PDA

View Full Version : Working on the same page



thedrifter
01-24-06, 08:40 AM
Working on the same page

By Gidget Fuentes
Times staff writer

YUMA, Ariz. - Somewhere north of this city, across the scrub-dotted southwestern desert, a group of enemy fighters prepares to attack a convoy of Marine Corps vehicles moving along a dusty road.

But these bad guys aren't alone. High in the sky, and just over some nearby hills, an assembly of aircraft outfitted with cameras and sensors watched from the sky, relaying imagery and data to a command post set up miles away.

Inside the command post, flat-panel screens - flickering with video, photographs, data and chat rooms - played out the mock attacks.

These combat scenarios marked the framework for Agile Lion, a four-day technological demonstration by the Marine Corps and Northrop Grumman Corp. at Yuma's Marine Corps Air Station. The early morning ambush on Dec. 15 unfolded as a roomful of military officials, contractors and engineers watched and tracked the attack.

"There's an ambush on the convoy, and they just killed it, and now they're moving on," said Lt. Col. Robert Softje, the Corps' project manager for the demonstration, glancing at a monitor. "You can see kind of a Nintendo game going on. But it's real."

What the demonstration sought to show was whether technologies, including existing off-the-shelf systems, could pull together multiple battlefield data and deliver it in real time to the Marine who needs to see it, whether a two-star division general or the corporal squad leader on the ground. The ensuing multidimensional battlefield picture is considered a key part of what's called "network-centric warfare."

Previously, a battle staff would collect information and intelligence, analyze it and relay it to commanders, who weighed options and made decisions. The boots on the ground carried out the orders.

But in today's sophisticated war-fighting arena, the rapid advance of technology has caused an exponential growth of information and industry-created capabilities such as wireless communication, Internet chat and handheld computers. The battlefield has become a digital world.

That explosion of tactical digital technology continues to give military commanders and leaders new tools that allow them to see real-time battlefield scenarios without actually being there. The Navy, for example, has been incorporating network-centric warfare with upgrades on existing ships and advances in new classes of vessels.

For the Corps, "net-centricity," as some call it, would mark a big change for platoon leaders on the ground.

The array of aircraft flying during the Agile Lion demo - two AV-8B Harrier jets, an F/A-18D Hornet jet, a KC-130J Hercules aerial refueler and an AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopter - carried sophisticated communication systems, antennae, sensors and imagery equipment. The fixed-wing aircraft collected video and imagery using Litening targeting pods linked into the network. On the ground at the Barry M. Goldwater Range, Humvees outfitted with laser rangefinders linked into a vast communications network, based on a Northrop Grumman Advanced Information Architecture server. The network combines voice, imagery, text messages, chat rooms and other data into a battlefield picture.

"Whether it is Marines on the ground or from the aircraft in the air, they're all gathering information," said 1st Lt. Kevin Schultz, a public affairs officer at Yuma. "That Marine on the ground can go through the network and pull the information he wants."

The idea, Schultz said, is that everyone "has the same information that the general or the colonel back at the command center [has] ... so they all work on the same page.

"In the convoy support mission, they are all helping that convoy get down the road, so that corporal in the Humvee can see what's ahead of him," he said. The corporal can watch that video in real time on his computer. He can pick and choose the data he needs based on the mission and situation he faces.

A patrol leader reconnoitering an insurgent hideout targeted for an airstrike would have more information at his fingertips. "The Marine on the ground has a picture, so instead of going on the radio - 'Oh no, it's that building on the right' - you have a picture here with a circle around the building [that says] that's the building," Schultz said, noting that "the pilot knows exactly what the building is."

Northrop Grumman officials initially approached Corps leaders with the concept using its AIA servers, said Stew Miller, Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems' advanced programs and experimentation director in Norfolk, Va.

The generals liked the idea, so Miller's team worked with aviation officials to see what could be developed.

Miller noted that linking more systems, including aircraft, into a larger network in a combat theater would expand the access for more tactical users. Such a system used in Iraq would create a network that blankets the entire country, he said.

Softje, the AV-8B requirements officer at Marine Corps headquarters, and other Corps officials worked alongside industry experts to develop Agile Lion. "It's been a journey of discovery," he said.

"At the end of the day, it's about the Marine getting the information that's available currently to the very high levels … in the same quality of information all the way down to the strategic corporal."

Miller said the collaboration has made it easier to flex the concept, unlike the slower acquisition process of developmental and operational testing.

Programmers can quickly make changes, such as rewriting software, based on feedback from the users, he said.

To see what it's like to be a Marine or soldier, Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems sent engineers to the field to ride in convoys. They returned from their first experience surprised by the toll of dirt and sand on their equipment.

They "didn't know the environment was that harsh," said Nick Gritti, Joint STARS senior program manager in Melbourne, Fla.

The next step, Softje said, is to get direction from the top brass so that "when we're done, we'll be able to make intelligent requirement decisions, or have requirements developed" from the process, he said.

"We're going to take what we learned here and go and make informed decisions for the Marine Corps about the direction of our network-centric warfare," he added.

"Is this the be-all? No. This is one of the inputs to help make informed decisions."