Operational Level of Command - provides widespread situational awareness so that commanders are able to more effectively execute command and control over their assigned forces

To enable NCW, FORCEnet will operate efficiently throughout this multi-dimensional information space.

How Do We Get There?

    The first step moving toward an OA environment is base-lining current systems.  A thorough understanding of what degree fielded software based ICWS and associated C2 capabilities comply with the engineering standards and functional allocations of OA is essential.  A top-level review establishes that none of the Navy's in-service ICWS backbones are currently compliant with OA.  However, a more detailed assessment reveals several that are technically positioned to support the infusion of OA conditions, so a detailed migration plan can be formulated and investment resources allocated to achieve migration.  They are:

·        AEGIS Baseline Seven for CG/DDG

·        Ship Self Defense System Mark Two for CVN/LPD/LHD

    The Navy faces a daunting task in transforming its high fidelity sensor, command and decision, and weapon fire control software based capabilities into Open Architecture, and once there, incorporating the new capabilities demanded by "Sea Power 21."  It requires two distinctive processes:

·        The “Open Architecture Transformation Roadmap” is a temporary, specifically focused process that takes the Navy to an initial OA condition by 2008

·        The “Rapid Capability Insertion Process/Advanced Processor Build (RCIP/APB)” will complete the transformation and provide the agile modernization structure to allow for new capability insertion for the foreseeable future. 

    These two processes will be sequential, but overlapping, and are the essential muscle movers to achieve and maintain network-centricity.

    Fundamentally, the Defense Department has no choice in moving its archaic, monolithic, main-framed, integrated combat systems into OA.  The commercial market place made the decision for the department over a decade ago.  The DoD embraced the decision when it shifted much of its capabilities out of military standard computing environments and into COTS hardware.  Unfortunately, it did not move to embrace the modern software structures, companion to COTS, and, as such, retains much of its capabilities in archaic conditions.  The only decision for the DoD remaining is when it will make the remaining shift to OA software designs.

    The world has entered an era of rapid, technological globalization, marked with the new threat of asymmetrical warfare.  It is necessary to seize and utilize the available tools provided by NCW to achieve joint interoperability of military forces on a global scale in order to successfully combat future asymmetric terrors.  Now is the time to embrace the power of OA and move aggressively to align Navy and DoD investment, acquisition policy, and budget execution to support it.

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