U.S. military services have made significant progress in networking weapons systems and sharing battlefield data during the last 10-15 years, but more work needs to be done to ensure seamless information flow and improve joint command and control.
During the period of Oct. 4-14, Naval units of the USS Tarawa Expeditionary Strike Group will participate off the coast of Southern California in Trident Warrior 04, the Navy's premier FORCEnet Sea Trial experiment. Participants include Expeditionary Strike Group ONE (ESG-1), 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), USS Tarawa (LHA 1), USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52), USS Chosin (CG 65), USS Cleveland (LPD 7) and USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53).
Trident Warrior is sponsored by the Naval Network Warfare Command (NETWARCOM). Others supporting commands are the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and the Naval Personnel Development Command (NPDC).
Trident Warrior's purpose is twofold. First, it will provide speed to capability, a rapid fielding of improved FORCEnet command and control warfighting capability to the fl eet. And it will develop supporting tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) designed to optimize the employment of new technologies in Naval operations. The overall intent is to identify and assess the capabilities available when operational and tactical nodes are connected in a near real-time environment.
FORCEnet, the networked command and control component of Sea Power 21, is the driving force behind Trident Warrior. FORCEnet empowers commanders to make better decisions faster and see the effective execution of those decisions. Building FORCEnet capability, Trident Warrior 04 will focus on:
• Expeditionary, multitiered sensor and weapon information
• Human-centric integration
• Distributed, collaborative command and control
• Dynamic, multipath and survivable networks
• Information effects
• Adaptive automated decision aids
Trident Warrior will exploit several Navy information technology initiatives, and a detailed analytical process will measure the effectiveness of these technology initiatives to help watchstanders at various levels.
Web-Enabled Warrior (WEW) is an initiative that provides integrated Web-service enterprise tools and network capabilities to assist in the completion of watchstander tasks. Increased task accomplishment will be achieved through improved knowledge of information placement and by the visualization of complex data in an effective format.
The following are a few of the WEW systems scheduled for evaluation:
• Navy-Marine Corps Portal (NMCP) – a suite of information services useful to tactical watchstanders in a preconfigured workstation environment. These services will increase watchstander efficiency in the performance of operational tasks by reducing his or her level of effort.
• Global Command & Control System-Maritime (GCCS-M) eWeb – a Web-enabled version of the GCCS-M picture available to all SIPRNET Web browser enabled computers.
• Naval Integrated Tactical Environmental System (NITES) - Next – an upgraded gateway to a variety of useful METOC products designed for deployed forces through distributed Web services architecture. A suite of METOC services will also be available to tactical watchstanders through NMCP.
Another program fundamental to Trident Warrior is the Naval Networks initiative, which focuses on optimizing the communications bandwidth available to the fleet. Lessons learned during Operation Iraqi Freedom identified the need for increased and better bandwidth management in support of tactical operations. Implementing the newest version of the Advanced Digital Network System (ADNS), the networks initiative provides multipath, multitiered network architecture.