Industry, DOD technology cooperation is key to realizing network-centric warfare
Col. David W. Madden
U.S. Air Force Col. David W. Madden is director of the enterprise integration group at the Air Force Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass. He is responsible for leading the horizontal integration, development, certification, deployment, and sustainment of Air Force, joint forces, and allied command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance enterprise systems, and allied C4ISR enterprise systems.
He has evaluated foreign aerospace technology capabilities; chaired a National Level Intelligence Community committee; developed space-related advanced command, control, communications, and intelligence systems; was a director of engineering; commanded a National Reconnaissance Operations Squadron; and defined documented operational requirements for future transformational space systems. Madden delivered the keynote address at the Military Technologies Conference in Boston in March. Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine sponsored the conference.
Q: How would you describe your group’s mission?
A: Our goal is finding how we integrate the electronic systems that are already there, because most of them don’t talk to each other. We are trying to establish networks to all of our systems to access any kind of information, but not just any information. We are overloading individuals in the field because we can’t get each person exactly what he needs. We need to get the right information to the right place at the right time, and we look to network-centric operations to do that. Net-centric operations are the core of military transformation. We need to fuse all the information out there, no matter where it might be, and establish more standards for military systems.
Q: What are your most pressing technological priorities?
A: How we integrate across all our different systems is the key. We need technology to bridge the gaps across our military programs, and we are trying to figure out how we fuse information to provide better situational awareness-how we filter and tailor it so our people don’t get overwhelmed with information. If you fuse all the information you have, you overwhelm the decision makers. We also need technologies to help us better share critical information between systems.
Then we need information assurance to help us ensure that our data is not being corrupted. We need technology in place so you know the information you are disseminating on the network is good information. You may have the best networking in the world, but you can’t input bad information that then gets disseminated throughout all command echelons. We also need technologies to protect our systems from the bad guys trying to break in.
Q: How can we make network-centric warfare a reality?
A: Back in the early ’80s, the stovepipe was the single program, which couldn’t interact with other programs, even if they had similar aims. Now we have identified similar programs and combined some of them, but now the stovepipe is still there, it’s just a bigger stovepipe. For network-centric warfare operations we need to establish what are the rules for sharing information that everyone needs to follow, and then you can connect to anything. More open architectures will allow us to be more flexible. We need more software-based solutions, such as the Joint Tactical Radio System [known as JTRS]. But to do this we need metrics to show us if we’re on the right track: here’s the money, what’s the worth?
To develop these kinds of systems we need a collaborative environment, a federation of new and existing systems, to help us test and evaluate our systems and networks. We can’t request information over a network, for example, with the wrong priority assigned to it. Then it might not be able to get through all the filters and routers, and your system might have to wait too long for an answer and locks up. We might not be able to determine that without a collaborative environment that simulates the message loading of tactical networks. We are getting close to achieving this by tying together the government research facilities, but we need to start running some of the things we would like to develop. We need to find out how to build it a little piece at a time, run things, and then build it a little bit better.
Q: How can industry work more closely with the military to achieve network-centric goals?
A: Industry needs to tie into our CRAW process, which stands for capability review and risk assessment. We need to identify the gaps between our CONOPS [concepts of operations]. How do we take advantage of the technologies that industry already has? How do we utilize that capability, and other capabilities that the military has already developed? At Hanscom we will have a C4I symposium or industry day this August. We need to establish industry panels that don’t dissolve, and lean on them to help us sort out all the technologies. All we know is what our [military] laboratories are doing. We need to know what industry is doing. To help companies exchange information in a meaningful way, the key is getting them to take the discussion up a level, where we can get them to look at the concepts, but not talk about how they might execute the solutions.
A lot of the technologies we need are out there now. We need to find out how we take advantage of what is already there and integrate that into our weapon systems. It’s a matter of applying the technologies we have to the problem. We need to figure out the business-base issues. How do we create an environment where the solution might not be a new system, but instead is a collection of smaller systems, some of which might already exist? Our system is set up to build new systems, because companies need to make a profit. How do we change the business model to make incremental improvements, rather than new systems? We don’t want to lose the main defense industry guys, but they also need to feel like they are not at risk from the smaller companies. At the same time we need to allow everybody to play in the game to build the defense systems of the future.
