CHIPS Articles: Trident Warrior 2005 — the premier FORCEnet Sea Trial event

Participants will include 2nd Fleet's Commander, Amphibious Squadron (COMPHIBRON) 4, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), USS Wasp (LHD 1), USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7), USS Nashville (LPD 13), USS Whidbey Island (LSD 41), USS Philippine Sea (CG 58), USS Bulkeley (DDG 84) and USS Cole (DDG 67). Coalition units participating from Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand will include the HMCS Montreal (FFH 336), HMCS Fredericton (FFH 337), HMNZS (virtual), HMNZS Te Mana (F111) and HMS Liverpool (D92).

Other commands supporting NETWARCOM and TW are:

While FORCEnet provides the command and control (C2) component of Sea Power 21, TW05 will create an operating environment to explore the functional concept for FORCEnet. The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Vern Clark, and the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Michael W. Hagee, signed and formally issued a joint FORCEnet document titled "FORCEnet: A Functional Concept for the 21st Century."

The overarching hypothesis of the FORCEnet Functional Concept states "… that if all forces and organizations down to the level of individual entities are interconnected in a networked, collaborative command and control environment, then all operations and activities can enjoy the benefits of decentralization, including initiative, adaptability and increased tempo, without sacrificing the coordination or unity of effort typically associated with centralization."

The operational impact should be "… command and control characterized by shorter decision cycles that allow commanders to make and implement better decisions faster than any enemy can tolerate…." The results will be units and platforms able to adapt more quickly and effectively to changing circumstances and the ability to self-synchronize in furtherance of the mission.

To understand the operational impact of FORCEnet command and control concepts, C2 must be executed in a realistic environment to assess, in quantitative and qualitative terms, FORCEnet enabling technology and ways it is used through tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs).

Analysis of collected data provides insights resulting in dedicated procurement and development decision information required to produce "speed to capability" (S2C). Speed to capability is the rapid fielding of improved FORCEnet C2 warfighting capabilities to the fleet with full supportability and maintainability. It also includes continuous development of supporting TTPs.

In today's global war on terrorism with responses ranging from large or small scale regional conflicts to relief operations, there is a potential for the configuration of an expeditionary strike group (ESG) or carrier strike group (CSG) to include coalition partners pulled from their national regional assets. So FORCEnet concepts must also provide continuity across the coalition with a Combined Forces Maritime Component Commander (CFMCC). NETWARCOM is partnering with 2nd Fleet to focus on FORCEnet support of a CFMCC from the operational to tactical level.

TW05 will focus on key enablers of FORCEnet capability to make the CFMCC fully capable of creating coalitions able to meet all challenges. Specific FORCEnet capabilities will be advanced in the following areas.

• Naval Networks. Optimizing communications bandwidth on naval networks for the fleet and providing communications interoperability capability for coalition forces are critical. Increasing bandwidth is a serious challenge across a strike group and especially with coalition partners. However, improving the efficient use of bandwidth can be accomplished through technical and administrative means.

TW05 will explore a range of these options, document them, and make them part of ESG and Combined Forces Maritime Component Commander TTPs. There will also be specific focus on the integration of enhanced coalition interoperable doctrine and technology into the Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System (CENTRIXS).

• Cross Domain Solutions (CDS). Cross Domain Solutions create a network-centric capable strike group across U.S. and coalition forces. The technical means to include and increase the capabilities of the assigned staffs and ships from the coalition nations will be included in TW05. Specifically, CDS will address multinational, multilevel, multidomain and interoperability issues that involve dynamic networks consisting of guards that support cross domain transfer of information.

• Information Management/Collaboration. This is essential to create and manage a CFMCC information management plan that addresses information management and processing between coalition units brought together in an ESG. TW05 will also be used as an opportunity to define Navy FORCEnet requirements for chat and collaboration tools.

• Knowledge Management (KM). Basic KM research begun in TW04 will continue in TW05. While information management focuses on the connectivity and flow of information, the KM focus of TW05 will be the definition of the “actionable information” moving across the networks. These knowledge flows may be documented, measured and used to improve the content of information and information systems.

• Command and Control. C2 decision tools are essential to synchronize planning and resource management for assets across the strike group. CFMCC operational planning tools and a common operating environment (COE) that integrates access to data used in automatic generation and dissemination of maritime task plan information will be developed in TW05.

• Human System Integration (HSI). HSI focuses on the integration of warfighters engaged in automated information processing and decision-making tasks. In TW05, HSI experts will document the information and knowledge requirements a CFMCC needs in a global war on terrorism. HSI focus will find the best methods to populate a CFMCC decision-support system by filling in knowledge gaps with the required information.

• Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR). Future synchronization of ISR capabilities will be worked through distributed ISR nodes, which, in turn, will support effects-based operations in joint-coalition environments.

TW05 will identify and document interoperability and information exchange requirements between Network-Centric Collaborative Targeting (NCCT) and Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) which are used to provide improved battlespace awareness. In addition, TW05 will be the Navy’s first opportunity to work the Global Hawk Maritime Concept of Operations (CONOPS) and TTPs to support intelligence dissemination. Data from Global Hawk Maritime events in TW05 will be used to determine a baseline for time, accuracy and quality of intelligence dissemination.

• Naval Fires. Automation through FORCEnet implementation of machine to machine (M2M) technologies enables movement of targeting information between aircraft and C2 nodes. This brings aviation assets into the Navy’s fires process and provides the CFMCC with an increased ability to apply force within the battlespace. As part of the fires initiative in TW05, track and chat data will flow between the CFMCC and coalition units enhancing targeting situational awareness and potential tasking of targets.

• Information Operations (IO). Information Operations are conducted using a variety of tools, all which need to be coordinated and synchronized. TW05 will further refine coordination and interoperability of information operations tools to conduct synchronized IO campaign mission planning for the CFMCC staff. Findings and recommendations gathered from TW05 will be presented to the Sea Trial Executive Steering Group (STESG) to enable Navy leadership to make informed decisions on the current and future course for FORCEnet.

“Trident Warrior is essential to getting concepts and capabilities to sea, trying them out in a realistic environment, and learning from them what is useful and should be implemented or advanced in a fast track,” said Vice Adm. James McArthur, commander of NETWARCOM.

The planning is already underway for TW06, which is scheduled to take place in the Eastern Pacific June 2006.

Mr. Brad Poeltler is a retired Navy captain and assistant director for Trident Warrior 05.

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.