By John McHale
WASHINGTON - Suppliers and integrators of advanced technology for the U.S. military displayed their solutions at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) annual meeting for the complete network-centric force, which Army planners expect to be the deciding factor on future battlefields.
Dominating the first Gulf War was the ability of the U.S. military to fight at night as most armies do in daytime. The second Gulf War drove that home even more convincingly.
Determining the victors on future battlefields will be how well they use advanced technology and communications to network elements of battle-planes in the air, ships at sea, satellites in space, ground vehicles, and individual soldiers into one centric force.
To do this, individual soldiers must have access to the same data and images as their commanders do, giving them the ability to coordinate seamlessly with land and ground forces. Special Forces and reconnaissance teams will be able to view surveillance imagery from unmanned aerial vehicles on their wearable computers-while it is being recorded.
The network-centric force will also enable soldiers to communicate with each other whether they have the same radio or not.
BAE Systems in Hudson, N.H., is working on a system that does just that-the Adaptive Joint C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, and Computer, Intelligence and Reconnaissance) Node (AJCN) program.
AJCN, formerly the Airborne Communications Node, will provide a scalable, multifunctional, multimission communications, SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) and electronic attack payload that can be reconfigured to perform a variety of functions in the same processing hardware.
The U.S. Army and Air Force will be key users of the C4ISR node. BAE Systems engineers were on hand at AUSA with the latest updates on AJCN.
Northrop Grumman Space Technology in Redondo Beach, Calif., demonstrated the capabilities of an advanced high-power amplifier for the U.S. Army that is capable of enabling critical communications for the network-centric Future Force.
Army Future Force concepts include information superiority and improved situational understanding through the integration of data from joint forces, Northrop Grumman officials say.
These capabilities require a secure wideband network to share large amounts of real-time information among forces on the ground, sea, and air. A key enabler of this capability is an efficient power amplifier with enough power to transmit wideband data waveforms such as the Wideband Networking Waveform (WNW) over distances warfighters require. WNW is currently under development by the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) program.
Northrop Grumman engineers are developing an SDR power amplifier under the Army Communications-Electronics Research Development & Engineering Center (CERDEC). CERDEC’s Radio Enabling Technologies and Nextgen Applications Army Technology Objective program inserts new technology into the JTRS program.
“The underlying wideband power-amplifier technologies developed in this program are universal, and have applicability to many of the Future Force’s communications needs,” says Greg Jones, director of JTRS Programs for Northrop Grumman Space Technology. “We subjected the amplifier to a full-power, 100 percent duty-cycle stress test for four minutes.”
Rockwell Collins engineers from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, demonstrated network-centric operation solutions at AUSA with a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or HMMWV, containing the latest in situational awareness, mobile command and control, and wide-band communications capabilities for the driver, crew member, and commander.
Rockwell Collins demonstrated situational awareness with its Driver’s Side System that provides driver’s vision enhancement, intra-convoy communication, route mapping, route monitoring, and alerting for wrong turn, vehicle status, and hazard proximity.
The Rockwell Collins HMMWV display is demonstrating a four station Command and Control System using a scalable line of ground-vehicle computer products and displays. The systems are capable of hosting high-speed Intel and SPARC processor blades and are compatible with the U.S. Army Battle Command System application suite, Rockwell officials say.
Rockwell officials also announced at AUSA that the company delivered 40,000 Defense Advanced GPS Receivers (DAGR) for use by U.S. warfighters.
For more network-centric warfare technology coverage be sure to see the Special Report section in the December issue of Military & Aerospace Electronics.
