By Ben Ames
SAN DIEGO — The future of naval warfare will make the most of joint operations to create an automated oceanwide vessel-monitoring network that military leaders liken to a "maritime NORAD," says Navy Adm. Vern Clark, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations.
Whether they are watching a commercial airliner or a FedEx cargo plane, federal officials monitor airplane transponders to build a high degree of confidence they know what is loaded on every airplane.
In contrast, worldwide maritime shipping is relatively unregulated and unenforced, as security officials struggle to track drug-smugglers, gunrunners, pirates, and terrorists, he says. Clark spoke at the AFCEA West 2004 conference in February in San Diego.
The solution is to use cooperative technology and work with international allies to track the cargo of every ship at sea at any given time.
For the U.S. Navy, that means creating a system of constant surveillance and intelligence that acts as a maritime NORAD — short for North American Aerospace Defense Command, the U.S. and Canadian early warning system of aircraft and missile attack based in Colorado Springs, Colo.
The plan is still in concept and development stages. Leading the effort are planners in the U.S. Coast Guard, since they must forge the international agreements, Clark says.
"Tomorrow's battlefield requires the ability for us to climb into the ring with the enemy," he says. Navy planners will achieve that goal through initiatives like Sea Sprite and Sea Shield, which enable Navy fighting forces to communicate more efficiently than they can today.
Such an approach relies on vast amounts of integrated sensor information. Sailors will collect and use that information through intelligent, unmanned vehicles, and through automated, self-organizing networks of sensors that perform anti-submarine warfare, Clark says.
This powerful concept of operations (con-ops) is wedded to new technologies.
"Does technology lead con-ops or does con-ops lead technology? We need to know which is which," he says. "To be more joint, we must share our acquisition process. There are not enough resources for us to continue to do stovepipe development. We need our industry partners to help us break down those stovepipes for this transformation."
The best example of this process is the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), Clark says.
"We build ships to last 20, 30, 40 years, even 50 years for a carrier. So how are we supposed to keep up with Moore's Law? The technology turns over every 18 months, but we're working with an acquisition cycle that turns over every five to seven years."
The LCS is designed to be a networked ship, so engineers can quickly swap new technologies for old ones during a port stop, instead of pulling the vessel into dry dock. That flexibility will enable sailors on the LCS to use unmanned vehicles and self-forming, self-distributing sensor networks.
"I look at it this way: should I hold my cards until I get everything I need?" he says. "No, I need to plug and play. So when technology comes, I can roll it on and roll it off, not go into the shipyard for a year and half."
