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FORCEnet Goal: Naval Information Superiority in Any Situation July 2004
U.S. Naval commanders will soon be able to launch attacks faster and with more precision in joint operations with the Air Force and Army, as well as with their sister maritime service, the U.S. Coast Guard. All thanks to an initiative called FORCEnet. The Department of the Navy describes FORCEnet, as "the operational construct and architectural framework for naval warfare in the information age, which integrates warriors, sensors, networks, command and control, platforms, and weapons into a networked, distributed combat force, scalable across the spectrum of conflict from seabed to space and sea to land." It will enable commanders to use information to sense, understand, decide, and act faster than any adversary in any situation. FORCEnet is the Naval component of the Department of Defense's Global Information Grid and is central to helping the Naval service develop its network-centric operations and warfare capabilities. Vice Admiral James D. McArthur Jr., (Commander, Naval Network Warfare Command) described FORCEnet as: "… all about making the OODA loop (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) work better and faster." "FORCEnet integrates a set of naval capabilities into a networked distributed combat system," says Harry Hogenkamp, program manager for Naval Combat C3 Systems in MITRE's Washington Center for Command, Control, and Communications, who is working on the program. FORCEnet Perspectives The effects of FORCEnet will be far-reaching. According to former Vice Admiral Richard W. Mayo, U.S. Navy, and Vice Admiral John Nathman, U.S. Navy, "Developing FORCEnet will involve designing and implementing a network architecture that includes standard joint protocols, common data packaging, seamless interoperability, and strengthened security."
Mayo and Nathman said FORCEnet will increase the combat power of our armed services through the use of superior knowledge. And FORCEnet will provide a comprehensive network of sensors, analysis tools, and decision aids to support the full array of naval activities, from combat operations to logistics and personnel development. To MITRE's Hogenkamp, "FORCEnet is not a war-fighting domain—you don't kill people with it," he says. "Rather, it provides the enabling command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) to the warfighters as part of Sea Power 21, the Naval vision of a superior, information-based combat force. FORCEnet helps Sea Power 21 aim the pointy end of the spear at the right spot." Wide Range of MITRE Support MITRE supports FORCEnet across the range of our naval sponsors with an integrated view that coordinates operational architecture and requirements, technical assessments, experimental planning and execution, and acquisition support. Last year, our support to both the planning and execution of Trident Warrior '03, a large-scale joint military exercise, achieved notable success in two areas: the Joint Task Force Warrior Network (JTF WARNET) and the FORCEnet Initial Prototype Demonstration. JTF WARNET, an advanced technology demonstration, provided both higher-bandwidth networking between Trident Warrior participants and improved location awareness of friendly forces. The Initial Prototype Demonstration combined these capabilities with current naval systems and planned upgrades to provide network-wide quality of service, ensuring that vital command and control information arrives reliably and predictably. The prototype demonstration also provided wireless line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight Internet Protocol (IP) networking, and distributed, collaborative planning. Without FORCEnet, the C4ISR capabilities would have been limited to satellites and shore gateways, a slower communications process. In addition, weapons coordination would have been slowed because of the need for voice commands to confirm and deconflict the location of friendly forces. Other FORCEnet Projects We also supported the FORCEnet vision through several other projects, including MITRE's support to the Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC). MITRE has been a mission partner with NWDC for several years and is fully engaged in its concept development and experimentation (CD&E) process. We are working with NWDC and the Navy's Pacific Fleet to plan, execute, and assess the results for near-term experiments in the Pacific. This CD&E effort brings the full expertise of MITRE to bear on the challenge of experimenting with potentially transformational warfighting concepts using legacy, costly-to-modify platforms, such as operational tactical aircraft. "For example, we leveraged work with the Air Force's concept, called "Cursor-on-Target," which enables machine-to-machine information transfer," says Hogenkamp. "We also supported FORCEnet efforts for the Naval Network Warfare Command and Marine Corps Combat Development Command on its Navy and Marine Corps coordinated requirements process. This included a MITRE-implemented relational database that was used by two fleet-led operational advisory groups that MITRE supported and managed. Over 100 requirements were validated in the areas of communications and network information, surveillance, and reconnaissance." Exemplar Approach to Acquisition The all-encompassing nature of FORCEnet requires a broad range of expertise in the areas of general system engineering, operations, database engineering, cost analysis, and science and technology. One of the Navy Department's next steps for FORCEnet is to shape new or existing acquisition programs to align with network-centric concepts. "Our Naval sponsors are defining FORCEnet pilot programs that will be exemplars for a net-centric approach to acquisition," says Hogenkamp. "From the warfighting side, they are using the concept of a FORCEnet engagement pack. This concept groups a set of capabilities coming from the acquisition community in a specific mission area, such as antisubmarine warfare or missile defense, into an end-to-end warfighting capability. Moving from experiment to fielded capability is the best measure of success." MITRE is helping the Navy and Marine Corps move ahead to bring FORCEnet to the Fleet by working to overcome some of the challenges that still exist. Primary among these is the challenge of providing practical, implementable guidance to acquisition program managers on how to align their programs with an evolving, net-centric service-oriented architecture. MITRE's Enterprise Systems Engineering role is being leveraged by FORCEnet to help address this challenge. —by David Van Cleave Related Information Articles and News Websites |
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