A good idea, well-executed and with value to the customer now, and in the future, is the key to any good product and its longevity. For FORCEnet that good idea is large-scale, complex field experimentation, which takes the best of new capabilities to sea from the systems commands (SYSCOMS), industry and academia. Trident Warrior 08 is the sixth of this successful series, which will take place this summer.
TW is planned and executed by a well-seasoned, experienced and expert planning staff comprised of Naval Network Warfare Command (NETWARCOM) N-9 directorate and Naval Postgraduate School subject matter experts and leaders from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) with specific skills in experiment design and operational planning.
Experimentation is a cost-effective means by which to acquaint the fleet with FORCEnet. TW08 is the largest and most complex afloat experiment to date, encompassing more than 150 independent experiment threads. Every Trident Warrior is conducted in partnership with a numbered fleet command. Products are tested and verified resulting in recommendations for acquisition of new or improved capabilities for the warfighter.
Third Fleet units of the USS Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) and coalition units will participate in the Western Pacific. Participants will include U.S. Navy ships and staffs and those from England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Specifically they include: Pacific Fleet, Third Fleet, Seventh Fleet, Amphibious Squadron 7, USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19), USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6), USS Germantown (LSD 42), USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52), USS Lake Erie (CG 70), USS Port Royal (CG 73), USS Milius (DDG 69), USS Chung Hoon (DDG 93), USS Decatur (DDG 73), HMCS Ottawa (FFH 341), HMCS Regina (FFH 334), HMNZS Te Kaha (F77) and HMAS Anzac (FFH 150).
The Trident Warrior series is aimed to help the Navy gain valuable insights on which to base smart fiscal and technical decisions for the future of FORCEnet development. Continued support of both the defense and information technology industries is essential. From the very beginning Trident Warrior experiments have accomplished measurable results for more than 200 individual technologies and procedures from Navy, Marine Corps, Army and Air Force programs of record.
More than 100 emergent technologies from industry both large and small have been tested "at sea." Many new technologies have now transitioned into programs of record. Focusing on FORCEnet capabilities that remain as leave behinds for participating ships, the Trident Warrior series has worked with more than 50 U.S. and 15 coalition ships.
Experimentation is organized in major categories called "focus areas" which were originally derived from the fleet's top 10 warfighter gaps and fleet collaborative team influence but are now linked to the NETWARCOM FORCEnet Enterprise Capability Plan.
Findings have immediately resulted in Office of the Chief of Naval Operations Program Objective Memorandum (POM) decisions. Results of testing have verified or altered SYSCOM program of record development, thus speeding up fleet delivery. Additionally, Trident Warrior has generated more than 100 formal DOTMLPF (doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel and facilities) recommendations that have been presented to the Sea Trial Executive Steering Group.
A brief history of the Trident Warrior experimentation series, and its evolution, helps to illustrate the range of this important event.
• TW03, conducted with Third Fleet and the USS Essex ESG, tested dynamic, multipath and survivable networks. TW03 was linked to the Joint Task Force Wide Area Relay Network (JTF WARNET), a Navy Research Laboratory initiative that grew from an Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration. Leave behinds included an Inter Battle Group Wireless Network.
• TW04, conducted with Third Fleet and the USS Tarawa ESG, used FORCEnet capabilities to optimize the execution of naval operations. TW04 was also linked to the Commander, Submarine Forces Sea Trial event, Silent Hammer. TW04 and Silent Hammer shared a common scenario and used common intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets. End-to-end command and control (C2) processes were established with objectives and results mapped to the Naval Capability Development Process.
• TW05, conducted with Second Fleet and the USS Iwo Jima ESG, tested C2 processes in a Coalition Forces Maritime Component Commander (CFMCC) environment. The experiment had a CFMCC focus with a global war on terror scenario and extensive coalition, joint and industry participation.
Significant achievements included integration and demonstration of a Subnet Relay, which provides a battlegroup with direct communications paths without going through a network operations center ashore, along with Net-Centric Collaborative Targeting, high frequency (HF) radio over IP and employment of the Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration aircraft.
• TW06, conducted with Third Fleet and the USS Bonhomme Richard ESG, explored required C2 systems that a CFMCC needs to conduct crisis planning within a joint task force. CFMCC focused on Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) in a GWOT scenario with interagency, coalition, joint and industry participation by working with Rim of the Pacific exercise 2006 participants during their transit from San Diego to Hawaii.
Significant achievements included Undersea Warfare Decision Support System (USW DSS), Coalition Chat Line Plus (CCL+), and continuation of testing SubNet Relay and HF over IP. The first three-country (U.S., Canada and Australia) SubNet Relay was demonstrated, Multi-Intelligence Ship Tracking (MIST) was used with Trident Warrior extending into homeland defense and humanitarian and disaster relief operations within a Defense Support to Civil Authorities/first responders experiment.
• TW07, conducted with Second Fleet and the USS Harry S. Truman CSG, tested maritime security through MDA, which was built and shared with coalition, interagency and nongovernment organizations (NGOs). TW07 worked with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency in a high availability disaster recovery focus with local NGOs, local law enforcement agencies, and coalition, joint and industry participants.
• TW08, conducted with Third Fleet, will experiment within maritime security and homeland security/homeland defense scenarios. The overarching theme will be MDA with specific interest in coalition collaboration and Maritime Headquarters with Maritime Operation Center (MHQ w/MOC) issues. Multiple MHQ/ MOCs organizations, and possibly Pacific, Third and Seventh Fleet with coalition partners, will be engaged in exploration of operational to tactical level command, reachback, operational/ tactical seams, global MDA and distributed operations.
TW08 focus areas have been defined and technology selection is underway. Focus will be on these FORCEnet areas:
-- Naval Networks to optimize communications bandwidth available to the fleet and provide communications interoperability capability for coalition forces. Increasing bandwidth is a serious challenge across a strike group and especially with coalition partners. There will also be specific focus on the integration of enhanced coalition interoperable doctrine and technology for the Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System (CENTRIXS) network.
-- Focus on interagency and agency-specific communications to support MDA. We will examine technical and procedural improvements in identifying threats through informational and tracking anomaly detection.
-- Cross Domain Solutions (CDS) are required to create a network-centric capable strike group with units assigned from other countries. The technical means to include and increase the capabilities of the assigned staffs and ships from the Pacific Rim countries will be included in TW08. Specifically, CDS will address multinational, multilevel, multi-domain and interoperability issues that involve dynamic networks consisting of guards that Stiletto, the Defense Department’s experimental 80 by 40-foot craft, took part in Trident Warrior 2007.
-- Command and Control (C2)/MHQ w/MOC decision tools are essential to synchronize planning and resource management of assets across the strike group. We will examine maritime operations center operational planning tools and a common operating environment that integrates access to data used in automatic generation and dissemination of maritime operational planning information.
-- Future synchronization of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities will be worked through distributed ISR nodes, which, in turn, will support effects-based operations in joint/coalition environments.
-- Automation of Naval Fires through FORCEnet implementation of machine-to-machine technologies enables movement of targeting information between U.S. Navy and coalition partners.
-- Information Operations will assess the effectiveness of several toolsets and procedures designed to improve the coordination and interoperability of these toolsets to conduct synchronized IO campaign mission planning for the MHQ w/MOC staff.
The findings and recommendations from TW08 will be vital for Navy leadership to make informed decisions on the current and future course for FORCEnet.
“The United States Naval service has come to rely on Trident Warrior as the most reliable source to help make critical FORCEnet decisions,” said Cmdr. Dave Varnes, Trident Warrior director. “Trident Warrior is essential for getting concepts and capabilities to sea, testing them in a realistic environment and learning what is useful and should be implemented or advanced in a fast track.”
Mr. Brad Poeltler is a retired Navy captain and assistant director for the Trident Warrior series.
Dr. Shelley P. Gallup is an associate research professor at the Naval Postgraduate School Department of Information Sciences. He has been the director for analysis of Fleet Battle Experiments and NETWARCOM’s FORCEnet experimentation.