Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 3: Information in Warfare (1997)

Future warfare strategies will depend on forward-deployed, dynamic naval forces to execute a broad set of military missions. These missions will range from early, rapid power projection to deter aggression and sustained operations within a joint force structure in a major regional conflict at one end of the spectrum, to special operations activities and humanitarian relief at the other end. These forces are now and will continue to be highly dependent on a wide range of tactical information and subsequently on the supporting information infrastructure. Future naval warfighting strategies are being shaped by trends we see emerging today, particularly within the commercial information services industries worldwide. Naval forces, because of their forward-deployed nature, are critically dependent on timely long-haul information transport and utilization and have been the major user of space systems, particularly satellite communications. The evolution of information and networking services and technologies within the commercial sector and the continued expansion of those services globally will continue with ever-increasing capabilities into the 21st century. By 2035, we will see a world dominated by the proliferation of primarily digital commercial information systems that will provide a broad range of services anywhere in the world. These services will be available to forward-deployed naval forces but likely will also be available to our adversaries. A major challenge for the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of the Navy will be the development of strategies and organizational structures to allow for the maximum utilization of global commercially developed information systems while at the same time protecting these critical capabilities from denial or attack and developing the means to deny the use of these systems and services to our adversaries.

To that end, the Department of the Navy must develop a strategy to achieve and maintain information superiority for naval forces. Information superiority must be established as a warfare area under an integrated organizational structure with responsibility for resource planning, program development, and budgeting for all Navy and Marine Corps information systems and services that are not unique to individual platforms or weapons systems. An information-in-warfare system for achieving information superiority comprises:

• Information sources, communications systems, information processing and fusion systems, and decision support and display systems, all seamlessly integrated by an infrastructure;

• The means for protecting these information systems and services by making them diverse, secure, and robust to attack or countermeasures; and

• The means to deny hostile forces the ability to degrade, disrupt, and/or utilize these information systems.

Today these three components are pursued separately and with unequal emphasis. The Department of the Navy must establish an organizational structure that integrates the development, protection, and denial of information services across all naval platforms in a ''system of systems" context. The importance of maintaining a tight coupling between information sources, systems, and services to include intelligence, sensors, MCG (mapping, charting, geodesy), command and control, weapons, and targeting systems cannot be overemphasized. We are rapidly moving into an information-rich era involving highly mobile forces, precision-guided weapons, exquisite global situation awareness, focused logistics, and full-dimensional protection of our forces. Information superiority must be the centerpiece for any vision of joint and coalition force operations in the 21st century. Information superiority will not, however, be viewed with the importance it demands unless naval officers are rewarded, career paths established, and education programs put in place within this warfare area.

To establish information superiority, a robust, seamless information infrastructure must be established to allow future military forces to transmit and receive needed information from any point on the globe in a flexible, reconfigurable structure capable of rapidly adapting to changing tactical environments. This information infrastructure must support these needs, while allowing force structures of arbitrary composition to be rapidly formed and fielded. Furthermore, the infrastructure must adapt to varying demands (i.e., surge conditions) during crises and stress imposed by evolving political and military situations. The infrastructure must allow information to be distributed to and from various force elements at any time; its architecture must not be constrained to support a

force-structure hierarchy conceived a priori. Most importantly, the information and services provided to an end user through the infrastructure must be tailored to the user's needs and be relevant to the user's mission, without requiring people at the user's location to sort through volumes of data or images. An information infrastructure meets the warfighter's needs by:

• Providing robust and reliable service;

• Avoiding exposing the user to detection and targeting; and

• Supporting force structures of arbitrary composition by:

  • Moving information in any format from any source to any destination, and

  • Providing information tailored to users' needs.

Commercial interests will continue to drive the development of most information technologies, and the Navy must be prepared to accommodate rapid changes in the direction that commercial capabilities evolve by adopting commercial technologies and equipment and adapting naval practices and systems to incorporate them. Although many developers of military information systems claim that they are using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, closer inspection often reveals that in fact they have modified the commercial product. This practice is markedly less desirable than adopting the product directly without change, because in modifying products the user loses future commercial support for the product, including the ability to insert commercial upgrades, and may end up with the burden of maintaining the system. In particular, because of the utilization of satellite communications to provide connectivity to forward-deployed naval forces, special emphasis must be given to the seamless integration of terrestrial fiber, satellite communications, and in-theater wireless tactical networks. Integration of these diverse, largely commercially developed communications systems into a robust, protected information infrastructure is a critical issue that will require significant Navy Department interest and research and development investment.

Establishing a robust, secure information infrastructure will allow the timely transport of critical information to naval forces deployed worldwide. Of equal importance are the content of the information transported over the infrastructure and the applications that make use of that information. It is important to regard the information content conveyed to the warfighter at any level of command as the end product of a system that is integral to the security of the nation. Indeed, the panel views the information system, consisting of the infrastructure, the information itself, and the processing of that information that transforms the data into meaningful representations, as an essential asset in the repertoire of offensive and defensive systems, on a par with platforms and weapons.

Three aspects of information that affect the value and utility of information content include:

• Sources of information, including DOD, government agencies, commercial, and public-domain sources such as Internet traffic, afforded by an increasingly information-centered society;

• Applications of information for naval activities, organized according to areas of coverage and requirements for timeliness; and

• Processing of information, which is required to transform information into forms that are useful for the corresponding applications. The panel particularly considered processing requirements for two classes of applications: automatic target recognition applications and data fusion applications for information understanding.

An essential aspect of information is its representation. How information is presented, whether to a human or to an automatic analysis system, very much influences the utility of the information. Further, a database can take on new significance when organized in useful ways or when the information is combined with prior statistical observations, as in collaborative filtering. Processing of information can be the vital ingredient in making the information have value. The panel believes that achieving "information understanding" requires the ability to extract useful representations, based on recognition of patterns and fusion of information according to meaningful associations.

The Department of the Navy must support technology development within the domain of information content, including information understanding and recognition theory, where unique military applications are involved. Technologies for improving information content involve information representation, search, integrity, and reasoning, as well as issues associated with information presentation and human performance prediction models. While much of this research and development will be critical to the entire DOD, the Navy Department should play a central and significant leading role in establishing programs in this area, given that forward-deployed naval forces are so information dependent and potentially bandwidth limited. These are not topics that will be dominated by commercial interests, although there are clearly areas of overlap within the global financial, medical, and information systems markets.

Critical to information content are the sensor systems that will provide the basis for situation awareness. Advanced sensor technology is a crucial element for the collection of information. One example of an evolving commercial business area with obvious military applications is airborne and particularly space-based collection of images. In the near term, new ventures in this area will offer afford-

able submeter-resolution panchromatic as well as artificially colorized imagery of most areas of Earth, from commercially launched space platforms. In addition to services and products, this industry will drive the development of low-cost, lightweight advanced sensors that will have spin-offs for uniquely military applications.

In spite of the major contributions the commercial sector is likely to make toward satisfying future military sensor requirements, there will always be a subset of those requirements that has no identifiable, profitable commercial counterpart. Many of the significant radar, electro-optical, and acoustic sensor technologies that will be critical for future military operations will require Navy Department investment to ensure their robust development and tailoring to naval applications. Reconnaissance and surveillance platforms under the control of the joint task force commander will provide some of the information necessary to conduct naval missions and operations. The Navy must ensure that it provides connectivity to those assets provided by other Services or the National¹ community, and it must invest in organic sensors and platforms to meet unique Navy requirements that will not otherwise be satisfied.

Given the critical importance of information to every aspect of naval operations, the area of information security is of concern. The Department of the Navy must be assured of the availability and integrity of both the information infrastructure and information content. Additionally, the Navy Department must be able to create and maintain confidentiality as required. These requirements are complicated by the naval forces' increasing dependencies on and interconnectivities with public and commercial information sources and infrastructure elements. The commercial aspects of the Navy Department's information environment must not prevent the effective exploitation and protection of the information infrastructure or content. The information infrastructure, the sensors that provide data for critical databases, and the information processing systems that will provide the information understanding to support warfighting activities must be protected. The Department of the Navy must also develop the means (including, for example, offensive technologies and infrastructure weapons) to deny U.S. adversaries the information they need.

In conclusion, the Department of the Navy must recognize the significance and critical importance of information technologies and systems for future naval

forces and elevate information superiority to a warfare area. The panel recommends that the Department of the Navy:

1. Establish and treat information superiority as a warfare area. Provide a mechanism for coordinating all Navy Department command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C⁴ISR) resources, requirements, and planning, giving due consideration to the evolving missions for naval forces and to current and future capabilities of ISR performed by other Services and agencies. If established, such an area could greatly enhance the capability of joint operations with other services.

2. Encourage information superiority careers. Educate all officers, regular and reserve, about information technologies, resources, and systems needed to support future Navy and Marine Corps operations; define a cadre of specialists; and identify a career path to flag/general officer rank.

3. Adopt commercial information technology, systems, and services wherever possible. Develop technologies only for special Navy and Marine Corps needs such as low-probability-of-intercept communications and connectivity to submerged platforms.

4. Modernize information systems and services aggressively. Strive to involve operational users, research commands, and acquisition organizations in a cohesive relationship that allows the continued rapid insertion of advanced information systems for use by Navy and Marine Corps forces.

5. Focus information infrastructure R&D. Make integration of diverse commercial services and DOD-unique links a primary focus of information infrastructure and network research and development.

6. Manage data sources. Establish a clear policy designating responsibility in the Navy Department for identifying, organizing, classifying, and assuring all relevant information sources that permit information extraction and communication from multiple remote locations. Invest in research on and development of tools and techniques to facilitate this shared information environment.

7. Extract relevant information and knowledge. Adopt commercial data-mining technology for naval applications and pursue a theory of information understanding and apply it to target recognition.

8. Exploit commercial sensing. Consider commercial space-based imaging systems and tools for exploiting them, as well as mechanisms for distributing data, in support of naval applications.

9. Exploit National and joint sensors. Provide online/direct connectivity to naval platforms and Marine Corps units to support long-range and precision-guided munitions.

10. Make information warfare operational. Integrate defense and offense and develop needed technology, systems, tactics, tools, and intelligence support.